The people who send much of such abuse are frequently those who are most
annoyed by out of office replies.
Real commercial spammers aren't "verifying your address". They already
have it. There is no market for verified email addresses. Only a specific
kind of non-commercial (ab)user wants a verified addresses. They are
typically mail administrators who do so by habit, because they don't like
bounces. Spammers (if they actually used proxies and forged From:
addresses) don't get bounces.
For example, when Spews.org recently thought it was being criticized, it
signed up the person doing the criticism to 'about a thousand junk mail
lists' and began DDOS'ing their web site. (story posted on Politech)
What remains to be calculated is how many virus stables it takes to
account for all of the non-commercial spam.
If you really want to fight spam, you would get law enforcement prosecute
and jail more virus operators. This is already a felony in the US, and a
crime in many countries. You don't need anything else. Nor will anything
else solve the spam problem.
But I'm still waiting for California ISPs to start posting billions in
profits now that spam has been banned there. Billions have been removed
from their expenses, so where are the profits from that? I digress... Have
a good weekend.
--Dean
On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, A. Kremer wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Is there any relationship between turning on an Out of Office Reply and
receiving a lot of junk/spammail?
There is a reason why I ask you this..
When I went for a 2 weeks holiday, I turned on my Out of Office Reply.
After those 2 weeks, when I got back at the office, I had received
250(!) spammails. I guess it is unnecessary to mention the contents
here. ;)
A few weeks later I got ill and stayed home, so I was not able to turn
on my Out of Office Reply.
After my return at the office, I only had received 2 spammails.
Then I had another holiday and I turned my Out of Office Reply on.
And guess what happened!
169 spammails when I returned at the office. After being absent for 7
working days.
At that moment the thought crossed my mind that there MUST be any
relationship between turning Out of Office Reply on, and receiving
junk/spammail.
So, am I right or am I wrong about this Out of Office issue?
If there is already an answer to this question, please let me know where
I can find it.
Very kind regards,
A. Kremer