[PLUG] email joe-job.

[Alan]

> On Mon, 19 May 2008, Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
>
>> Looks like I've had a joe-job done to my main email address.
>> Forged envelopes with my address as the Return-Path.  A couple of
>> thousand bounce messages since around 10:30 this morning and still
>> coming in. [....]
>
> Bummer.
>
> I can't believe that there are still that many mail servers that are
> queueing mail without running spam/virus filters during the SMTP
> transaction -- in which case the sending MTA is responsible for the
> bounce. When the sender is a spambot, which is likely in this case,
> the failure notice is ignored, because the $$$ are made by sending
> spam, not forged bounces.
>
> Spam's been a major problem for years now. Why are recipient MTAs
> still accepting responsibility for bouncing spam?

I can think of a number of reasons.  Most people who run mail servers do
not have any clue how to configure them correctly.  Or they picked
software that does not filter well.  Or they use packages that do stupid
things like generate bounce messages on viruses and other bogus content.

There are over 1,000 solutions to spam.  Most of them are bad.