4 ms·

But these bouncebacks are predictable, no? There are several key words in them that identify them as bouncebacks, no? So make a spam filter for them, and it'l

by lsb 17y ago

But these bouncebacks are predictable, no? There are several key words in them that identify them as bouncebacks, no? So make a spam filter for them, and it'll work great, especially because the mail programs aren't trying to evade spam filters with their messages.

dpcan 17y ago
Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable. And false positives are the problem I'm talking about. If you allow bounce-backs or replies with personalized messages, as a larger company, you have to let them through or you will miss something. I don't know support departments big enough to wade through this amount of junk every time you have to notify your user base of something.
- raganwald 17y ago
  What technology can deal with spam, where the originator is actively and maliciously trying to break your filtering algorithm, but is helpless when dealing with bounce-backs, where there is no such intent?
  - eli 17y ago
    It's possible, sure. But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options (as with spam filtering) and it's certainly much easier to just say do-not-reply
    - moe 17y ago
      But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options Then you haven't looked very hard. Every CRM system worth its salt (including the free OTRS) supports this. Either by inserting a cookie into the initial mail ("please leave this line intact when you reply") or, smarter, by assigning a dedicated reply-to address to each recipient. It's not rocket science and adding a "do not reply to this mail" speaks volumes about how little you care about customer service.
      - eli 17y ago
        Right, obviously there are plenty of systems that will tag all incoming mail and create a ticket for it, etc. But I don't want 12,000 tickets for Out of Office messages in my CRM system, thanks.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable. Lots of people have done mailshots before. Is there no open-source email-bounce-rejection corpus yet?
- eli 17y ago
  And you didn't even mention the Out Of Office automailers in different languages. Or, god forbid, you actually want to send an email with the word "vacation" in the subject -- how can you filter the replies?
  - moe 17y ago
    99,999% of MTA bounces can be automatically classified, there's not so many different MTA implementations in the wild. The same applies to 99,9% of vacation responders because most people use the standard templates from their Outlook or Webmailer. The rest is intern-food. A single person can easily classify 20+ mails per minute. And that's what happens in companies with real customer service.
    - eli 17y ago
      Uh, have you ever actually tried? Because I have, and neither of those numbers are anywhere close to what I experienced. It's probably true that a plurality of the messages are standard Outlook autoresponders, but not "most" -- and definitely not 99.9%. And a very large number of MTAs are either misconfigured or intentional subvert the standard in order to confuse spammers. These days there are thousands of "So and So doesn't work here any more" messages that have to be removed from the list by hand, then the people using Lotus Notes, Eudora, and god knows what else. Also non-standard Outlook messages and Outlook messages in different languages. Worst is those whitelist anti-spam challenges that require you to fill out a CAPTCHA (or pay the spam filtering company a bribe!) for each message you want to send to a subscriber. We do comb through the replies because email is an important aspect of our business, but it's a lot more work than you make it out to be. If you're just a small company sending out a monthly newsletter, I'd probably say don't bother.

by lsb 17y ago

dpcan 17y ago

Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable. And false positives are the problem I'm talking about. If you allow bounce-backs or replies with personalized messages, as a larger company, you have to let them through or you will miss something. I don't know support departments big enough to wade through this amount of junk every time you have to notify your user base of something.

raganwald 17y ago
What technology can deal with spam, where the originator is actively and maliciously trying to break your filtering algorithm, but is helpless when dealing with bounce-backs, where there is no such intent?
- eli 17y ago
  It's possible, sure. But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options (as with spam filtering) and it's certainly much easier to just say do-not-reply
  - moe 17y ago
    But I'm not aware of any off-the-shelf options Then you haven't looked very hard. Every CRM system worth its salt (including the free OTRS) supports this. Either by inserting a cookie into the initial mail ("please leave this line intact when you reply") or, smarter, by assigning a dedicated reply-to address to each recipient. It's not rocket science and adding a "do not reply to this mail" speaks volumes about how little you care about customer service.
    - eli 17y ago
      Right, obviously there are plenty of systems that will tag all incoming mail and create a ticket for it, etc. But I don't want 12,000 tickets for Out of Office messages in my CRM system, thanks.
jodrellblank 17y ago
Have you ever dealt with over 1000 bounce-back messages? It's as if every email server on the planet uses a different bounce-back method and message. It's terribly unpredictable. Lots of people have done mailshots before. Is there no open-source email-bounce-rejection corpus yet?
eli 17y ago
And you didn't even mention the Out Of Office automailers in different languages. Or, god forbid, you actually want to send an email with the word "vacation" in the subject -- how can you filter the replies?
- moe 17y ago
  99,999% of MTA bounces can be automatically classified, there's not so many different MTA implementations in the wild. The same applies to 99,9% of vacation responders because most people use the standard templates from their Outlook or Webmailer. The rest is intern-food. A single person can easily classify 20+ mails per minute. And that's what happens in companies with real customer service.
  - eli 17y ago
    Uh, have you ever actually tried? Because I have, and neither of those numbers are anywhere close to what I experienced. It's probably true that a plurality of the messages are standard Outlook autoresponders, but not "most" -- and definitely not 99.9%. And a very large number of MTAs are either misconfigured or intentional subvert the standard in order to confuse spammers. These days there are thousands of "So and So doesn't work here any more" messages that have to be removed from the list by hand, then the people using Lotus Notes, Eudora, and god knows what else. Also non-standard Outlook messages and Outlook messages in different languages. Worst is those whitelist anti-spam challenges that require you to fill out a CAPTCHA (or pay the spam filtering company a bribe!) for each message you want to send to a subscriber. We do comb through the replies because email is an important aspect of our business, but it's a lot more work than you make it out to be. If you're just a small company sending out a monthly newsletter, I'd probably say don't bother.