Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces

Lennon - Orcon

17 Oct 2004 17 Oct '04

1:20 p.m.

I've been looking lately and a "large" number of double bounces to postermaster are caused by people who use "MailWashers" to Bounce Spam. I rmember the days when I could read every message to postmaster(a)isp.co.nz They are quite easy to spot as they all have the format of: mail.local: unknown name: username 550 username(a)domain.co.nz ... User unknown Coming from MAILER-DAEMON(a)domain.co.nz (usually the ISP's one) (and forging the email (which I presume is against all ISP's T&C) In mailwashers FAQ it says: ------- Do the spammers know I am bouncing email? No, spammers do not know you are bouncing messages. Bounced messages look just like a returned mail message you would receive if you sent an email to an incorrect address. --------- If I can tell if someone if using mailwasher.. why cannot the spammers? Even so I would think 99.9% of all emails bounced via this program don't get back to the spammers anyway (they don't use proper from addresses or use someone else's domain to send from (anyone in NZ using/looking at using SPF? to stop this type of thing) What I am trying to say (if not very well). What do people think of this feature of mailwasher. I've emailed the writer a few times for comments over the last few years and heard nothing from him. Have ISP's complained to uses using it? stopped people using it? or what? Thanks Craig Whitmore

Show replies by date

Mark Foster

17 Oct 17 Oct

2:42 p.m.

...

What I am trying to say (if not very well). What do people think of this feature of mailwasher. I've emailed the writer a few times for comments over the last few years and heard nothing from him. Have ISP's complained to uses using it? stopped people using it? or what?

Speaking personally, everyone I have ever come across who's mentioned the name 'Mailwasher' has had a response from me of 'fine, but NEVER EVER use the bounce feature'. This is usually greeted with a 'Oh really? I had never realised that would put me in breach of any rule.' Very likely that people who are using mailwasher's bounce feature are 'using an application feature' and are not aware of the fact that they're doing anything potentially wrong. Maybe the software needs a big dialogue box when enabling that option which states very clearly the risks. I personally think that where the use of the mailwasher bounce is detected it should become an abuse case that is handled by the security team of an ISP in the manner of any other unintentional breach of T&C - via a warning. Help documentation published on the web that users could be referred to which explains exactly why this is a problem wouldn't go amiss either. I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if there's demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it. Mark.

Mark Foster

3:05 p.m.

...

I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if there's demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it.

At the risk of replying to myself - and for the benefit of those readers who don't understand why this is a 'bad thing'(tm) - I ranted about it anyway. Those interested can view it at http://www.blakjak.net/node/view/134 As always, opinions posted are mine only.

Blair Robson

5:19 p.m.

...

...
I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if

I agree with you Marky Mark, I'm sure the mailwasher team wouldn't mind putting something in about it. Blair Robson Wireless Data Technical Specialist Telecom New Zealand Ltd wdhd(a)telecom.co.nz ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Foster" To: "Lennon - Orcon" Cc: Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces there's

...

...
demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it.

At the risk of replying to myself - and for the benefit of those readers who don't understand why this is a 'bad thing'(tm) - I ranted about it anyway.

Those interested can view it at http://www.blakjak.net/node/view/134

As always, opinions posted are mine only.

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Steve Phillips

5:58 p.m.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Blair Robson wrote:

...

I agree with you Marky Mark, I'm sure the mailwasher team wouldn't mind putting something in about it.

Actually, the mailwasher team have been informed of this and their answer is "the customers like it, it stays, we dont care that it inconveniences the ISP postmasters" (an abreviated version) At the time there was not much that could be done about this, but under some convoluted version of Amendment 6 to the crimes act they may be in breach under NZ law and a criminal suit could be raised against them if any one feels like persueing it. I guess bouncing all the ISP bounces generated by mailwasher onto the mailwasher authors would possibly highlight the issue to them.. -- Steve.

James Clark

18 Oct 18 Oct

3:05 a.m.

