Could 'Bounce' Make Spam Worse?

Forum for MailWasher Pro 7 and/or older 2011/2012 versions.
The Enforcer
Student Sheep
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:36 am

Could 'Bounce' Make Spam Worse?

Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:56 am

Hi,

I have a Hotmail email address, now administered by Outlook.com. I have been bouncing all spam/blacklist mail for about 10 days now and in that time the daily numbers have increased from around 10-20 to 40-50 per day. This is the highest they have been for at least a year.

I read that bounce is ineffective against spam, but I tried it anyway, because even if it stopped one of them that would be a victory. However, could it actually have made things worse in that the scumbag spammers treat bounces as indicators that the account is active and make the account a priority?

Cheers,
TE
gingbat
Least Evil Firetrust Employee
Posts: 1009
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:04 pm

Re: Could 'Bounce' Make Spam Worse?

Sat Feb 04, 2023 5:31 pm

Yes, although there is no real way MWP can increase spam, as it doesn't send out any information except for bounces, and the sender already had your email address to send you the spam in the first place anyways...

However...... if bouncing mail possibly many of the spammers actually used your address forged as the sender, then when you bounced, the bounces came back to you.... (if so, you'd get heaps of fake returned mail emails?)

If general spam has increased, (not returned emails) then no, not something I have seen before when bouncing, however it's not impossible....

Although you can still bounce in the 7.xx versions, we disabled the bounce column and the automatic bounce option to stop users from bouncing all spam emails, as we no longer actually recommend to bounce all emails because 90% of all email addresses in Spam messages are forged and therefore no one will ever receive that bounce message and it is just unnecessary email traffic.

Plus, a lot of ISP's actively block bounces now, and sometimes even block the senders of these...

Where the bounce feature is demonstrably useful is where you are trying to get off a legitimate business's mailing list that you are having trouble opting out of. Business mailing lists usually do check for bounces, do recognize MailWasher bounces as legitimate and do remove you from their mailing list.
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TrustFire
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Joined: Fri Jul 30, 2010 11:04 pm

Re: Could 'Bounce' Make Spam Worse?

Sun Feb 05, 2023 5:38 am

I'm a frequent user of the bounce feature and find it quite useful — have enjoyed using it in the past to dodge legitimate Senders (for example — my Bosses.) Just a heads-up — if at all bouncing is resorted to, it should be done on an immediate basis (or else, the Sender would notice that it is a fake bounce.) ;)

On the other hand . . . there is no usefulness in bouncing spam messages.
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The Enforcer
Student Sheep
Posts: 22
Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2023 11:36 am

Re: Could 'Bounce' Make Spam Worse?

Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:48 pm

I stop using 'bounce' and the number of spams immediately halves. Go figure.

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