Jump to content

General Questions


Nev

Recommended Posts

Many thanks for the explanation Miss Betsy,

Very interesting ..

I am definitely not running my own server .. and cannot think what I could have posted to suggest this .. but I have written to the nice crowd at MailWasher and expect a reply as to their views on the bounce question.

Perhaps this has all been debated before, and at length, but it is interesting for me and if anyone wants to know their answer, just say so and I will post it .. or perhaps MailWasher might even post for themselves !!

Cheers

Nev

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, it would be interesting to see what Mailwasher has to say.

If they are like McAfee, they will just ignore it. McAfee puts in every virus email that is cleaned, 'We strongly recommend you report this to /the forged address whatever it is/' and does nothing in response to my comments.

BTW, sometime I am going to change my anti-virus. Does anyone have any recommendations? Is the ZoneAlarm Pro good?

Miss Betsy

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, it would be interesting to see what Mailwasher has to say.

If they are like McAfee, they will just ignore it.  McAfee puts in every virus email that is cleaned, 'We strongly recommend you report this to /the forged address whatever it is/' and does nothing in response to my comments.

BTW, sometime I am going to change my anti-virus.  Does anyone have any recommendations?  Is the ZoneAlarm Pro good?

Mailwasher has been touting the "bounce" thing as a "feature" since day one. That some folks have lost their ISP acounts due to the forgery involved (bounce allegedly came from an ISP role account), and that anyone that has had to deal with that data has come to the universal stand that's it's stupid these days ...(way back when, it was conjectured that the spammer would be convinced that it was a "real" bounce thus removing your address from his/her list ... who believes in removal these days, who believes that the top spammers would be fooled, and to pull back to the original complaint, as the "bounce" is usually sent to a forged address, there is no connection to the spammer anyway .... at this point, it's really kind of who cares what they say, based on the continued advertising putting this "feature" right up front ....

ZoneAlarm is a firewall, the Pro adds some features, but millions are still using the free version .... Anti-Virus recommendation starts with the AVG product, found at http://www.grisoft.com .. also both a free and paid version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Firetrust (owner of Mailwasher) still promotes the bounce feature, but now its halfway down the list. The brighter thought is that its no longer one of their bold (marketing) features. Even the original site has it halfway down the page.

http://www.firetrust.com/products/pro/

http://www.mailwasher.net

I used the bounce 'feature' for a couple months when it was advertised on our local news channel a couple years ago. They sold me. Until I saw my spam wasn't going anywhere. Then I'd heard about spam taking bandwidth, and my bounces were taking just as much bandwidth, and still not getting me anywhere.

But, with all its other features, Mailwasher, in my case, and until I find something better, is still extremely useful in controlling my e-mail.

I personally believe that the bounce feature should be removed permanently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
Firetrust (owner of Mailwasher) still promotes the bounce feature, but now its halfway down the list. The brighter thought is that its no longer one of their bold (marketing) features. Even the original site has it halfway down the page.

http://www.firetrust.com/products/pro/

http://www.mailwasher.net

I used the bounce 'feature' for a couple months when it was advertised on our local news channel a couple years ago. They sold me. Until I saw my spam wasn't going anywhere. Then I'd heard about spam taking bandwidth, and my bounces were taking just as much bandwidth, and still not getting me anywhere.

But, with all its other features, Mailwasher, in my case, and until I find something better, is still extremely useful in controlling my e-mail.

I personally believe that the bounce feature should be removed permanently.

23091[/snapback]

We ensure through in the ongoing development of MailWasher we respond accordingly to the changes in technology, and though bouncing is less effective, it still can be a useful tool. Bouncing is however one part of MailWasher, and it's through the utilisation of all MailWasher's features that the user can control their spam. Bouncing is off by default in a new install of MailWasher and as kdcinfo noted above there's been significant changes in the marketing.

We don't have any hard data as to the efficiency of the bounce feature but it seems that some spamming software does check for bounces and then remove invalid addresses from the list. There is anecdotal evidence that bouncing can help - check out the user comments on download.com for some examples.

We haven't had any complaints from people who received bounced messages from MailWasher, where spammers have hijacked their addresses.

Where spammers have used an innocent victim's address and set it as the return address I think the victim's main concern is likely to be the vast amount of "Don't spam me!" messages from people who thought that they were the spammer. In addition, the innocent victim will also receive a vast quantity of bounces from genuinely invalid email addresses if the spammer has used an untested email address list.

Where the bounce feature is demonstrably useful is where you are trying to get off a legitimate business's mailing list that you are having trouble opting out of. Business mailing lists usually do check for bounces, do recognise MailWasher bounces as legitimate and do remove you from their mailing list.

Thanks

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are reporting then I am most grateful.  My filtering scenario works so well that I don't remember the last time I got junk in my inbox and the number of false positives I receive is tiny (although I did get one thismorning  ;)  )

Andrew

22701[/snapback]

If you report it (spam in your inbox) quick enough the Spammers 3 hour run is blocked before it completes often in seconds meaning most of spammers run hits a bit bin (or silicon hell)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you report it (spam in your inbox) quick enough the Spammers 3 hour run is blocked before it completes often in seconds meaning most of spammers run hits a bit bin (or silicon hell)

23876[/snapback]

Excellent point petzl and to extend it, I've noticed some of my fresh spam is from IP addresses that have already been listed for extended periods (16 hours is the most I've seen, but I only check a handful). So when fresh spam is reported it can also significantly extend the prophylaxis of the SCBL. 7 hours until de-listing - new report - *bang*, 23 hours until de-listing. Bit of a worry really, that they should be maintaining or continuing their activity that far into the blocking period, maybe these ones are just low volume, but in any event if they want to take on the BL let them go for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bit of a worry really, that they should be maintaining or continuing their activity that far into the blocking period, maybe these ones are just low volume, but in any event if they want to take on the BL let them go for it.

They don't care because the messages are getting out on the line and with the number of bounce-after-receive systems in use, the message is going somewhere. The number of email addresses protected by any one blocklist is probably pretty small compared with the number of addresses out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it seems that some spamming software does check for bounces and then remove invalid addresses from the list.

23874[/snapback]

I find this very difficult to believe -- refusing delivery in SMTP with a 5xx error code I could believe might be far more effective, and it doesn't run the risk of backscatter nailing the innocent.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...