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 06:58:58AM -0500, Steve Phillips wrote:

...

Actually, the mailwasher team have been informed of this and their answer is "the customers like it, it stays, we dont care that it inconveniences the ISP postmasters" (an abreviated version)

We also had this response from the MW team, when I contacted them about this (from Wave, at the time), this was over two years ago. It would be nice if they saw the light. Cheers, James

Bruce Fitzsimons

4:22 a.m.

James Clark wrote:

...

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 06:58:58AM -0500, Steve Phillips wrote:

...
Actually, the mailwasher team have been informed of this and their answer is "the customers like it, it stays, we dont care that it inconveniences the ISP postmasters" (an abreviated version)

We also had this response from the MW team, when I contacted them about this (from Wave, at the time), this was over two years ago. It would be nice if they saw the light.

It might help to remember that Mailwasher was built, on contract I think, at the behest of a non network/software person. It evolved from a shareware base. The owner made a killing too (I'm not sure the developer did), and I'm sure a major reason for its success that is the satisfaction that people derived from sending the bounces off to those nasty spammers. It is not in his interest to remove the option. Removing options from users makes them grumpy. I totally agree that its not a pretty thing for the internet as a whole, but until people start requesting refunds from him because of the feature it will not change, and even then its likely that they'll just be told not to tick the box that causes it. I believe the story of MW is around on the interweb somewhere, its an interesting story that I interpret as how identification of a vertical market combined with decent marketing can make you a whole lot of money. I'm jealous. /Bruce

Garrett Stoupe

4:22 a.m.

Wouldn't the most easiest thing to do is to redirect the messages to nick.bolton(a)clear.net.nz which is the administrative contact name under mailwasher.net? They will soon get the picture, Checking server [whois.crsnic.net] Checking server [whois.opensrs.net] Results: Registrant: Mail Washer PO Box 4620 Christchurch, n/a n/a NZ Domain name: MAILWASHER.NET Administrative Contact: Bolton, Nick nick.bolton(a)clear.net.nz PO Box 4620 Christchurch, n/a n/a NZ +64 3 365 4176 Technical Contact: Nesbitt, Roger roger(a)ecosm.com PO Box 13945 Christchurch, na na NZ +64 3 365 4176 Fax: +64 3 372 3535 Registration Service Provider: eCOSM Limited, roger(a)ecosm.com +64 3 365 4176 This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords, DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions. Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 05-Mar-2004. Record expires on 04-Apr-2005. Record created on 04-Apr-2001. Domain servers in listed order: NS1.ECOSM.COM 202.37.218.3 NS2.ECOSM.COM 66.216.68.106 Domain status: ACTIVE Garrett Stoupe Network And Database Administrator Cabbage Tree Press garretts(a)te.co.nz www.te.co.nz www.jobzone.co.nz www.nzcarbuys.co.nz -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Fitzsimons [mailto:Bruce(a)Fitzsimons.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 10:22 AM To: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces James Clark wrote:

...

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 06:58:58AM -0500, Steve Phillips wrote:

...
Actually, the mailwasher team have been informed of this and their answer is "the customers like it, it stays, we dont care that it inconveniences the ISP postmasters" (an abreviated version)

We also had this response from the MW team, when I contacted them about this (from Wave, at the time), this was over two years ago. It would be nice if they saw the light.

Simon Byrnand

4:39 a.m.

At 11:22 19/10/2004, Garrett Stoupe wrote:

...

Wouldn't the most easiest thing to do is to redirect the messages to nick.bolton(a)clear.net.nz which is the administrative contact name under mailwasher.net?

They will soon get the picture,

To do that though, you would need a foolproof, programatic way of getting an MTA to recognise a Mailwasher forgery and seperately handle it. Has anyone done this yet for any popular MTA's ? It's one thing for a human to be able to look at the headers and spot them reliably, but another for it to be automated. (Think spam filtering - FP's and FN's etc) The overhead would need to be pretty low too, since mailservers have a hard enough time filtering junk as it is... While I don't condone forwarding bounces to the authors, if someone had a reliable way to detect them, they could at least be dropped on the floor instead of going into the MTA's outgoing queue to be retried for 5 days... Regards, Simon

Simon Lyall

5:05 a.m.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Simon Byrnand wrote:

...

