Re: RFC-822 gurus - Do spammers know when we delete their mail

Think of it this way.  Even with a 0.1% 'hit' rate, 4 million spam
messages will generate 4 thousand hits.  Considering the cost to send
those 4M spams is next to nothing, 4K return hits is worthwhile.

That said, I think I've read before that the actual hit rate is
somewhere between 0.5% and 1%.  And there's nothing to say that the
average target list is only 4M long.  1% of a 10M message spam nets out
to 100K hits.

Volume is key.

I have about 4 actual email addresses on my personal, unadvertised
domain.  I get 200-400 spams a day to all kinds of non-existent
addresses.

John A. Jones, CISSP
Americas Information Security Officer
Jones Lang LaSalle, Inc.
V: +1-630-455-2787 F: +1-312-601-1782
john.jones@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Booth Martin
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 8:40 AM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] RFC-822 gurus - Do spammers know when we delete
their mail

I've always wondered....  How many stupid people are there?  I mean, the
numbers have got to be really skewed.  Any idea what the return rates
are?


David Gibbs wrote:

Mark Villa wrote:

Question: is their a spec. that you can include in an email envelope
or server that "notifies sender when recipient deletes" that bypasses
mailers attempt to block notify requests from mail,or outlook bugs,
and how do I trap that on outbound without resorting to zonealarm or
tool, or is this something a security guru would do for his
organization?.

The question really is ... do spammers care?  Answer: No.

Since spammers send out so many millions of messages with spoofed from
addresses, the notification email would never end up being sent back

to

them in the first place.  They don't care if you don't read their

email

... there are plenty of stupid people that will fall for it.

david