Posted by spoc on June 20, 2004, at 11:56:46
In reply to Re: Answering my own question, posted by Dinah on June 20, 2004, at 8:19:07
I don't know if intercepted spam is returned to sender, or just torched by the ISP's or software program's spam filtering system. But just in case, I wanted to say that my own ISP's auto filter grabs many wrong things. Sometimes it is just plain inexplicably wrong, and other times it was based on a word having been used that I had custom-entered myself as a spam flag (e.g., drug names I entered due to online pharmacy spam).
Have you ever had this happen: you see an email in your box stating that it is being returned to you as "undeliverable," but you look at the addressee and see that you never ever sent that thing at all. This is spammers including our own email addresses in their *sender* info (GRRR!). And when a piece of their spam gets turned away, ostensibly due to a bad address but who knows, maybe also due to a spam filter, *we* get a copy of the failure notice.
That is what makes me think it's at least possible that "spam" (correctly or incorrectly defined) is bounced back to the sender.
My ISP has a configuration option so that everything intercepted as spam can be saved in a folder temporarily, so that you can at least glance at it if you remember before it drops off. I indeed see a good number of personal emails in there, often for no identifiable reason, and retrieve them.
Maybe someone will know the answer as to whether "spam" bounces back to the sender or not; or we could do an experiment if you like. I could turn off my spam-detaining folder, and we could see what happens to an email if you send one purposely containing some of my designated spam words. I don't know if all programs process intercepted spam in the same way, but let me know if you want to try that.
poster:spoc
thread:358117
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040619/msgs/358312.html