Anyway to rig an email address to appear to not exist

Boston

Ive about 8 thousand spam mails sitting on an email address. the way these things usally work is they have a list of email address and they scan each on to make sure there is actually an address. if it doesnt confirm the email is delted from the lists.

so is there away to set up my account to tell the mass mail server that theres nobody at this address.

Gavin

I came acros a thing recently that replies to spam with a mail saying

"To join this email list email this bla blahb blah"

Basicly, it makes it appear as though the address is an email list sign up one.

Can't remember the name though.. sorry !

Gav

dahamsta

Well, normally spammers just take over an open relay and hit send. They don't give a toss whether the addresses exist or not. They just add the ones that get angry replies to a validated list.

But yes, you can open a socket to the mail server and have a wee chat with it to see if the address exists. The conversation would go something like this:

HELO mail.server.com
MAIL FROM: <user1@server.com>
RCPT TO: <user2@server.com>
QUIT

If you get the right answers back from the mail server, the email address is deliverable, although that's no guarantee that it won't be rejected when a real email gets there.

Unfortunately though, that the way email works, and there's no way to tell the difference between a "conversation" like this and one where a real email is actually going to be sent.

So, although I'm certainly not an authority on this, and I could very well be wrong, my answer is: "No, you can't set up the account to tell the mass mail server there's no-one at the address." At least not if you want to be able to receive email.

adam

Boston

but i dont want to be able to recieve mail, i just what to leave it that way for afew months, eventually the emails will stop coming

dahamsta

Depends where the email account is so. If it's on a subscription email account, you can just let it sit -- the box will fill up and will start refusing email. This might not be very wise with a free account though, as you risk having the account deleted. If you have control of the server, use the config to reject mail to the address. On Sendmail you would use the virtusertable or access file for this.

adam

yellum

In my last job our domain was used as the return address for about 6 million spams. In one day we got 950,000 rejected email addresses and lots of irate and ignorant people thinking a college was really sending out XXX spam. A very wise and intelligent "network admin" with one of the biggest financial institutions in the world rang us too to complain and was convinced someone was using our system to spam, until I explained to him about mail headers. Always happy to educate those more arrogant and far better payed than me.

This has actually happened 3 or 4 times now. The spammers don't give a damn if the address is valid or not since they don't have their return address in the spam being sent out.

So, if you think sending a fake "mailbox does not exist" return email will get you off their list, it won't. If you're on it, you're on it for good and your email addy will probably get added to more and more email databases as time goes on.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

Originally posted by yellum
A very wise and intelligent "network admin" with one of the biggest financial institutions in the world rang us too to complain and was convinced someone was using our system to spam, until I explained to him about mail headers. Always happy to educate those more arrogant and far better payed than me.

Tell us what company?

It's always the case, the bigger the company, the more "right" they think they are.

Boston

blast, ha at least ive one thousand emails now sitting on an iol account. that ill teach them to cut me off.

how many emails before they discoonect that account anyway?

yellum

Is it an iol account ? They had a spam filter called mailman afaik. It used to get rid of a lot of spam if you had it configured. I think there were posts about it on boards before. Do a search to see.

ando

stop going to porn sites and you'll stop getting spam hehehe

Snaga

The IOL site is mailman.iol.ie

It allows you to filter out crap and set forwards and other fancy frippery.

Boston

thats extremely handy, thanks

yellum

http://www.mailwasher.net/

bugler

Interesting stuff, must check out some of them. I was about to admit defeat in my battle against spam in some of my older accounts.

Originally posted by ando
stop going to porn sites and you'll stop getting spam hehehe

The cure sounds worse than the disease.

yankinlk

Originally posted by yellum
In my last job our domain was used as the return address for about 6 million spams. In one day we got 950,000 rejected email addresses and lots of irate and ignorant people thinking a college was really sending out XXX spam.

was that a college in cork by any chance?

yellum

uh huh