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My Forwarding Solution


gezgin

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As the mail train called “1 October 2014†bears down on us all, I’ve had an “Aha!†moment about forwarding from my SpamCop addresses. My particular problem is that I currently have SpamCop hold all mail that’s not from addresses in my White List: everything (and there’s quite a bit of it) not already whitelisted gets held so I can report or (rarely any more) whitelist it as need be. After 30 September there’s not going to be a Held folder or a White List, which to me means that a lot of junk that’s currently being caught is going to get passed on to the new forwarding address that I provide. (I may be wrong about this but I suspect not.)

My solution, which I’ve just implemented, is to create a brand-new Gmail account. All messages sent to my SpamCop addresses will be forwarded to this address, which will not be used for anything else. Now here’s the Aha!: In the settings for that account, I’ve turned on “Vacation response†and I’ve created a message that (1) tells people that my email address has changed and (2) gives my new email address in a form that is human-readable only.

I’ve tried this out sending messages to the one SpamCop address that I’ve already turned forwarding on for and it works perfectly.

YMMV

--

Bob

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Hi Bob,

I think this may have very undesirable consequences for you. Spammers inevitably forge the sender address, often putting in the real address of a completely innocent third party which they have in their lists. That person is going to get a "Vacation response" from you about a mail they did not send, complete with your new e-mail address. You are probably going to get deluged with angry responses from these innocent third parties. They may well even report you for spamming. Reports about automatic responses of this sort to spam are currently accepted by SpamCop IIUC.

Not to mention that all the traffic this will generate is going to increase the chances one way or another of spammers getting hold of your new address.

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You raise a very good point that I hadn't considered. Thank you for that. I clearly need to rethink this.

I have advised all of my active clients that my address has changed and they are all using the new one. Normally I wouldn't care what goes to gezgin at spamcop dot net any longer. (Indeed one option is not to provide a forwarding address at all and just let it die.) The problem is that I've been using that address for something like eleven years and there are many inactive clients with whom I haven't corresponded in a long time. Those are the ones I was hoping my "Vacation" solution would help. But as you pointed out, it poses serious risks.

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

--

Bob

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You raise a very good point that I hadn't considered. Thank you for that. I clearly need to rethink this.

I have advised all of my active clients that my address has changed and they are all using the new one. Normally I wouldn't care what goes to gezgin at spamcop dot net any longer. (Indeed one option is not to provide a forwarding address at all and just let it die.) The problem is that I've been using that address for something like eleven years and there are many inactive clients with whom I haven't corresponded in a long time. Those are the ones I was hoping my "Vacation" solution would help. But as you pointed out, it poses serious risks.

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

--

Bob

Assuming CISCO can stop spam getting to your new account should work?

You bounce message with correct email address should be framed like so

bounce [ AT ] dit.dot.com

Doubt if spammers read bounce messages?

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The problem, as Spamnophobic pointed out, is that the message may get bounced to innocent bystanders and suchlike. I can't have that.

Gmail at present are very compliant they would not bounce mindlessly

You should not get spam because CISCO reputation scoring. I have found it that good

There is a problem with vacation messages in bouncing but if legit email?

Watch and trail.

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I'm thinking that spam messages may get forwarded too. Obviously sending "Vacation responses" to those would be very undesirable.

As far as I have been able to tell, whitelisting will no longer be available once the mailboxes go. However there seems to be some uncertainty about what forwarding will and will not incorporate.

Filtering of spam will take place. Personally I've never found any form of automatic filtering with 100% detection and 0% false positives. The personal control over filtering (such as choose blocklists, blacklisting, greylisting, choose a SpamAssassin threshold, and the Held Mail folder) which we had with SpamCop e-mail will all disappear after September 30th IIUC.

Anyway, there is fairly extensive information on these forums about "Vacation messages", "Out-of-Office", etc., which may help the OP decide how best to arrange things.

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...Here's my 2 cents, for whatever it's worth: although my situation seems similar to petzl's in that I can turn on Out-of-Office messages because my (employer-provided) e-mail client (MS Outlook) permits me to limit those messages to only fellow employees and my Contacts, I fully agree that for most people Spamnophobic's guidance is best practice and therefore Bob (gezgin) is well advised to heed it, as he has.

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In spite of the general advice to not use an auto-response email I thought your solution was an interesting innovation.

Depending on how well SpamCop filters out the spam, the number of bounces to innocent third parties could be nominal. You might include an "I'm sorry" for those that didn't really send you an email. Understanding the likely chain of events, I just delete arrant bounces. Given the evidence my email addresses are often forged in spam so there should be lots of bounces from "real" people, but there aren't. My guess is that most people just use the delete key with ease.

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In spite of the general advice to not use an auto-response email I thought your solution was an interesting innovation.

Depending on how well SpamCop filters out the spam, the number of bounces to innocent third parties could be nominal. You might include an "I'm sorry" for those that didn't really send you an email. Understanding the likely chain of events, I just delete arrant bounces. Given the evidence my email addresses are often forged in spam so there should be lots of bounces from "real" people, but there aren't. My guess is that most people just use the delete key with ease.

Just needs watching

"Theoretically" your SpamCop email spam will be bit-binned you shouldn't see it.

Big new problem and I no longer get email via CISCO servers is compromised email accounts, so not sure if this affects reliability.

Doubtful email CISCO "passed", in my case, put a spam/whitelist button link (not sure if this will happen with "us")

But I can honestly say I never got spam through a CISCO server and my work email contact was published?

Bet they don't tell spamming ISP's like "hetzner.de" don't know their servers are just bit binned (guessing here)

For starters keep an eye on what's happening before any "vacation notice" is sent/activated

We have twelve months then it looks like CISCO will rethink if it continues.

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I'm thinking that spam messages may get forwarded too. Obviously sending "Vacation responses" to those would be very undesirable.

YMMV, but since ending my use of CESmail for filtering (and reporting) spam to my domain, I've found Google to be good at identifying spam, with low false positive and false negative rates. Most of the false negatives are because of inDUHviduals in a particular state cannot correctly transcribe the letters s f c n (for the Spanish Fork Community Network), so it's not really a failure on Google's part.

Later, Sten

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