Cap on forwarded messages per day

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qst
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Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by qst » 28 Sep 2007, 18:43

I would like to use trashmail as a challenge/response system, setting it up with 10000 forwards and 6 months.

However, a spammer might send a load of messages to my trashmail address using, as his 'from' addresses, a list of his spam targets.

Trashmail would then send a challenge to each person, and the challenge would of course be the spam message.

To prevent this, I would like to keep the 10000 total messages forwarded, but limit them to a few each day.

Admin
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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by Admin » 28 Sep 2007, 20:36

qst wrote:I would like to use trashmail as a challenge/response system, setting it up with 10000 forwards and 6 months.

However, a spammer might send a load of messages to my trashmail address using, as his 'from' addresses, a list of his spam targets.

Trashmail would then send a challenge to each person, and the challenge would of course be the spam message.
The spam text would then not appear at top but at the bottom of the message. In theory you are right, this is a big problem with challenge-response system.
qst wrote: To prevent this, I would like to keep the 10000 total messages forwarded, but limit them to a few each day.
This is a good idea, I would like to implement this. But what do you do when this limit of a few emails per day is reached?
Should then TrashMail respond to the email? If yes, then the spammer would be again be able to spam other people by changing his FROM address? So what to do ?
Best regards,
Stephan Ferraro
Founder of TrashMail.com
CEO of Aionda GmbH

qst
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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by qst » 28 Sep 2007, 21:35

I could live with missing a few legitimate emails, so if all messages were deleted after the limit, that would be fine for me, but I don't know about others.

If spammers knew that a trashmail address would not be one they could use as a zombie, because there was a cap, I imagine they would not bother trying, but that is a guess.

Maybe if messages continued to come in after the limit was reached, one email could later be sent to the trashmail user, saying that x messages came in over the limit and were deleted. That would at least let him know that something was wrong - either that he was spammed or that the limit that he set was too low.

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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by Admin » 29 Sep 2007, 09:54

qst wrote:I could live with missing a few legitimate emails, so if all messages were deleted after the limit, that would be fine for me, but I don't know about others.

If spammers knew that a trashmail address would not be one they could use as a zombie, because there was a cap, I imagine they would not bother trying, but that is a guess.

Maybe if messages continued to come in after the limit was reached, one email could later be sent to the trashmail user, saying that x messages came in over the limit and were deleted. That would at least let him know that something was wrong - either that he was spammed or that the limit that he set was too low.
Ok I will see when I can implement this.
There is a lot of TODO to DO. :D
Best regards,
Stephan Ferraro
Founder of TrashMail.com
CEO of Aionda GmbH

Z
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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by Z » 30 Sep 2007, 11:58

qst wrote:I could live with missing a few legitimate emails, so if all messages were deleted after the limit, that would be fine for me, but I don't know about others.
I personally think that it would be very bad thing. I think if limit is reached, challenges should go out WITHOUT the original text. So it prevents usefulness of CR spam.

Primary reason why I first asked for CR to be implemented, is that... I can have an email address which can be publicly visible. And if someone has something important to tell me, they can do it. But all generic email crap is cut of, because users won't bother to confirm email. If then legimate messages start to disappear, then whole point is lost. Then generic spam filtering will do just the same. Some important messages will be lost. My goal was to archive zero loss on important messages, but very high loss of junk mail. Even junk which is sent by real persons, but they aren't really interested about it if I receive that email or not.

jerel2u
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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by jerel2u » 16 Nov 2007, 22:49

There is no reason to include the original text of the email in the request for response. Other systems I've used that do this merely send back a generic message saying that in order for delivery of the message to complete the sender must respond to the request for response, and that this is being done to help reduce and/or eliminate SPAM. Your service should NEVER cause legitimate emails to be lost. That's much too high a price to pay!

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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by Admin » 19 Nov 2007, 17:05

jerel2u wrote:There is no reason to include the original text of the email in the request for response. Other systems I've used that do this merely send back a generic message saying that in order for delivery of the message to complete the sender must respond to the request for response, and that this is being done to help reduce and/or eliminate SPAM. Your service should NEVER cause legitimate emails to be lost. That's much too high a price to pay!
I know, emails should never be lost.
The problem is, what do you do in case of automatic send emails and a bug in the software?
Then the SMTP server responds to the sender which is a robot and don't understand the error. Then the email is "lost", but the sender has been notified.
The second case is that there is a real serious software bug that nobody will be noticed and the email will get lost. This is less probable, but if this happen, the email is lost. The idea is to save every email for 7 days, but I have not adapted this to protect the data privacy of all TrashMail user by paying the price to maybe loss emails some times.
But a good idea would be to make an option who everybody could choose if emails should be saved or not for 7 days.
Best regards,
Stephan Ferraro
Founder of TrashMail.com
CEO of Aionda GmbH

Z
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Email gets losts...

