[Buck_W]

Maybe it's just my experience, but everytime I begin to bounce email spam, it appears that my spam increases at least four fold. I'm not talking about bogus mail headers that just get bounced back to me. I've paid attention to the amount of spam I receive when I simply delete it. Without a doubt, when I begin bouncing it back, the spam (different kinds) immediately increases.

Anybody else have this problem? Anybody have a suggestion as to why this might be the case?

[Ω]

From what I understand a bounce tells them that your address is valid.

[Buck_W]

Originally posted by _?_:
From what I understand a bounce tells them that your address is valid.

If that is indeed the case, then that would validate my experience and it would raise the question, "Why in the world would anyone want to use the bounce feature?"

[ghporter]

Originally posted by _?_:
From what I understand a bounce tells them that your address is valid.

Yup. It does "only encourage them." The best thing to do with spam is to simply delete it-don't even read it or mark it read, just trash it and empty your mail trash promptly.

[analogika]

Originally posted by ghporter:
Yup. It does "only encourage them." The best thing to do with spam is to simply delete it-don't even read it or mark it read, just trash it and empty your mail trash promptly.

What?

I thought bounces were the equivalent of "invalid recipient"???

[CatOne]

Originally posted by _?_:
From what I understand a bounce tells them that your address is valid.

Why would it tell them this? It's a bounce?

Still, typically the email address they send from is invalid, which means when you bounce something, you get another bounce back. It's not worth it, just delete it.

[JKT]

Bouncing spam just doubles the amount of spam on the net... 99.99% of spam will be sent from a spoofed e-mail address so bouncing it back to that address does nothing other than fill the inbox of the person who has had their address spoofed. In other words, don't do it!

[hayesk]

Originally posted by analogika:
What?

I thought bounces were the equivalent of "invalid recipient"???

Because bounces will usually come back from a mail server in a few seconds. If you read your email an hour after it came, and bounce it back, all the sender has to do is look at the time it came back and realize is was you "bouncing" it rather than a real error message.

Also, the sender address is typically fake anyway, so you would be sending Invalid recipient address to a stranger who had nothing to do with the spamming.

So just forget about bouncing. Bounce was a well intentioned, but poorly thought-out feature. It should be removed and replaced with a dialogue explaining to users why bouncing is wrong.

[Ω]

Originally posted by CatOne:
Why would it tell them this? It's a bounce?

Me no understand. Me just recite what me been told.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by _?_:
Me no understand. Me just recite what me been told.

Well that's silly. I was told Hitler was a really nice guy. Tell your friends!

[ghporter]

A bounce is some kind of reply. The 'bots that handle spam only worry about getting a reply when they probe addresses, so most spammers will continue (or increase) to spam you if you bounce the spam. Ignoring it not only doesn't give them a response, it snubs them too. When I delete spam, some sick spammer gets heartburn, and that makes me happy.

If email worked like it should, then bouncing would be the answer. Nowadays a bounce is more often interpreted as something like a badly managed server saying "user behind on payments" or "user's mail box is crammed right now, wait a few minutes." This is part of the "openness" of email standards. They're all RFCs, and not IEEE standards, so there's no real "conformity," and that is the crux of the spam problem. Good email should be proof against spoofed addresses, volume mailing, shotgun addressing, and all the other nasty tricks spammers use. Too bad...

[CharlesS]

If you bounce spam messages, this is what you'll be doing to someone:

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=242148

[Ω]

Originally posted by CatOne:
Well that's silly. I was told Hitler was a really nice guy. Tell your friends!

I hear he was quite artistic. He wrote a book as well. That's what people tell me.