E-Mail Spam Thing...

**Todd W** · 10-06-2006, 08:33 PM

So I forget the name of the software or site that requires a user to REPLY to an e-mail before their e-mail gets delivered to you to verify 100% (or atleast darn close) that it's not spam...

Anyone know?
-Todd

**AmbulanceBlues** · 10-07-2006, 02:18 AM

I had to do that yesterday e-mailing my Aunt's earthlink account. I sent her an e-mail for the first time, and earthlink sent me a reply with a link wherein I had to put in my name and why I was mailing her before she would reply. It was kind of perturbing -- but effective, I guess.

**Todd W** · 10-07-2006, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by AmbulanceBlues

I had to do that yesterday e-mailing my Aunt's earthlink account. I sent her an e-mail for the first time, and earthlink sent me a reply with a link wherein I had to put in my name and why I was mailing her before she would reply. It was kind of perturbing -- but effective, I guess.

I did some more research and the process doesn't really work that well because most spammers use a faulty/bad/good/fake reply... so you are essentialy then sending random e-mails to the reply address.. If you get 500+ spams a day that could be a LOT of e-mails to random people who have their email used as the reply by the spammer

**bbolte** · 10-10-2006, 07:11 AM

Originally Posted by ToddW

that could be a LOT of e-mails to random people who have their email used as the reply by the spammer

yep, my inbox has been getting hammered by that recently. i have a catchall set up on one of my sites that's been inundated by that. i'm going to have to remove the catchall...

**KLB** · 10-10-2006, 09:49 AM

These validate your message methods really have one major flaw. They don't account for legitimate but automated message processes (e.g. forum registrations). A better way to handle spam is to initially bounce a message from an unknown mail server via a faux server error. Almost all legitimate mail servers will try to resend the message later. Spammer's use a fire and forget method so their servers almost never listen for server error message and thus don't try to resend a message. When my web host implemented the false server error routine, my the amount of spam I saw that still needed to be filtered fell by 70% or more.