[SpamCop-List] Re: Bouncing spam

[Stuart Brook]

Guy Macon wrote:
> 
> Cat <nobody> wrote:
> >
> >Guy Macon wrote:
> >
> >> >A bounce to an innocent person makes their life more difficult,
> >>
> >> If an innocent person is being listed as the sender of
> >> a spam, his mailbox is already clogged with thousands of bounces.
> >> One more doesn't make his life any more difficult.  One less doesn't
> >> make his life any easier.
> >
> >But you should understand that your bounce isn't just "one more
> >bounce." It's just one of many. That's how spammers sound, saying
> >"aw, but one more spam won't bother you since you're already
> >getting so much spam from everyone else." Sending fake bounces
> >to innocent people on is abusive, and if I find out someone is
> >doing that to me, that person will be reported to his/her ISP
> >for such abuse.
> 
> The spammer sends out a bunch of spam.  Lots of it goes to
> invalid email addresses on servers that exist.  Those servers
> send bounces to innocent people.  Please explain why it is that
> those bounces are not abusive, why your "one more bounce is bad"
> argument doesn't apply to them, and why your acceptance of the
> harm that those bounces cause isn't "how spammers sound."

No, they don't send bounces to innocent people.  They respond to the
SMTP server that forwarded the message to them that the address is
unreachable. The bounce message generated does NOT go to the FROM:
address unless the FROM: address is local, if it's not local, it should
be discarded.

> A bounce is a notification that an email was not delivered.
> Period.  The fact that spammers use fake addresses does not
> mean that bounces are bad.  You are arbitrarily categorizing
> notifications that an email wasn't delivered for one reason
> as being good and notifications that an email wasn't delivered
> for another reason as being bad.  I am asking what criteria
> you are using to decide which kind of bounce is good and
> which kind of bounce is bad.  Care to enlighten me?

Your "bounce" is not a bounce at all, it's an email with a forged FROM:
address of your postmaster, potentially telling someone the mail was not
delivered.  You have no right to forge the postmaster's address unless
you are the postmaster yourself.  A bounce is a refusal of the SMTP
SendTo: address which is formatted by you OWN postoffice into a bounce
message.