Active Defense for SPAM

[DietCokeMan]

I receive about 100 Spams a day.

Is there a tool that would send back to the SPAM-er, a ligament looking error message stating "Mail Closed" or "account disabled" or " xxxx@.com is not a recognize account". Intent is they might take one off the their list.

By not getting an error message, they know you received the SPAM.

 

[JockMullin]

Actually most spammers are hijacking other people's facilities anyway, so they won't ever see any bounce messages, real or otherwise.

In fact they don't really care - it doesn't cost them anything to send dead mail. And if you respond in any way that just tells them they have a live email address for sure and your spam quotient goes way up.

The best defense is to use a throwaway email address for public use so when it starts getting heavily spammed you just close it down and start another. Keep a private address for personal use and NEVER publish it, post it or use it for any 'free' purpose.

Jock

 

[goombawaho]

Never respond and never click on any "unsubscribe" links - that puts you on the hot list for receiving tons more spam.

If you want to foil spam, your best bet is a hosted solution where your mail goes there first and is filtered for viruses/spam and then you can download it. Of course, this is normally only used by companies because it would be expensive for a home user.

 

[donb01]

Not to mention that if replies were sent to all those spoofed E-Mail addresses you would actually be adding to the spam problem by having all those poor victims' mailboxes fill up with "your mail could not be delivered" messages when they never sent it in the first place!

 

[DietCokeMan]

Thank you all.

The sad fact is that SPAM must be profitable or they would not do. There must be lots of dumb Axx's out there clicking the links.

Ken

 

[goombawaho]

They only need a very few per 1000 to make it worth their while and lots of people just open the e-mails by accident or have auto-preview turned on. The spammers might get credit for page hits that way.

 

[ettienne]

The best is to ignore spam, get a spam filter and do not let spam get to you. Thunderbird is a free mail client with a good spam filter built in, and if you want to do something about spam then look at reporting spam to

http://www.spamcop.com

or

http://www.cybertopcops.com