On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 3:00 PM, Jared Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The product I've been working with allows th user to set Rejection and
> Deletion thresholds, at which a message identified as spam will be rejected
> with "550 - Message is Spam" etc., or accepted with "250 OK" but dropped on
> the floor, respectively.  Historically it has been believed that if we have
> a high enough confidence that a message is spam, it is adventageous to
> pretend we have accepted the message in order to avoid allowing spammers to
> know whether their methods are working.  I have not verified anywhere that
> this practice really does have a negative impact on spammers.  This would
> especially be invalidated if most of the rest of the spam filtering world
> does not make use of 'delete' and simply issues rejections -- in that case,
> if the spammers don't get the information from me, they'll get it from the
> next guy.
>
> I do know that having a delete threshold occasionally causes false
> positives to go undetected by end users.  That is a bit of a disadvantage.
>  The suggestion has also been raised that claiming to accept spam rather
> than rejecting it might invite spammers to send more spam your way.
>
> Does anyone have any knowledge or opinions on these matters?  Does
> pretending to accept a message contribute to the "fight against" spam in
> some way?  Or does it invite more spam?  Is it worth it?
>


I prefer to follow the spirit if not the letter of the RFCs.  If I am not
going to "take responsibility" for a message, I reject it.

I do accept some things and quarantine them rather than put them into a
user's mailbox, but I never just throw anything away after saying I will
deliver it.

There are plenty of sites that do silently throw away mail, and plenty that
will reject.  unless you are a *really* big site I really don't think
spammers are going to care what you do, if they notice at all.  I'd worry
more about the legitimate users and what happens to their mail in a false
positive situation.

-Aaron



>
> Jared Johnson
> Software Developer and Support Engineer
> Network Management Group, Inc.
> 620-664-6000 x118
>
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