To do that though, you would need a foolproof, programatic way of getting an MTA to recognise a Mailwasher forgery and seperately handle it. Has anyone done this yet for any popular MTA's ? It's one thing for a human to be able to look at the headers and spot them reliably, but another for it to be automated. (Think spam filtering - FP's and FN's etc) The overhead would need to be pretty low too, since mailservers have a hard enough time filtering junk as it is...

The message-id has mx1.yourdomain.co.nz as it's host. Also the from address (and the message-id) will use the domain of the customers email address. This is a good way to grep them out of the mail logs. So if you bounce emails from a different domain than what customers are using (ie customers use paradise.net.nz for email and the mail servers generate bounces from tsnz.net) then they are pretty easy to spot. The best trick is to reject emails from MAILER-DAEMON(a)yourdomain.co.nz from customer IPs, or similar. I'm told it even pops up an error to the mailwasher muppet when you do this. If you are really good you could make the error tell them to contact mailwasher support. As aothers having stated the only long term method of fixing the problem is to shift the support costs onto the mailwasher authors. -- Simon J. Lyall. | Very Busy | Mail: simon(a)darkmere.gen.nz "To stay awake all night adds a day to your life" - Stilgar | eMT.

Matthew Poole

5:20 a.m.

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Simon Lyall wrote:

...

As aothers having stated the only long term method of fixing the problem is to shift the support costs onto the mailwasher authors.

Might this be a new tactic? Take a leaf out of the anti-spam handbook, and contact Mailwasher to advise them that you will begin invoicing them for all future bounce handling after xyz date, if they don't remove the bounce feature. Make sure the date is far enough in advance that they do have time to modify the software, and then carry through with it. As far as Steve's "convoluted interpretation" of the Crimes Act goes, S.250 states: (2) Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who intentionally or recklessly, and without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised, or being reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised, (a) damages, deletes, modifies, or otherwise interferes with or impairs any data or software in any computer system; or (b) causes any data or software in any computer system to be damaged, deleted, modified, or otherwise interfered with or impaired; or (c) causes any computer system to (i) fail; or (ii) deny service to any authorised users. It's not at all a stretch to view MW as enabling contravention of para c, and 251 makes it a crime to make, sell or supply enabling software. -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer."

Simon Byrnand

5:28 a.m.

At 12:05 19/10/2004, Simon Lyall wrote:

...

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Simon Byrnand wrote:

...
To do that though, you would need a foolproof, programatic way of getting an MTA to recognise a Mailwasher forgery and seperately handle it. Has anyone done this yet for any popular MTA's ? It's one thing for a human to be able to look at the headers and spot them reliably, but another for it to be automated. (Think spam filtering - FP's and FN's etc) The overhead would need to be pretty low too, since mailservers have a hard enough time filtering junk as it is...

The message-id has mx1.yourdomain.co.nz as it's host. Also the from address (and the message-id) will use the domain of the customers email address. This is a good way to grep them out of the mail logs.

Ah yes, I remember now... way back when I first discovered mailwasher it was from noticing bounce messages claiming to be from mx1.igrin.co.nz, when there was no such thing.... bit of a giveaway that... :)

...

So if you bounce emails from a different domain than what customers are using (ie customers use paradise.net.nz for email and the mail servers generate bounces from tsnz.net) then they are pretty easy to spot.

The best trick is to reject emails from MAILER-DAEMON(a)yourdomain.co.nz from customer IPs, or similar. I'm told it even pops up an error to the mailwasher muppet when you do this. If you are really good you could make the error tell them to contact mailwasher support.

