Where do e-mails go to die?
Ever since I got this domain (and all my other domains), I receive these bounced e-mails on a fairly regular basis. Usually they are spam that are sent “from” some weird, non-existent e-mail address at mentele.net. Well, each time a spam mail gets sent “from” someone at mentele.net “to” another user that doesn’t really exist at some other domain, that e-mail gets bounced BACK to my non-existent e-mail address which in turn gets bounced BACK to the server which sent the first bounce. Here’s a little list to explain what i’m talking about (hopefully) a little clearer.
- Joe Spammer spoofs SPAM e-mail “From” some random e-mail address at mentele.net to jack@some-random-address.com (i don’t know if that really exists, but lets assume it doesnt).
- The e-mail server at some-random-address.com receives the e-mail “From” me.
- Since the mailbox for jack doesn’t exist, the server is most likely set up to bounce the e-mail back to me so I know that “jack” doesn’t exist
So, because this spammer sends this one e-mail, it gets bounced two more times AFTER the spammer originally sent it! Now, multiply that by 500 or so (that is the approximate number of those e-mails that I receive on a daily basis) and we begin to see why SPAM is such a problem. Okay, my 500 is a bad example, but mentele.net is a low-profile system — imagine something like usgs.gov or digg.com or some other LARGE domain with more than 5 users!
SPAM is only becoming a larger problem. We really need some successful legislation against spammers. Hell, we just need to confiscate their servers and computer systems…and give them to me! hehe…well, I’d be happy if we could just do the first part.
———— Update 11/07/06 ————
Odd, the day after I post this, there’s a front page article on Digg titled The Spammers Fight Back talking about a very similar topic (the increased SPAM lately). Here’s the link directly to the Eweek article.
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