Fun With Autoresponders
Submitted by spiro on Mon, 2006-03-13 01:44.
Random
I have been playing around with Site5's e-mail options, in order to setup a spam tracking mechanism. Not the real spam, that, Gmail takes care of it, but the spam you get when you give out your e-mail to sites like hi5, myspace et al.
So, here's a sample of what you will get if you send an me an e-mail through these sites:
From: spambox@unhandledexception.net Mailed-By: phoenicians.multisite.site5.com To: spammer@domain.com Date: Mar 12, 2006 7:39 PM Subject: Unsollicited Message IGNORED! - CHEAP VIAGRA!!!Hi Spammer,
Please be informed that the recipient of your message entitled "CHEAP VIAGRA!!!" does not wish to receive any correspondence from your company, or any of your affiliates regarding any products or services you offer. As a result of this, your message will be ignored and eventually purged.
You are possibly getting this message because you harvested this e-mail address in exchange for offering a service and are currently using it to send unsollicited messages. If you think you got this message in error, please accept my most sincere apologies and contact me by visiting http://www.unhandledexception.net/contact .
Thank you.
Message received entitled : CHEAP VIAGRA!!!
From (identifier) : Spammer
E-Mail address: spammer@domain.com
Ah well, doing my best to fight spam!
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Well, (1) Plain-text
Submitted by spiro on Mon, 2006-03-13 06:15.
Well, (1) Plain-text messages like this won't cause much traffic, and (2) many sites will kick you off their mailing list because they will consider it a "bounce" message. Sure beats finding my way through the opt-out link on ad-infested, slow-loading web pages.
I reiterate, this is not designed to filter general spam, but stuff originating from unsollicited mailing lists (of the type you get when you sign up on a site), and very annoying contacts (the ones that still send me crap after I told them 100 times not to) which, upon having to go through the process of getting another e-mail address to contact me, might think twice about it. Other, random spam is filtered by SpamAssassin and Gmail, depending, as it would also land on my legitimate e-mail addy.
Rest assured that I will kill the autoresponder if it is sending 1000 mails a week. Way before that actually.
Still disagree?
» reply
I hope you realize that spam
Submitted by Smokinn (not verified) on Mon, 2006-03-13 04:29.
I hope you realize that spam is actually a strain on the net. Last I heard spam accounted for somewhere around 75% of net traffic. That's insane.
Now imagine what would happen if all spam hit auto-responders. Or even if half the spam hit auto-responders.
You're not helping fight spam, you're compounding the problem. If you're really worried about spam just blackhole it. Set up your account to automatically delete all incoming email. It's not as gratifying as thinking you're actually getting through to someone (which I doubt you are since I'm sure 95+% of spam reply-to addresses are blackholed) but it's better than creating more useless traffic.
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Well... At least I don't get
Submitted by spiro on Mon, 2006-03-13 03:23.
Well...
At least I don't get to see the ad-filled "newsletters" these sites send to me, whenever I register for stuff, or post my e-mail address on the web, like, when completing these online quizzies my friends send me. Maybe if everybody did that, they'd say... "why bother" and not send these "newsletters" anymore.
People should not abuse of the priviledge of having my e-mail address. That means, NO newsletters, NO chain-letters, NO special offers or other stupidities. Otherwise you end up blacklisted and your messages go straight to the spambox and stay there till they get auto-purged. Numerous times.
I am pretty much making some order in my e-mail accounts. There are just too many of them! As a result, I will be closing/abandonning some accounts.
» reply
How does that help fight
Submitted by Kal (not verified) on Mon, 2006-03-13 03:17.
How does that help fight spam? I don't get it. o_O
» reply
I fail to see how that can
I fail to see how that can help you ...
Usually spammers send messages by guessing email addresses. What you _should_ do is send them a Delivery Notice Failure or something.