Does mailwasher actually use an explicit envelope-sender of MAILER-DAEMON(a)yourdomain.co.nz or does it use an empty envelope-sender as the RFC's dictate for real bounce messages ? (Which is then changed to MAILER-DAEMON or MAILER-DAEMON(a)yourdomain.co.nz in the message headers by your own MTA) If mailwasher does indeed explicitly put MAILER-DAEMON(a)yourdomain.co.nz as the envelope-sender then it would be a simple matter to apply a REJECT rule for that, since any REAL bounce messages from REAL MTA's will have empty envelope-sender addresses.

...

As aothers having stated the only long term method of fixing the problem is to shift the support costs onto the mailwasher authors.

But in a non-destructive way though. If the above idea works it would be a simple matter to include some text in the REJECT message telling them to contact mailwasher support because your ISP does not support mailwashers bounce feature... :) Alas, when I checked the outgoing queue to find a sample message there is currently not a single mailwasher one, so it seems that the people I've advised not to use it in the past really did take it on board... :) Regards, Simon

Craig Whitmore

5:18 a.m.

...

To do that though, you would need a foolproof, programatic way of getting an MTA to recognise a Mailwasher forgery and seperately handle it. Has anyone done this yet for any popular MTA's ? It's one thing for a human to be able to look at the headers and spot them reliably, but another for it to be automated. (Think spam filtering - FP's and FN's etc) The overhead would need to be pretty low too, since mailservers have a hard enough time filtering junk as it is...

When I was using Spamassassin I had a 100% full proof way of stopping people doing it (it seems also different versions of Mailwasher did it slightly different as well) But as I'm not using Spamassassin anymore.. then I can't find an easy way of doing it (yes I could write a simple milter to do it) Thanks Craig

Mark Foster

4:54 a.m.

...

Wouldn't the most easiest thing to do is to redirect the messages to nick.bolton(a)clear.net.nz which is the administrative contact name under mailwasher.net?

They will soon get the picture,

*snipped whois* I'm glad you rethought this on your followup, Garrett. :) As Simon pointed out, you'd need to be able to determine if a message was infact created by mailwasher or not. The whole point is that these are fairly hard to tell apart from the real thing - thus the whole 'forgery' thing. As much as it'd be poetic justice to forward the messages back to them theres a whole other can of worms: - You're contributing to the problem - You're encouraging them to disable and/or ignore their admin address (so where do you send genuine abuse reports about their network?)- You're probably risking your own T&C adherence by engaging in what might be construed as 'excessively annoying behavior' by redirecting those messages. If an end-user enables the 'bounce' then they themselves are responsible for their conduct, adherence to their ISP Terms and Conditions and/or general 'annoyingness'. A bit like how we can't blame car manufacturers for the fact that cars are capable of exceeding 100km/h - we blame the driver who chooses to exceed the limit. The difference here, of course, is that many users can plead ignorance. Thus two things come to mind: - Strict enforcement by ISPs, and - Emphasis on educating users about what construes 'bad behavior' online. So I would hope that ISP and Network admins in networks where Mailwasher may be in use would take all cases of Mailwasher use and/or abuse seriously. I realise theres a tendency to 'dismiss for higher priority cases' but in my view theres no case too small; especially as single cases can have far reaching impact. (IRC Drones anyone?[1]) Mark. [1] Refer http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/09/08/botnet_with_10000_machines_shut... for an example of how 'isolated cases' can quickly become a problem....

Jeremy Brooking

5:13 a.m.

Mark Foster wrote:

...

Thus two things come to mind:

- Strict enforcement by ISPs, and - Emphasis on educating users about what construes 'bad behavior' online.

Perhaps the PC magazines out there, who have forced Mailwasher down the throats of users for the past year should help with this. I see dozen of these magazines with a copys of it on thier cover CD, yet few/none which explain to the users correct and responsible use. "PCwhatever magazine says use this function, and they should know what theyre talking about!!!!!" Too many users take what they see in these magazines to be gospel.

