Redirecting spam mails and autoresponders

NeilDurrant · 17-04-04

After another weekend of spending my time shifting through a shedload of spam I've decided it's about time I did something about it.

I've just thrown one email address away and am no longer bothering to collect its mail.

I have another one which is 99% spam but has the odd good email. As a safeguard I'm wondering if I ought to place an autoresponder on the account 'just in case' someone thinks I'm ignoring them.

1/ Whats the chances of spammers harvesting back received mail and adding in alternate email addresses provided in those emails to their lists. (I know most spammers won't even have a genuine return path - but I don't want to fire back a good email address to them if theres a chance I start the vicious circle again)?

2/ Looking at my server set-up, I can allocate the spammed account mail to it's own pop box and the forward on to an alternate email but I cant see that my shared host on this account provides an autpresponder service. Is there a service I can use to forward this mail to that will simply fire back an autoresponder.

Any thoughts or tips?

Cheers

- Neil

Rich · 17-04-04

I don't know about 2, but for 1 you could include another contact method in the autoresponse that the user needs to go thru to get your email. Either give your phone number, if they are close contacts, or send them to a contact details web page where they can get your new address from. (and give them the option to download a vCard of your details so the extra step doesn't seem as much of a pain)

I'd be surprised if a spammer had a system that would read an incoming email, extract web pages links from it, then extract emails from that page - but it would be possible.