Email Spam Settings

[Barry]

I have been using the 'Block' option on my servers site - Europa-network - for email spam settings. this seems to work OK but I recently changed the spam treatment option to 'Bounce'.

Has anyone any views on the advantages or disadvantages on the way to handle spam?.

Regards.

Barry

[Andreas Prescher]

Well Barry,
it all depends on the reaction of the spammer.
Bouncing means that spam is being sent back to the spammer and that he or she might think your e-mail is available for further spamming.
If you block it, then the spammer might only try and try again and finally give up.
On the Downside of bouncing, always keep in mind that it produces traffic. and your ISP looses capacities so it is better to block it.
Her´s an excerpt from an article i just found on
www.dontbouncespam.org/#WHYNOT

Why you shouldn't bounce spam. Back to the Index.

Spam (and viruses) shouldn't be bounced because the From and Return Path are invariably forged. Sometimes they're not valid addresses and they go nowhere, although it takes some server and DNS activity for even that to happen. But far too often, the forged address belongs to someone. Some spammers use an address off of their mailing list as the From. It used to be common to use one address for an entire run of many thousands of spams. If someone actually owned/used that address they would get thousands of bounces. More recently the spammers seem to be inserting a different address from their mailing list in each spam, the same way they rotate the To, Subject and Body. The main reason is probably to help them get around filters that collect massive numbers of emails looking for duplicates. It also makes it impractical to block specific senders since you'll probably never get another spam from the same 'person'. When the From is legitimate, this method results in less bounces to each victim. But they're still going to someone who had nothing to do with the spam. And if you got one of those spams you're also likely to have your address used for some of the forged Froms, meaning you're likely to get some bounces yourself. websiterepairs.net has some good information on the problems caused by bouncing spam.

Spammers have even started deliberately crafting their spams so that they are bounced by a poorly configured server and end up where the spammer wants them by making the From address be that of the target. Bounce spam attacks can cripple the server that is picked to do the bouncing. Bounce spam will often pass right through filters since it usually comes from legitimate servers that aren't on blacklists and the headers won't look like spam. However those “legitimate” servers are now getting added to blacklists as a result of sending the bounces.
Sounds Complicated? well it is.

so just block your spam and never worry about it again.
just remember to allow your important legitimate e-mail senders.

Andreas

[Barry]

Hello Andreas,

Thanks for your response and information.

I have restored my server spam settings to 'Block' and still use the 'Spamfighter' programme in addition.

When Spamfighter blocks an email automatically I copy the url (Without opening the email of course) and add this to my blacklist on the server. I suppose this is unnecessary really as I could just as easily delete the spam but it's just finding the best way to deal with a nuisance.

Regards.

Barry