In message , Rodger Whitlock
writes
On Mon, 1 Dec 2003 12:44:26 +0000, Martin Brown wrote:

...Anything I bounce goes back to the
address in the return path complete with all the spammers forged
headers. It is then up to the unfortunate on the receiving end to decode
them and complain about the forgery to the spammers ISP or more likely
the dumb sysop with the open mail relay (or his ISP).

That kind of "bounce" is worse than useless and merely aggravates
the problems caused by spam. Stop it right now.

Not likely.

[If I'm repeating myself in what follows, apologies.]

There are two distinct types of e-mail bounces:

1. The kind you describe, where the entire message is received by
a POP server, then forwarded, either by the server or by an
e-mail program under user control, to the address in the
"Return-path:" header. This is what's described above.

No it isn't. Demon provides full SMTP services to end user domains. And
their software provides for genuine envelope rejection.


2. The other kind is where the destination SMTP/POP server
refuses to accept a message and returns an error code to the
originating SMTP server. This is what you get if you send e-mail
to a non-existent address.

Exactly. And that is what I and many other Demon users do.

It sounds like lots of people don't understand how e-mails are
sent.

Don't be too quick to jump to conclusions.

1. The "envelope", which says who the message is for. This is
normally invisible to the end recipient because it is stripped
off by most POP servers. The envelope may also contain the size
of the message within and a small amount of other data.

You are assuming that I use a POP server. I don't.

The key thing to understand is that the headers (item 2) may have
nothing to do with anything; they can all be complete forgeries

Agreed. Although usually there is a small amount of real path hidden
somewhere in amongst the dross. It is really only worth beating up on
major corporate data centres that have open mail relays.

While we wait for effective anti-spam legislation to be brought
in, the only bounces that do any good are those based on the
envelopes. But I have yet to hear of anti-spam software that
operates on the fly as a message trickles in.

Turnpike and for that matter the DOS based KA9Q that I used before that
both provide envelope based rejection and SMTP.

Your faith in the ability of legislators to deal with spam is touching
but sadly misplaced. They might drive it offshore but that is all.

The upshot of this is that anti-spam software that operates after
the entire message is received should not bother "bouncing"
anything. It's a total waste of time in almost all cases.

I agree entirely. Once it has been downloaded you may as well file it in
a junk folder and then trash it. But on a dialup line bouncing bulk UCE
dross by applying rules to the envelope is extremely efficient. YMMV

Regards,
--
Martin Brown