4 ms·
Maybe it's to throw the email system's bayesian spam filter off?
by ph0rque 18y ago
Maybe it's to throw the email system's bayesian spam filter off?
- pg 18y agoVery unlikely. It's almost certainly either to check if the addr is live or a broken spam in which the spammer forgot to insert the payload (not uncommon). I've never seen evidence of spammers trying to poison filters. This certainly isn't. If you were trying to poison filters you'd want to include a lot more words.
- immad 18y agoIf that is the case it would be cool if your email client had a "pretend bad email address" type function which sends a fake bounce email.
- jonknee 18y agoMany clients do have that feature. Mail.app has "Bounce" in the contextual menu. Another handy one in there that's not often used (or always duplicated) is redirect.
- tlrobinson 18y agoI forget where I heard this, but supposedly the Mail "Bounce" feature does more harm than good. Whatever method it uses to bounce is easily identifiable as fake, so it's only good for tricking humans who don't know any better.
- notauser 18y agoIt does way more harm than good. Spam is sent mostly from forged addresses, so when you bounce the message it just gets sent on to the poor sucker who owns the mail address that was forged. One of my domains was used as the 'from' address for a big spam run, and I would cheerfully strangle _everyone_ who bounces spam after recieving 90,000 or so returned mails that had not originated from my mail server in the first place.
- neilk 18y agoI used to get spam that consisted of a URL followed by a long excerpt from classic literature. Was that filter poison?
- ambition 18y agoNo, the spammer is hoping the classic literature will get the message through the filter.
- shawndrost 18y ago"to check if the addr is live" -- why not just send a spam?