> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I still suggest returning undelivered
> email 'to the sender'.
I used to agree with that. I thought it was irresponsible and
inexcusable for any ISP to throw away mail without notifying (or
getting previous approval from) either the recipient or the (alleged)
sender. But, after considering the potential effect on an innocent
party whose address gets forged on spam, I have reconsidered. I still
hate it when I send mail that just silently disappears with no
notification or explanation, but there are worse things that could
happen. However, I think letting the sending server handle the
notification alleviates this problem.
> If some innocent person gets a jillion pieces of mail because
> *someone else forged his email address* then maybe that person will
> get angry enough to join the effort to try and clean up the net.
I have already joined the effort to clean up the net. My website is
helping Project Honeypot identify email-harvesting bots. (
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ )
My SMTP server is using RBL to reject a LOT of incoming spam, so I
don't have to whine about losing legitimate incoming email in a flood
of spam. And it's up to the sending servers to decide whether or not
to notify the sender. My guess is that legitimate servers will, and
spambots won't. And if anybody either gets an erroneous notification
about rejected spam that he didn't really send, or fails to get a
notification when his legitimage message didn't reach me, that's the
fault of the sending server, not mine.
I'm doing what I can to clean up the net. I don't need a jillion
pieces of mail to convince me cleaning up the net is a good thing.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But isn't also a good idea to auto-ack
the alleged senders of the spam mail since if a person gets enough
of those they may be moved to clean out the zombies in their own
computer (if they have any, or if they don't) become angry enough to
join in the fight in a big time way? That is why I am seriously
thinking about changing my auto-ack to say 'thank you for writing me
and if you didn't write to me then welcome to the club'. PAT]
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