Thanks to everyone contributing thoughts about this matter. I can say, that I was able to convince management to refrain from this, using all the facts stated here <s>
Cheers Ralf G. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roedel, Mark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 5:12 PM Subject: RE: [SAtalk] Slightly OT: Arguments needed for not replying to spam > -----Original Message----- > From: Ralf Guenthner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:51 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [SAtalk] Slightly OT: Arguments needed for not > replying to spam > > > Fellow spam-fighters, > > management wants me to set up an auto-reply to mails marked > as spam by SA. I told them that this is a very bad idea, since > > a.) reply addresses are fakes and not working most of the time anyway And if they *do* work, they're quite often not the address of the actual sender... > b.) if they DO work, we will just notify the spammers that > the address they bought/harvested is working Maybe, maybe not, depending on how your mail services are architected. (Our SpamAssassin is set up on a gateway server, for example, so under this scenario the spam analysis and the resulting bounce would happen before any check that the destination mailbox actually exists.) > c.) most spammers are from the U.S. or other foreign > countries and wouldn't give a damn about German law > (not to mention that they wouldn't be able to read/ > understand German) > > Did I forget anything? Well, you'll be using additional resources on your mail servers to queue and send these reply messages, and presumably if they're not eventually deliverable there'll be a bounce message that goes somewhere and has to be dealt with by somebody. Who's going to compose the text of this auto-reply? Will it be framed in a way that might upset a potential customer who happened to generate a false positive? ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: INetU Attention Web Developers & Consultants: Become An INetU Hosting Partner. Refer Dedicated Servers. We Manage Them. You Get 10% Monthly Commission! INetU Dedicated Managed Hosting http://www.inetu.net/partner/index.php _______________________________________________ Spamassassin-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/spamassassin-talk
