Bouncing Spam

[Quentin Campbell]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Julian Field [mailto:mailscanner at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK] 
>Sent: 09 January 2004 12:25
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Bouncing Spam
>
>
>At 12:09 09/01/2004, you wrote:
>>I have been using MailScanner for a year or so. We used to flag spam
>>messages but accept them. As the volumes of spam increased we have now
>>started to bounce spam messages. We bounce rather than delete 
>so as to be
>>polite to people who send legitimate messages which are 
>'falsely' marked as
>>spam.
>[snip]
>Result: They get very annoyed, as they can't see any of their real mail
>among all the MailScanner spam bounce messages.
>Result of that: They complain to me about it, and I can't help them.
>Result of that: MailScanner gets a very bad name, and you have 
>wasted yet more of my time that I have to spend answering these (often 
>rude, abusive and threatening) emails.
[snip]

Julian

I sympathise with your problems. However I am equally at risk from
sanctions or abuse from people who think that I am deliberately ignoring
their mail when in fact it was (a false positive) deleted automatically
as probable spam. 

For this reason I have chosen to use the MailScanner option to send an
explanatory message when spam to me is deleted. In truth I am more
concerned about the people who _need_ to know what has happended to
their message to me than I am about the consequences of collateral spam
that results.

One reason I have moved to using MailScanner to delete probable spam is
that we have many mailboxes on Outlook/Exchange. That system cannot
permanently delete tagged messages through the Rules Wizard when Outlook
is switched off. This can be a serious problem and results in mail being
lost if quotas are exceeded (over vacations for example).    

I receive so much spam each day that it is not practical to have tagged
messages delivered then moved to a "spam" folder (by a personal mail
filter) where I am supposed to inspect them for possible false
positives. 

I would be interested to hear what alternative strategies have been
adopted by people in my position.

Quentin