Rejecting bogus "mail returned" email

July 28, 2004 9:26 AM

Spam-a-lot: Are there spam filters that can reject phony "Mail returned" virus e-mails by comparing the "failed" address to what you've actually sent? Such hoaxes are dominating my daily spam quotient, despite my use of spam-blocker Razor. But it seems like these would be easy enough for a program to detect.
posted by inksyndicate to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Server side or client side?
posted by the fire you left me at 9:31 AM on July 28, 2004

I get so many of these that I've just set up a filter to get rid of any "mail returned" e-mails I get, unfortunately the drawback is that I won't know if I actually HAVE sent an unsendable piece of mail... I'd like a real solution as well...
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:40 AM on July 28, 2004

I've set up a filter that looks in the body for "Received: from jerrykindall.com" and also checks that the body does not contain 216.254.17.177, which is the IP address of my mail server, which would actually be in the bounce if it was a message I'd sent. The bogus messages try to make it look like I really sent it with a phony "Received:" header, but they don't have the right IP address.
posted by kindall at 10:13 AM on July 28, 2004