Spam: Sending error messages and complaints

[Theodoric]

I have McAfee SpamKiller which allows me to send fake error messages to the reply address and/or complaints to the abuse-reporting address at the spam's domain. May I put forward a few questions.

A) Fake error messages
1) Is it worthwhile doing this? When I used Mailwasher it had a facility for bouncing message but, in most cases, my Norton anti-virus software reported the address as false so the error message could not be sent.
2) Are the spammers wise to this technique and could you be shooting yourself in the foot by actually somehow confirming that your address is live?
3) Are these fake error messages related to the complaints that I have seen of people simply clogging up the system by sending them, or are we talking about automatic messages here?

B) Complaining to the source domain of the spam
1) Again, is it worthwhile doing this?
2) Am I being paranoiac in wondering whether there are such things as rogue domains that will take complaints as evidence of a live address?

[Jon M]

A.1) Not really worth it based on what you've said there.. and for the following reasons:
A.2) Yes
A.3) Both, any automatically generated message has to be carefully implemented.. the whole point of reducing spam is to reduce network load.. so adding more emails to the mix is definately not cricket.

B.1) Yes.. provided you can pinpoint the originator of the email (not the return address which is often spoofed).. to do that you will need to disect the email header and find the appropriate IP address.
B.2) Possibly.. but I don't know of any.. not really worth worrying about it.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by s1lv3r

A.1) Not really worth it based on what you've said there.. and for the following reasons:
A.2) Yes
A.3) Both, any automatically generated message has to be carefully implemented.. the whole point of reducing spam is to reduce network load.. so adding more emails to the mix is definately not cricket.

B.1) Yes.. provided you can pinpoint the originator of the email (not the return address which is often spoofed).. to do that you will need to disect the email header and find the appropriate IP address.
B.2) Possibly.. but I don't know of any.. not really worth worrying about it.

So, it's not really worth the bother (at least not without having to put some effort into it). Thanks for the reply, anyway.

Fortunately, at the moment, I only get about one spam message a day, so it's livable with, but having read some of the horror stories posted here I wonder how long I'll remain in that reasonably fortunate position.

[Jon M]

you might want to have a browse through some of the info I've posted here: http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=10441

[zoombini]

1 ??

You only get 1????

Heck I wish I was that spamless.

I got 70+ last night.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by zoombini

1 ??

You only get 1????

Heck I wish I was that spamless.

I got 70+ last night.

I use Spampal................my spams went from 40 aday to ZERO.

I don't actually see them or have to do anything.........all spams delete from the ntl server.

Mike

[Toreador]

Originally Posted by Mike

I use Spampal................my spams went from 40 aday to ZERO.

I don't actually see them or have to do anything.........all spams delete from the ntl server.

Mike

But Spampal downloads the emails first before processing them. So if you keep your emails on the server even after you've downloaded them (as I do, so I can access them by webmail when away from home) then they're still there (until you delete them from webmail too). Plus there's the overhead of having to download them (quite high when you get dozens of these MS Security viruses every day @ 140Kb each).

Mailwasher is good in that it access the emails direct on the NTL server without having to download them first. However, it keeps crashing when run on XP Home so I can't use it any more