Would this work against spam? Sending a fake undeliverable notice, use spoofing to make it look like it came from postmaster@outlook.com

Posted by matroosoft@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 10 comments

See title.

[-]

oaomcg@reddit

Why would anyone sending spam look at what is coming back?

[-]

matroosoft@reddit (OP)

To remove dead addresses from their list

[-]

digitaltransmutation@reddit

you can do that with the http response code

[-]

oaomcg@reddit

If we're talking about genuine spam here and not a legit bulk mailing list, then I can't imagine any world where they would be interested at all in curating their junk mail list....

If they fire off a million emails and half of them bounce, there's no way they are taking action on the NDRs...

[-]

no_regerts_bob@reddit

You’re advocating a:

(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(x) Spammers don’t care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career or business

etc...

[-]

zakabog@reddit

What does "Would this work against spam" mean?

Are you asking if you'll stop getting spam from that sender when you send a fake undeliverable? Probably not, they don't care they're just blasting messages out.

[-]

jnievele@reddit

Spam is usually sent from fake addresses, so where would you send it? And why would the spammers care? It's not as if they have any motivation to reduce the number of mails they send out?

The idea isn't new, it's been around for ages, there's even automated tools like Mailwasher to do it - but it's a waste of time at best, and a nuisance to the people whose adresses were abused to make the spam look legit. So please don't...

[-]