2006-08-12

Bounce Spam?

I, like a lot of people, get a lot of spam emails.
I get a lot of these via a catch-all, but I’m now turning that off. Should I bounce or just ignore those messages?

I’d like to think that the spammers would be put off by emails bounced back to them, but think I have to accept that they probably won’t even get the bounces, so I’d just be creating a little more pointless internet traffic.

Perhaps the ‘email tax‘ suggestions should be adapted to only make people pay for bounced emails?

Technorati Tags: , ,

Tags: , ,
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments RSS | Add Comment

Previous: Kenya: Hotel Pool: Me Swimming
Next: Working Nights

2 Comments

  1. TW 2006-08-19, 19:56

    Personally I would go with the leaving the catch all and setting it up so it empties every few weeks (or days, depending on the volume).

    Bounces dont deter spammers - often the email addresses are so heavily faked the wrong person will get the bounce and think you are spamming them. Also, as you mention, it would just add to network traffic.

    As an aside, it is “good practice” to have an address like “webmaster@example.com” so people can send generic emails / problem reports.

    Oh, yeah - good blog :-)

  2. jazzle 2006-08-20, 22:13

    Thanks for the suggestions (and the compliment!) TW.

    The webmaster@ and postmaster@ addresses often get as much spam in my experience, and it’s a shame that spammers don’t realise that the people who see the emails sent to those addresses are probably the least likely to respond.

    Perhaps the real problem is the people who respond to the emails at all.