Can Outlook Bounce? (?)

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People,

Can Microsoft Outlook (not: Outlook Express) bounce unwanted e-mail back to
the sender, in the same way that MailWasher does? I have been bombarded
with mass mailer worms; & want to get a little vindictive. I was going to
go with MailWasher, since it can bounce…but was wondering if Outlook could
do the same.

Thanks much,

mark4man

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Replies

No, and it’s a good thing because your vindictiveness will hurt more innocent people than it will punish infected people. The latest worms make up names to use in the to and from fields as well as take addresses and domains from web pages and other sources. You’ll only succeed in wasting bandwidth and other peoples time.

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And some people may get upset with you and start selling that Valid address that your replied from.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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And some people may get upset with you and start selling that Valid address that your replied from.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Oh…I see, MaryJ

We simply do nothing, right?

We just let the mass mailer worms like Swen & Norvarg just stream on in to our inboxes, right? And hope that NAV quarantines them right? And meanwhile, the ISP’s do nothing about the mass mailer worms traveling through their servers.

Well, I tell you what I did…I got MailWasher. This enables me to view mail at the server, prior to being downloaded by my e-mail client (Outlook Express.) When you bounce from MailWasher, a fake address not found message is sent back to the sender. I don’t beleive that will punish anybody but the sender.

Wasted bandwidth?

Please!

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The point is that you are not bouncing to the spammer. You are bouncing to a spoofed address. For example, I received a bounce message today from an address in Hungary which I have never heard of. My address was in a Hungarian friend’s address book. He/she was infected by MyDoom.A. I get the bounce message.

Last year, somebody with my address in their book was infected with SoBig.F. I get a bounce message from the University of Vermont – where I know nobody. That address is now on a blacklist with ATT.Worldnet. My ISP will not confirm to ATT.Worldnet that I am not a spammer. In 7 years of email use, I have never been infected. At present, I receive only ~150 pieces of spam per day.

As MaryJ says, you are absorbing bandwidth by sending bounce messages. If you want to vent, take a tennis racket and beat it against a pillow instead.

HTH

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unk,

The point is…the address book of “origin” is the address book where the deceitful little SMTP harvester/robot resides, right? So if that individual receives the bounce back, maybe that would cause them to take a closer look at their address book…& perhaps delete any weird or unknown entries?

As for bouncing Spam, I’ve heard nothing but accolades & kudos for bouncing these (with MailWasher)…as the fake address not found message sent back to the sender causes that address to be removed from the Spam list (of which are sold over & over.)

mark4man

& Anyway: My tennis racket is already broken, from this crap.

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FWIW – looking at the bounce message I received several hours ago – the virus did a DNS resolution and generated a purportedly valid SMTP address – matching a range used by the ISP. Presumably this is why I received the bounce.

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FWIW – looking at the bounce message I received several hours ago – the virus did a DNS resolution and generated a purportedly valid SMTP address – matching a range used by the ISP. Presumably this is why I received the bounce.

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> The point is…the address book of “origin” is the address book where the deceitful little SMTP harvester/robot resides, right?

No, most worms use addresses harvested from the victim’s computer as the “From” and/or “Reply to” address, 99.9% of which will not be the victim’s address. So you could well be confusing someone’s mother with your message. Will that make you feel better?

What you need is for your service provider to filter these problems before they ever get to your mailbox, at least the viral ones. There’s a risk of losing legitimate mail if you use numerous different patterns to infer the nature of the message (like anti-spam software), but as long as the virus signatures are made correctly, virus pre-filtering will knock out all the ones with dangerous attachments. Write your ISP!

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> The point is…the address book of “origin” is the address book where the deceitful little SMTP harvester/robot resides, right?

No, most worms use addresses harvested from the victim’s computer as the “From” and/or “Reply to” address, 99.9% of which will not be the victim’s address. So you could well be confusing someone’s mother with your message. Will that make you feel better?

What you need is for your service provider to filter these problems before they ever get to your mailbox, at least the viral ones. There’s a risk of losing legitimate mail if you use numerous different patterns to infer the nature of the message (like anti-spam software), but as long as the virus signatures are made correctly, virus pre-filtering will knock out all the ones with dangerous attachments. Write your ISP!

Reply | Quote

unk,

The point is…the address book of “origin” is the address book where the deceitful little SMTP harvester/robot resides, right? So if that individual receives the bounce back, maybe that would cause them to take a closer look at their address book…& perhaps delete any weird or unknown entries?

As for bouncing Spam, I’ve heard nothing but accolades & kudos for bouncing these (with MailWasher)…as the fake address not found message sent back to the sender causes that address to be removed from the Spam list (of which are sold over & over.)

mark4man

& Anyway: My tennis racket is already broken, from this crap.

Reply | Quote

The point is that you are not bouncing to the spammer. You are bouncing to a spoofed address. For example, I received a bounce message today from an address in Hungary which I have never heard of. My address was in a Hungarian friend’s address book. He/she was infected by MyDoom.A. I get the bounce message.

Last year, somebody with my address in their book was infected with SoBig.F. I get a bounce message from the University of Vermont – where I know nobody. That address is now on a blacklist with ATT.Worldnet. My ISP will not confirm to ATT.Worldnet that I am not a spammer. In 7 years of email use, I have never been infected. At present, I receive only ~150 pieces of spam per day.

As MaryJ says, you are absorbing bandwidth by sending bounce messages. If you want to vent, take a tennis racket and beat it against a pillow instead.

HTH

Reply | Quote

Oh…I see, MaryJ

We simply do nothing, right?

We just let the mass mailer worms like Swen & Norvarg just stream on in to our inboxes, right? And hope that NAV quarantines them right? And meanwhile, the ISP’s do nothing about the mass mailer worms traveling through their servers.

Well, I tell you what I did…I got MailWasher. This enables me to view mail at the server, prior to being downloaded by my e-mail client (Outlook Express.) When you bounce from MailWasher, a fake address not found message is sent back to the sender. I don’t beleive that will punish anybody but the sender.

Wasted bandwidth?

Please!

Reply | Quote

No, and it’s a good thing because your vindictiveness will hurt more innocent people than it will punish infected people. The latest worms make up names to use in the to and from fields as well as take addresses and domains from web pages and other sources. You’ll only succeed in wasting bandwidth and other peoples time.

Reply | Quote