Re: [exim] Anti Phishing Trick

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, Michael Johnson wrote:

[...]
> This also applies to my previous working situation. I was a
> contractor to NIH. I had an email address at NIH, one with the
> company I worked for, and my home address.

Speaking as someone who has a well known address at the University
where I work, as well as forwarding addresses at several international
research institutes where I am - or more precisely our research group
which it's our job to support is - involved, I have to say that, as
far as spam is concerned, those forwarding addresses are a severe pain
in the nether regions.

On the one hand, they forward spam to us which our anti-spam measures
reject out of hand (causing them no doubt to send bounces to innocent
third parties whose addresses have been counterfeited as senders of
the spam). On the other hand, they accept spam from totally
disreputable sources with which we would not have passed the time of
day, let alone accepted mail from - and then pass on this "laundered"
spam to us, making it difficult for us to recognise it for what it is
(I put a fair bit of effort into additional measures to try to keep
this "laundered" spam at bay, but the measures are only partially
effective, and occasionally cause more false positives than I would
like).

I really do wish there was a nicer way to deal with forwarded spam,
but I'm simply not prepared to drop it silently into a black hole - as
several have proposed to me - because I want to maintain a reliable
email service, in which every item is either positively delivered or
positively rejected, in considering the occasional false positive hit.

best regards