Fighting SPAM?

[m1911owner]

There was a thread in the old Roundtable at THR about getting rid of SPAM.  I recall that someone said that there is a tool you can use to bounce SPAM as undeliverable, which will cause some SPAMers to purge you from their mailing list.

Does anyone have any information about this tool?  Thanks!

[AmbulanceDriver]

I actually have this program, it's called Mailwasher.  A google search for it will find you the link (would try to find it myself, but I'm at work)

It works extremely well.

[Sindawe]

Hmmm...I'll have to look into that.  I manage the mail servers for my employer I see hundreds of pieces of SPAM come in each day.  Some gets blocked by our AntiVirus/AntiSpam package, some does not.  That which does not but targets a bad or defunct address generates an NDR.  The thing I see is the return address for the SPAM is also bogus, so the NDR generates an NDR on the target mail system, which comes back to our servers and gets routed for review by me.

Sometimes I wonder how much of the traffic on the 'Net is just this sort of NDR volleyball.

Frelling SPAMers.  A pox on the lot of 'em!

[Werewolf]

Mailwasher is useful if your ISP supporst the 3rd party bounce feature (they'll bounce but don't allow users to). Some don't.  Cox for example doesn't. When that happens MW tries to fool the original sender by sending a message that looks bounced even though it really isn't which is pretty useless because a bounce is different from a simple reply to original send point (which is usually fake in spam anyway).  In addition spammers aren't stupid - they can see the time stamp on the message and if it isn't pretty darn close to when the original was sent they know it's fake. NOTE: It's been a couple of years since I used MW - it may work better now.

Most ISP's these days have spam blocker features that the user can turn on or off at will. The one Cox has works pretty good. The only problem with it is they might kill something you actually want to get.

The best method to deal with spam is to set up your mail program filters just to drop anything where the from isn't in your address book into the trash. You can review trash - add what you want to your address book and delete the rest. After about a month most all spam ends up in the trash and the stuff you want ends up in your inbox. Another useful filter is to dump messages that have a blank subject into the trash.

Its still a good idea to do a quick scan on your trash for from addy's you may want before you delete it but I find I can scan the trash barrel in less than 10 seconds even with a 100 or so messages in it.

Spam is a fact of life these days. There's no fool proof way to deal with it and be sure you're still getting the stuff you want. With Cox spam blocker turned off I get 100+ spam a day. With it turned on I get maybe 10. Spammers are smart - they keep figuring out ways around the blockers.

[Standing Wolf]

Spammers are smart - they keep figuring out ways around the blockers.

Cunning, perhaps, but not smart. If they were smart, they'd find legitimate ways to make their livings.

[Werewolf]

Spammers are smart - they keep figuring out ways around the blockers.

Cunning, perhaps, but not smart. If they were smart, they'd find legitimate ways to make their livings.

No... if ethical they'd find legitimate ways to earn their livings.

Smart and unethical as well as smart  and evil or smart and criminal are not mutually exclusive traits.

There's plenty of unethical and/or evil and criminal types who are plenty smart.