Martin Gregorie: > On Sun, 2022-08-14 at 11:39 +1000, Noel Butler wrote: > > On 14/08/2022 02:38, Martin Gregorie wrote: > > > > > 3) It would be rather trivial to return spam to sender with a > > > suitable > > > > WTF, that has been a terrible idea since the 90s, given most spam is > > spoofed, the end result of this will be your mail server getting the > > poor reputation as source of backscatter and going into blacklists :) > > > greed - I don't do that, but almost as long as I've been on this list > there have been advocates of it. As I said, I thought about it, but the > effort of writing a filter to determine what, if anything should be > bounced or rejected, has never seemed worth the effort for such a low > volume mail used as myself.
To clarify: Backscatter is caused by ‘rejecting’ mail with a bounce message, after first accepting it. Backscatter is not caused by rejecting mail directly during the SMTP conversation. The Wikipedia page explains this really quite well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_%28email%29 Depending on one’s goals it may be useful to reject spam, at least obvious spam, early, eg using a milter.
