Thread: Autorespond to Spam

Can I autorespond to spam? If the spammers got all of the junk they send out thrown back to them, I'm sure that they would soon stop.

SORRY, BUT THAT'S not a good idea, Any reply you send to a spammer is unlikely to reach the spammer, Few spammers send their messages out with an accurate 'From:' address in place, Instead, most purveyors of digital waste send their garbage out through botnets huge networks of malware-infected computers, The owners of the misused computers don't know that their systems are infected, and criminals can take control of them at will. (The PCs within a botnet are sometimes called zombies, but a more accurate name might be Manchurian candidates.)

What's more, the outgoing addresses are usually forged, or spoofed, to hide the identity of the zombie PC, (Why? Because if you found out that your PC was spamming people, you'd probably do something to stop it.) Likely as not, responding to spam would result in nothing more than a lot of bounced e-mail, along with some angry replies from innocent victims of your justified outrage. Your best bet is simply to mark any junk message you receive as spam in your e-mail client and then not trouble with it further, -Lincoln Spector