Bouncing?

A poll would be far to crass for this subject
Does bouncing SPAM serve any purpose? - Or, if the mail is sitting on the server, is it a futile effort as it has been accepted by your server even though you may not have received it to your in box?
I use Mailwasher but rarely use the bounce facility as all it does, in most cases, is "double" the bandwidth useage as there is usually no valid return path.

Pilli

 

Some have said it worked, and some say it doesn' t work. It all comes down to if they use a valid From: address that they actually use, and not a fake address or somebody elses address. Then you have to hope that their software actually takes the e-mail address off the list, which they don't have to do if they actually provided a valid From address.

I would have to say it doesn't work most of the time as spammers fake so much information.

 

Well; I have experience in the very center of this.. I got Mailwasher a while back and I always bounced everything I didn't want all the time. At first it worked wonderfully I asume because within a week I seemed to get no spam at all. Recently (not sure why - I think I have a very private email addy) my spam has increased greatly and I don't think the bounce is having any effect anymore. Seemed to have worked very well for months.. maybe half a year.

 

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen
I have experienced the same as Detox; I got rid of 99,9 % of spam first, now I am receiving it again, but NOT as massive as it used to be, not even close. There is still one bug in there, his name is Phillip Ryker living in Boston, newfunpages.com. I keep on receiving his spam daily. I use spamcop.net reporting tool too. I have no idea what exactly it does.......maybe just emails ....the most effective antispam would be reporting to the closest police I recon.

friendliest - Ari

 

I agree with all of the above comments. I've been using FRONTGATE MX's reject and report feature. Reports
spam to ordb.org. Too early to see any results. I like the fact that it will send you back a report of any action taken though.

 

I agree with LowWatermark, that the bouncing feature has its greatest effects in the psychological. It makes people feel at least a little pro-active rather than being victimized, kind of like flipping spammers the third finger in light of the general helplessness surrounding the crap they have to filter through in their mailbox everyday.

Mailwasher, and the bouncing feature, in my extremely unexpert opinion, should only be the second line of defence. I've always felt that safe surfing habits, and continued education about it (cookie control, scripting control, file execution permissions, real-time registry modifications, website privacy policies, spyware/webbugs awareness etc) have a far greater effect on reducing spam. I mean, those are some of the methods that spammers use to harvest your name in the first place, so understanding those things should preempt the use of Mailwasher.

Of course, people can be even more proactive than just bouncing (Spamcop, email tracking, ISP reporting), but how many ordinary people have the time, the inclination or the necessary knowledge (like how to decode email headers, for instance) to pursue this to the required end?

In my own experience, Proxomitron has had a far greater effect on reducing spam than Mailwasher and its bouncing feature. The feature I appreciate about the latter most is the ability to preview my messages on my ISP's server, and delete it from there. However, some email clients like The Bat! and the new Pocomail (version 3) also have this feature, so does this make Mailwasher redundant?

........besides, I think I'm falling in love with qi4zmtg0ljewodg4nzq1@3184.6445000.iwestnoc.com .....I'm thinking of popping the question next week......