> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralf Guenthner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 8:51 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [SAtalk] Slightly OT: Arguments needed for not 
> replying to spam
> 
> 
> Fellow spam-fighters,
> 
> management wants me to set up an auto-reply to mails marked 
> as spam by SA. I told them that this is a very bad idea, since
> 
> a.) reply addresses are fakes and not working most of the time anyway

And if they *do* work, they're quite often not the address of the actual
sender...

> b.) if they DO work, we will just notify the spammers that 
> the address they bought/harvested is working

Maybe, maybe not, depending on how your mail services are architected.
(Our SpamAssassin is set up on a gateway server, for example, so under
this scenario the spam analysis and the resulting bounce would happen
before any check that the destination mailbox actually exists.)

> c.) most spammers are from the U.S. or other foreign 
> countries and wouldn't give a damn about German law 
> (not to mention that they wouldn't be able to read/
> understand German)
> 
> Did I forget anything?

Well, you'll be using additional resources on your mail servers to queue
and send these reply messages, and presumably if they're not eventually
deliverable there'll be a bounce message that goes somewhere and has to
be dealt with by somebody.

Who's going to compose the text of this auto-reply?  Will it be framed
in a way that might upset a potential customer who happened to generate
a false positive?


---
Mark Roedel           | "The most overlooked advantage to owning a
Systems Programmer    |  computer is that if they foul up there's no
LeTourneau University |  law against whacking them around a little."
Longview, Texas  USA  |                        -- Owen Porterfield


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