Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Bouncing junk mail and saving drafts in Mail for OS 10.7

I can't find these options in Mail 5.3.

Generally speaking, you never want to bounce junk mail. It does not tell the spammers that your email address is no good. The "from:" address in spam is always forged. Sometimes, spammers will forge valid "from" addresses, knowing that some people will bounce the junk mail--it's a way to get their spam to more people. At best, it does nothing. At worst, it helps spread the spam because it gets it to people who would otherwise have filtered it.

Drafts seem to be saved automatically these days if you start composing a message and then close it, or if a message won't go for some reason. I don't deliberately save drafts, yet messages that are in progress always still seem to be where I expect them to be.

The bouncing seemed to have worked in the past to get me off lists because eventually my mail would be clean. I do see some spam or phishing in the system log as being received but if I don't look there I never see those emails so I don't know what particular mechanism is at work there.

I signed into one furniture website about six months ago prior to which my email had almost zero junk. I have Ghostery running so I suppose the site could not establish any kind of profile of me, much of the junk mails I am getting since then are from small businesses or attorney offices that are in other states. The headers look legit but since these are rinky dink sites, I am hesitant to click on the unsubscribe. They are usually from the same set of businesses, over and over. Annoying. Filtering them gets them in the junk mail, still, every now and then ClamX pulls one up as a problem.

I started getting solicitation on my cell phone and can just block the number and I never know it happened. What mechanism is making the system reject many emails so I never see them and can I add these to that?

I am running Little Snitch and when I click on the emails I do get a permissions option. I assume these are receipts to the sender? I always deny them but it doesn't stop it.

Unsubscribe link:

http://unsubs.unsubjn67.com/unsub/unsub....1e1a416d3f122e1

Doesn't look legit. This is a junk I keep getting that is nothing more than links to where to get an SUV.

This is the return address

tb35rqu@1gr4lk9.fishybackdamastes.com

I just clicked on an unsubscribe link in an e-mail from a legitimate entity, and the page to which I was taken looked very much like your linked page...even had a similar "Your privacy is taken seriously" e-mail address at the bottom.

Edit: Not to say, though, that yours isn't spoofed.

What is 'bouncing'? My process is to create a Mail Rule that blocks future mailings from the sender. I assume that is not bouncing.

"Bouncing" is where the e-mail is returned to sender, as if it were undeliverable. The hope is that the spammer would think the e-mail address is no good and stop sending to it.

But as Tacit pointed out above, more often than not, the spam sending address is not legitimate, so sending it back would also result in undeliverable mail.

If the mailing is legitimate, most mailing software WILL flag you for removal. If it's actual unsolicited spam, then it's usually a waste of your time.

Clicking "unsubscribe" links is much the same way. They often work if they're honestly being implemented. Otherwise they either don't work, or actually end up getting you MORE spam because you've just confirmed yourself as a real person that reads their spam. I modified one of those links one time to test it, I put in an address I created as a test, to unsubscribe from. It confirmed I had been "removed from the list" even though that address never was in the list to begin with. then that alias started receiving lots of spam..

I am trying a different approach. I did change my junk mail filter to automatically delete those that come from one domain or similarly named ones that the mail is merely link farms, that is, find an (attorney, SUV, etc. ) in your area. Instead, I installed LS and deny access to all ports for that the sender so they do not get a 'receipt' that it was delivered.

Maybe you've referenced a new feature in LS 3.x, but what you've done doesn't sound like anything I can do with LS 2.5.4.

Under any circumstances, though, doesn't your sender (Edit: in effect) get a "receipt" when the spam is delivered to your mail server...before it ever hits your Mac?

Dunno if a receipt is sent automatically, but when I open them, I do get requests to open ports. I deny all those requests. We'll see..

The unsubscribe link, which I see when I hover over it is not for safe unsubscribe. The sender is getting more aggressive. I have had another thought, though, up my SMTP filter on with the provider.

> ...when I open them, I do get requests to open ports.

Those requests may be to d/l content...probably a good idea to deny them under any circumstances. (I've never heard of "receipts" for mail; I've always assumed that the equivalent thereof is the sender's failure to get either a "bounced" or "undeliverable" notice.)

It seems like when I receive something generated by Constant Contact there is a feedback loop. I'm going on that supposition. If these emails (and they are getting worse) are, as you suggest, placing cookies or something similar somewhere, where might I find those?

If it is supported by the servers and email clients it is possible for a sender to get a receipt when an email is opened. Apple Mail does not have a preference setting for this, but it can be turned on through Terminal. (You can find a YouTube How To here). Otherwise there is no receipt generated by the POP/IMAP server or Mail on your computer. The POP/IMAP server for the receiving domain may generate a reply if the specified email address is not found on the server. (Clarification:Technically there is handshaking and/or receipts exchanged at lower levels in the OSI 7 Layer Communications Model but not at the Applications layer where email resides and although the TCP/IP protocols used by the internet conflate some of the OSI layers the OSI functionalities are still provided for.]

In any case malicious spam most often is sent from one way accounts that have no associated POP or IMAP server so bounced messages or even messages to the effect the address is not found on this server go into the bit bucket. In a substantial number of cases the sender is a bot that has created its own SMTP server on an innocent person's Windows PC without their complicity or knowledge. (Too often their first warning is when their PC exhibits a growing lethargy because of the CPU cycles and internet bandwidth being used by the bot.) The principal contribution made by bounced emails is taking up computer and internet resources with email traffic going nowhere.

I wasn't suggesting anything that insidious, merely content, such as remotely hosted images in HTML messages, requests to d/l which may be triggering LS.

So, as I thought, whatever rules slolerner has set in LS in all likelihood have nothing to do with preventing e-mail receipts from going back to the spammers.

Thanks for the link to the receipts setup; I've got no need for it, but it's worth bookmarking.

For now at least, the unwanted emails ended. I was getting them all day. As Maxwell Smart would say, "One of possibilities: First, the bot got shut down (there is Virtual's 'coincidence' theorem of strange events) or, Second, LS blocked something and that turned off the floodgate. They are not even in the Junk Mail folder.

If LS did stop the persistent junk mailer, it was one or a combination of these:

nonexhautibledisceptation.com
b6f55a85cee85832123...928.r39.cf1.rackcdn.com
unmaddenedterminatory.com
pesticidebrutally.com
euchologynondiscursive.com
missionarygastronomic.com
matchbookraffia.com

LS version 3.3.4

Maybe your ISP/mail host stopped the junk? (I ask because Verizon is always right on top of stuff like that, and I wonder about other ISPs.)

Mine uses software that identifies what it thinks may be spam and inserts a caution in the email "Subject" line. However, it's not particularly discriminating.

The ISP is also a phone provider and their spam software has occasionally identified their own promotional emails as spam. What a hoot.

My ISP only warns me there is a possible infected file on the server. I have it on a moderate spam filter because the higher setting sounds like it will stop messages I may want.

I think LS did work for this particular sender of piles of spams, maybe because each had a single image with a bunch of links and I blocked the image download Could be that other users of this ISP complained, but unlikely as I starting getting these emails when I signed up for a particular thing.

Ryck, that's really funny.

They know SPAM when they see it!

Verizon has been great about spam!

I move it into my spam mailbox, and within not too many days I stop getting it.