[Spambayes] bounce?

[Stuart Forsyth]

Thanks for putting it all in perspective for me ;-)
>From now on I'll avoid that bounce like the plague.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Peters [mailto:tim.one at comcast.net] 
Sent: 13 November 2003 04:15 PM
To: Stuart Forsyth; spambayes at python.org
Subject: RE: [Spambayes] bounce?

[Stuart Forsyth]
> Is there a feature to bounce spam in spambayes?

No, and there won't be.  The sender address in spam is almost always
forged.
At best, the forged address doesn't exist, so your attempt to bounce it
bounces right back to you, and now the original piece of spam has
clogged
the net with two additional useless pieces of email.  At worst, the
forged
address is a real one, and your bounce ends up in the inbox of an
innocent
third party.  You really can't appreciate the pain this can cause until
some
spammer forges stuartf at the-i-junction.com as the sender address (want to
wake up to find 10,000 bounces in your inbox, every day?  along with
assorted random threats because outraged victims believe *you're* the
one
sending farm porm spam to their kids?  etc).

BTW, some systems with this (mis)feature forge the sender address on the
bounces it generates, so that *you* don't see the consequences of
bouncing
to a bogus or innocent address.  That's even worse -- then you can talk
yourself into thinking you're doing good, when at best you're increasing
the
spam-related load on the net, and at worst are harrassing innocent
victims.
The one thing a bounce-back gimmick can't do is bother the spammers.

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