Garrett Stoupe

4:27 a.m.

Then to think about it again.. I forgot to mention it would create problems for clear.net.nz then..... Garrett Stoupe Network And Database Administrator Cabbage Tree Press garretts(a)te.co.nz www.te.co.nz www.jobzone.co.nz www.nzcarbuys.co.nz -----Original Message----- From: Bruce Fitzsimons [mailto:Bruce(a)Fitzsimons.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 10:22 AM To: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces James Clark wrote:

...

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 06:58:58AM -0500, Steve Phillips wrote:

...
Actually, the mailwasher team have been informed of this and their answer is "the customers like it, it stays, we dont care that it inconveniences the ISP postmasters" (an abreviated version)

We also had this response from the MW team, when I contacted them about this (from Wave, at the time), this was over two years ago. It would be nice if they saw the light.

Mark Foster

12:16 a.m.

That'd be nice :P On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Blair Robson wrote:

...

I agree with you Marky Mark, I'm sure the mailwasher team wouldn't mind putting something in about it.

Blair Robson

Wireless Data Technical Specialist Telecom New Zealand Ltd

wdhd(a)telecom.co.nz

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Foster" To: "Lennon - Orcon" Cc: Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces

...
...
I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if there's demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it.

At the risk of replying to myself - and for the benefit of those readers who don't understand why this is a 'bad thing'(tm) - I ranted about it anyway.

Those interested can view it at http://www.blakjak.net/node/view/134

As always, opinions posted are mine only.

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Matthew Poole

1:57 a.m.

Sadly, as Steve has said, the Mailwasher authors have precisely zero interest in being good members of the 'net community. This has been raised with them before, I believe NZNOG was informed at the time, too. I'm aware of ISPs who've politely told customers using the bounce feature that if they don't desist immediately (for very, very small values of "right the f**k now!") their account will be terminated for T&C violations. Most customers then listen. And one plonker who boasted about using the bounce feature,on Usenet, was reported to to TCL abuse by at least three people and promptly vanished. If ISPs take a hard line with customers who use the bounce feature, maybe even explicitly forbid it in their T&C, it might add a little weight to requests to the Mailwasher authors to remove the feature. Failing that, a lawyergram advising of a potential criminal complaint tends to buck peoples' ideasup.

...

That'd be nice :P

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Blair Robson wrote:

...
I agree with you Marky Mark, I'm sure the mailwasher team wouldn't mind putting something in about it.

Blair Robson

Wireless Data Technical Specialist Telecom New Zealand Ltd

wdhd(a)telecom.co.nz

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Foster" To: "Lennon - Orcon" Cc: Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces

...
...
I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if there's demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it.

At the risk of replying to myself - and for the benefit of those readers who don't understand why this is a 'bad thing'(tm) - I ranted about it anyway.

Those interested can view it at http://www.blakjak.net/node/view/134

As always, opinions posted are mine only.

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

-- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Find a larger hammer."

Garrett Stoupe

2:20 a.m.

Hi Matt I totally agree with you, the other option is to simply black list email from them, but if the option is disabled by default simply a few users will not be aware of it, I remember experiencing a similar thing many years ago, The situation was that simply the customer was not aware that the software that they were using had port scanning turned on by default (it was a mirc script), The person was simply banned from the isp Are mailwasher doing enough to make there customers aware of this? Un wanted traffic on a mail server is simply not needed Garrett Stoupe Network And Database Administrator Cabbage Tree Press garretts(a)te.co.nz www.te.co.nz www.jobzone.co.nz www.nzcarbuys.co.nz -----Original Message----- From: Matthew Poole [mailto:matt(a)p00le.net] Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 7:57 AM To: NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces Sadly, as Steve has said, the Mailwasher authors have precisely zero interest in being good members of the 'net community. This has been raised with them before, I believe NZNOG was informed at the time, too. I'm aware of ISPs who've politely told customers using the bounce feature that if they don't desist immediately (for very, very small values of "right the f**k now!") their account will be terminated for T&C violations. Most customers then listen. And one plonker who boasted about using the bounce feature,on Usenet, was reported to to TCL abuse by at least three people and promptly vanished. If ISPs take a hard line with customers who use the bounce feature, maybe even explicitly forbid it in their T&C, it might add a little weight to requests to the Mailwasher authors to remove the feature. Failing that, a lawyergram advising of a potential criminal complaint tends to buck peoples' ideasup.

