Don't take this as preachy. It is in no way intended to be.

Unfortunately this method shifts costs to uninvolved third parties. What happens in the case where everyone uses this method of "spam control"?

Let's assume that the typical user gets N spam messages / day. If each one of these messages has an innocent user's address as the "from" address, then N users will get a confirmation message from me.

Now, if we assume that the spammer is using the same list to fill the "from" and "to" addresses, then the same user should also get 10 confirmation messages.

The network load has now "doubled". If I need to see every confirmation message to ensure that I am not "missing" a message, I still have to check out N confirmation messages.

Let's change the distribution of from and to addresses to putting only user@example.com in the from address. Now all of the confirmation addresses are headed for that user's mailbox. Ouch.

There are some things that can make this better, but it requires things like verifying that the host sending you mail from a user is authorized to be done by every mail host on the net. Not very likely.

Since this is not SPAM-L or the like, this is probably not the place to get into a discussion of it, but I would recommend that if interested in this topic, to browse the SPAM-L archives or subscribe for a while. There are some very opinionated people on that list, but also some very respected people that know email, spam, filtering, blocking, and enforcement inside and out.

In summary, anything that is cost-shifting in nature is not good when applied to the entire net. If it is used for good or bad, it is still cost shifting.

Hopefully, one day, agreeing to receive spam will pay my monthly connection costs. :-) I can dream can't I?

*laugh* Yes, that would be nice. At $0.02 per message, that would be about 1000 messages / month (or 30 / day). I might be able to live with that. Much more than that, and it would become painful :).

--MidLifeXis

In reply to Re^4: email address hiding by MidLifeXis
in thread email address hiding by sh1tn

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