Getting too much spam? Send it back using 'Return to Sender'

[VEFF]

Sounds pretty good if it works as advertised.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/22/technology/ibm_spam/index.htm?cnn=yes

The paper reports that, using that database, e-mails coming from a computer on the spam list are sent directly back to the computer, not just the e-mail account, that sent them.

[Ian]

While it sounds good, they forget that most of the spam sent these days is via zombied computers. All they're gonna do is piss off ISP's and consumers when their home computers start getting flooded.

[MediumRare]

While it sounds good, they forget that most of the spam sent these days is via zombied computers. All they're gonna do is piss off ISP's and consumers when their home computers start getting flooded.

Well if this serves to help the afflicted find out that they are zombies, it might not be such a bad thing. I doubt if anyone would knowingly want to stay compromised...

G

[Justin42]

But the problem is the accounts are bogus-- no one will ever get them, they're just going to be floating around the ether til some mail server finally drops them.

This sounds good but probably will be useless. It's kind of like the Mailwasher program, which purports to do the same thing -- it's an awesome pre-filtering program, I actually have registered it and use it constantly, but I never bounce email back to the sender-- it's not going to help anything.

[Justin42]

Gee, surprise surprise, CNN is entirely wrong.

It's a challenge/response system... NOT a "return to sender".
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/fairuce

This is why you should never trust the media. Look how many things we understand (or can read technical stuff about to get the gist) that they get entirely wrong-- imagine their batting average for things we DON'T understand.