...

That'd be nice :P

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004, Blair Robson wrote:

...
I agree with you Marky Mark, I'm sure the mailwasher team wouldn't mind putting something in about

it.

...

...
Blair Robson

Wireless Data Technical Specialist Telecom New Zealand Ltd

wdhd(a)telecom.co.nz

----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Foster" To: "Lennon - Orcon" Cc: Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 10:05 PM Subject: Re: [nznog] Mailwasher and its Forged Bounces

...
...
I know ISPs dont like referencing third party hosted data, but if there's demand i'd gladly write up something and put it on my site. Assuming noone has beaten me to it.

At the risk of replying to myself - and for the benefit of those

readers

...
...
who don't understand why this is a 'bad thing'(tm) - I ranted about it anyway.

Those interested can view it at http://www.blakjak.net/node/view/134

As always, opinions posted are mine only.

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

_______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

-- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Find a larger hammer." _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog

Simon Byrnand

3:05 a.m.

At 21:42 18/10/2004, Mark Foster wrote:

...

...
What I am trying to say (if not very well). What do people think of this feature of mailwasher. I've emailed the writer a few times for comments over the last few years and heard nothing from him. Have ISP's complained to uses using it? stopped people using it? or what?

Speaking personally, everyone I have ever come across who's mentioned the name 'Mailwasher' has had a response from me of 'fine, but NEVER EVER use the bounce feature'. This is usually greeted with a 'Oh really? I had never realised that would put me in breach of any rule.'

I've contacted a few customers about it in the past, and all have been happy to turn the bounce feature off or even stop using the program altogether when the situation is explained. (I wrote up a standard "form" explanation of the problem which I just modify slightly as needed when sending it) When they realise not only is it not doing them any good (spammers never see the bounces, but it wastes their time online sending them) and actually causes problems for ISP's mail servers, they usually understand.

...

Very likely that people who are using mailwasher's bounce feature are 'using an application feature' and are not aware of the fact that they're doing anything potentially wrong. Maybe the software needs a big dialogue box when enabling that option which states very clearly the risks.

Or maybe the author needs continual whacking with a clue stick until he removes a "feature" that has no proven benefits (spammers never see the bounces because the return address is ALWAYS fake nowadays, and there is no evidence that spammers DO remove addresses that bounce ANYWAY, and lots of evidence that they DONT) but has proven negative effects. (Wasted online time for users sending the fake bounces, ISP's mailserver queues getting clogged with mostly undeliverable messages, and innocent third parties getting joe jobbed just because their address was used as the reply address in some spam) I lump this feature of Mailwasher right up there with virus scanners who reply to the "sender" of a virus, (which is also always fake or an innocent third party these days) its exactly the same braindead stupidity that needs to be stamped out before peoples inboxes are overcome with a new menace - bogus bounce messages due to incorrectly configured virus scanners, and spam "filters" that generate bounces...(it's already becomming a big problem) As someone pointed out, this exact issue has come up on nznog before (a year ago ?) and obviously the Mailwasher author is still clueless and/or unrepentant. I for one would sign a petition to have it removed from Mailwasher if someone were to start one ;-) Regards, Simon

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12 participants

participants (12)

Blair Robson
Bruce Fitzsimons
Craig Whitmore
Garrett Stoupe
James Clark
Jeremy Brooking
Lennon - Orcon
Mark Foster
Matthew Poole
Simon Byrnand
Simon Lyall
Steve Phillips