forward to fail?

[young]

is there a way to forward certain email addresses to fail?
we have some that are spammed more than others.
i'd like to have the server give a failure notice back to the spammer. would that even help reduce spam?

 

[nobaloney]

Spammers disregard failure notices.

And not because they want to, but because they have to.

Since many more of their addresses fail than work, if they looked at failures their servers would crash.

Of course that would be a good thing for us, but not for them.

The best way to have mail for an address fail is to remove the address.

If you're using a catchall you probably shouldn't be; they're fairly dangerous on today's Internet.

Jeff

 

[young]

If you're using a catchall you probably shouldn't be; they're fairly dangerous on today's Internet.

what's dangerous about catchall ?

but i'd still like to forward to fail for people that want to contact the email address.

 

[matrixx]

what's dangerous about catchall ?

By catchall Jeff is refering to the way your account behaves when for instance a misspelt email address is receives i.e. ssles@yoursite instead of sales@your site.

In earlier days on the web I considered this a useful feature but unfortunately spammers now abuse it.

For example a number of our clients receive 'dictionary' spam i.e. a@yourdomain , aa@yourdomain, ab@ etc etc - if they had their catchall set to forward to a legitimate email address and you or a client was unfortunate enough to find yourselves subject to this sort of spam bombardment you would soon find your mailbox flooded with illegitimate mail.

I recommend our clients give delivery failure notices as I believe it is good practice.

So I would say like Jeff the best way is to delete the email address in a structured way - starting with the setting up of another address, advising of clients of the change of address, monitoring both addresses until you are satisfied that all important people have changed over then deletion of the old address.

One thing I'm unsure of is whether it is wise to switch the old address to an autoresponse detailing the new address. I'm unsure if the spammers would pick up the email from the autoresponse or not. I'd err on the side of caution and respond manually..

Edited: To correct spellings

Hope this helps,

Rob

 

[young]

thanks for explaining the dangers of catchall, but i still want to use catchall atm and just foward spammed email addresses to fail.

is there a way to forward certain email addresses to fail?