Re: [Exim] Warning: spammers abusing vacation autoresponders

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Author: Vadim Vygonets
Date:  
To: Exim Users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Warning: spammers abusing vacation autoresponders
Quoth Phil Pennock on Mon, Feb 11, 2002:
> I'm seeing more and more spam come in, where the spammer used a fake
> sender and abused a vacation-style auto-responder.


Do you see anything indicating it's a vacation message (like
subject or body pointing out that fact)?

> Mostly, I doubt that
> Exim has been involved in this.
>
> Since the spammer doesn't care about how many mails they send,
> restrictions such as "once" don't help. Setting text or file does ...
> unless it's expanded and includes something like $message_body.


What's the point? /usr/ucb/vacation and the Exim filter vacation
command (by default) don't send $message_body back. If the
spammer's point were to deliver as much mail as possible to you,
it would be reasonable, but they usually try to deliver the
content, so it's kind of pointless.

> Mr Hazel Sir, could you please add a throttling feature? No more than N
> mails per day from a responder? 100 default, option to change?


I don't think it would be trivial... And why do it?

> Or is there a better way of preventing issues with $message_body being
> returned?


Bounce messages usually have $message_body in them.

> Can you see a vampire through a one-way mirror?


Interesting question.

Vadik.

--
We who stride like giants across the world and allow all the
systems to speak, each unto the other.
        -- Chad Robinson, BOFH