[Coco] Re: Bounces

[John E. Malmberg]

In article <5.1.0.14.0.20040102120847.00bcfe68 at pop.bayou.com>,
Roger Taylor <rtaylor at bayou.com> writes:
>>
>>Member: bradleyj2 - at - aol -dot - com
>>Please check your spam filtering
>>Still receiving 10+ bounces from your address daily
>
>
> I thought a spam filter just deleted suspicious e-mails.

An end user spam filter can only tag, move another folder, or delete
what it thinks is spam.  It does not have the information it can trust
to generate a bounce.  And to generate a bounce it must spoof a role
account for the domain.

No client side spam filter should ever be generating bounces.  It is
abuse and against the TOS of every ISP that I am aware of.  Those bounces
almost always go to non-existant addresses or innocent users.

A spam filter at the mail server can issue reject codes before the
SMTP transaction is over.  Generally the reject codes will explain why
the mail is rejected.  In comparing the several mail servers that deliver
e-mail to me, the ones most accurate in eliminating spam pay the most
attention to the source I.P. address and the least attention to the content.

It may be that AOL can check a user's spam settings that early, but that
increases the complexity of the mail software.

AOL is/was generating bounces after the SMTP transaction is over, but
have posted on the SPAM-L mailing list that they are stopping that
practice because it is abusive and are converting to only use SMTP
reject codes.

Based on postings in other forums, AOL seems to be having some
problems with their global content based spam filtering, and these
have been going on for a couple of months.  Apparently AOL is fixing
things on a case by case basis instead of fixing the root cause.

There is an AOL web site (sorry I do not have the URL) that explains
what some of their content filtering will reject.

>  I wonder if I can
> get Eudora to bounce all of my spam over to my ex wife, since she keeps
> sending forwards to me. :)

Possibly, however it will show up as a NEW e-mail from your system.

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
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