* Alvin Oga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [20030319 15:18 PST]: > > On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Vineet Kumar wrote: > > > The proper thing to do is silently ignore such messages. > > i think the proper thing is to "bounce" the spam .. and dont even > receive it in your "spam folders"
If you can reject it at SMTP time, great. Once your MTA has accepted it, though, IMO you should just discard it. You could choose to report it before discarding it, or to do some forensics on the headers, or to add the sending host to a list of bad senders, or any number of other things. In any case, I maintain that starting an off-topic thread on debian-user is not among the acceptable courses of action ;-) > - if you bounce it, the sending servers get filled up > with their own spam This is just naive. More often, if you bounce it, it ends up frozen in your queue. Other times, it ends up going to a victim of header forgery. Very rarely does it actually bounce back to the actual sender. > > - 95% or more of the spams they try to send just bounces > ( the balance of spam just needs filter tweeking, no time for it > > ( too bad sendmail creates a log of it bouncing ... > ( but oh well, small price to pay > > if you receive the spam in your inbox, its now a confirmed/valid email > addy and they will add you to other "known-to-be-good" spam lists More likely, if you respond in any way to the spam, you're validating it for them. I think the least information you can give them (once your MTA has already accepted the mail via SMTP) is to just /dev/null the message. Most spammers don't care about error messages at all, and will continually try bouncing addresses anyway. Not only do I doubt that they won't sell an address they don't know to be good, they don't even do so much as to remove the address from their own lists. good times, Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater
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