Re: Can I "Bounce to sender" an Email message using Outlook?

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From: Vanguardx (see_signature)
Date: 09/02/04 

Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 11:23:55 -0500

"Sherri" <Sherri@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote in news:96D3A968-057A-441A-8177-E00A0FAC5A72@microsoft.com:
> Does Outlook have a feature that allows me to "bounce to sender" an
> Email message? I use IncrediMail for my personal Email and the
> "bounce to sender" feature allows me to "bounce back" an email
> message. By doing so, the sender will (hopefully) believe that the
> Email address is incorrect and again, hopefully remove me from
> his/her contact list.
>
> I have been getting these ridiculous Email requests from people
> living in African countries who claim they want to send me money for
> helping them in some scam.
>
> Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Sherri

A fake bounce message issued from a client e-mail program can be
detected as a fake bounce message (i.e., it did not come from the
recipient's mail server). All you are doing is notifying to the spammer
that they have reached a valid and monitored e-mail address, if they
bother to read anything you send to them. Also, why would you think the
spammer/scammer is going to use their real e-mail address in the From,
Reply-To, or Return-Path headers? Just because your a good netizen
doesn't mean the spammer/scammer is. All you're doing is sending
bounces to bogus e-mail addresses that are invalid or for some poor 3rd
party that had nothing to do with sending the message (i.e., your
bounces are "collateral spam" to the recipient).

Mailwasher is a product to detect spam and it allows automatic
bouncebacks but all Mailwasher users are recommended to NOT use the
bounce feature. The spammers won't see your bounce message. If any do,
they can tell it was a fake bounce and that just tells them YOU sent the
fake bounce which ups your e-mail address in their list to have them
send you more of their crap. Or you are whacking innocents with YOUR
spam in the form of bounces for messages they never sent. That is
ignorant and rude.

Because spammers/scammers are not going to use their real e-mail address
is another reason why the Blocked Sender list is ineffective and simply
wastes time scanning your messages for spammer e-mail addresses that
aren't going to be used again, anyway.

It's time you start investigating what anti-spam software might help you
eliminate the turds from your mailbox. I use SpamPal which has several
plug-ins and lets you detects spam using several methods (all of which
is free) but there are plenty of anti-spam products out there, some free
and some commercial (which may also have trial versions that you can
test). 

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