Post by Z » 19 Nov 2007, 17:18

There can always be errors that lead to loss of email. Even with normal email services, that's nothing new... Unfortunately. That's life.

Safe-mail, gmail, hotmail all mail service have lost email. And that's nothing new.

http://www.spamgourmet.com is losing email all the time. When there is more email coming in that system can handle there is nothing that you can do.

First email gets delayed, and when it gets delayed long enough, it gets lost. That's it. End of story.

Guess why I started looking for different "spam protection" email service in first place? I got sick'n'tired of Spamgourmet, which lost a lot of email. Because I didn't save all old emails I didn't even have information how to contact my contacts when spamgourmet went down. That really sucked a big time. Then service called safe-mail.net lost about one week emails that they had already received due DDOS attack as they say. I think truth was that they were hacked and they had to restore old backups.

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Re: Email gets losts...

Post by Admin » 21 Nov 2007, 19:51

Z wrote:There can always be errors that lead to loss of email. Even with normal email services, that's nothing new... Unfortunately. That's life.

Safe-mail, gmail, hotmail all mail service have lost email. And that's nothing new.

http://www.spamgourmet.com is losing email all the time. When there is more email coming in that system can handle there is nothing that you can do.

First email gets delayed, and when it gets delayed long enough, it gets lost. That's it. End of story.

Guess why I started looking for different "spam protection" email service in first place? I got sick'n'tired of Spamgourmet, which lost a lot of email. Because I didn't save all old emails I didn't even have information how to contact my contacts when spamgourmet went down. That really sucked a big time. Then service called safe-mail.net lost about one week emails that they had already received due DDOS attack as they say. I think truth was that they were hacked and they had to restore old backups.
There are currently no serious DDOS attacks which could make problems to TrashMail. I will soon implement the realtime stats that everybody could watch the server mail traffic.
Best regards,
Stephan Ferraro
Founder of TrashMail.com
CEO of Aionda GmbH

spambycounterspam

Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by spambycounterspam » 27 Dec 2009, 02:16

As a human, I've gotten generic autogenerated challenge-response e-mails and had no clue from whence it came. Say I send to an anonymous Craig's List ad and get a reply from [email protected] but never heard of trashmail.net, well guess what, it's getting marked as spam.

Other times I've sent e-mails and forgot to whom I sent so I have to search if the e-mail address is referenced in the challenge-response but many systems do not. The RE:subject included in the challenge-response might be nice.

The other side of the coin is that autogenerated challenge-response messages that include the referenced e-mail, say in the "reply to" field, verify to a bot that the address is valid and that someone or something has responded... Just like feeding the trolls on forums, it breeds more unwanted traffic.

There are no easy answers but methinks the admin is doing a first rate job. :-)

Admin
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Re: Cap on forwarded messages per day

Post by Admin » 30 Dec 2009, 12:07

spambycounterspam wrote:As a human, I've gotten generic autogenerated challenge-response e-mails and had no clue from whence it came. Say I send to an anonymous Craig's List ad and get a reply from [email protected] but never heard of trashmail.net, well guess what, it's getting marked as spam.

Other times I've sent e-mails and forgot to whom I sent so I have to search if the e-mail address is referenced in the challenge-response but many systems do not. The RE:subject included in the challenge-response might be nice.

The other side of the coin is that autogenerated challenge-response messages that include the referenced e-mail, say in the "reply to" field, verify to a bot that the address is valid and that someone or something has responded... Just like feeding the trolls on forums, it breeds more unwanted traffic.

There are no easy answers but methinks the admin is doing a first rate job. :-)
I would like to offer one day a SMTP service for everyone.
Sent emails should be added automatically in the whitelist. Or maybe without SMTP service I could add this feature as a Mozilla Thunderbird Add-On.
Best regards,
Stephan Ferraro
Founder of TrashMail.com
CEO of Aionda GmbH

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