[LINK] Backscatter [was: My communications setup, email, Web...]

[Robin Whittle]

I ensured my SpamAssassin was trained on spam, not on backscatter.

I recall SpamAssasin has an option to filter it, but I didn't turn it
on.  If I was going to do that, I would probably do it separately,
and put the resulting messages in their own backscatter trap.

It is vital to get genuine responses from mailservers when I send to
an invalid address.  I am not sure how an automated system could
distinguish between those and backscatter, since in both cases it is
a report of an email with my address as the sender not being delivered.

I have had backscatter storms on and off for the last 6 months or
more.  Sometimes I get a few hundred in a few hours - but that is
extreme.    Weeks can go by with little or no problem, and then there
will be a flurry for a few hours, thinning out but still there a day
or so later.

BTW, have you noticed how so many female spam sender names in recent
days have "Julia" as the first name?  Maybe the master spammer has a
grudge against someone.   I recently got a spam which Thunderbird
very helpfully rendered in full Arabic script - and it wanted a
confirmation.  There's no limit to the crap, and I have long given up
on the idea that an automatic filter could stop every one of them
without getting any false positives.

I just searched 5000 messages in Spam-marginal.  I search for my
first name and for certain terms common to my business.

A score of 3.0 to 5.0 puts the message in Spam-marginal. Above 5 puts
it in the general Spam mailbox which I never check.  There were 5000
Spam-marginals since mid October.  I found one genuine message which
scored 4.5 - very close to being lost forever in mailbox Spam.  It
was from someone I didn't know (a genuine person, not a bot)
helpfully pointing out a bad link on my site.

 - Robin