Date: Tue, 17 May 2005 00:22:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Problems with Capclave email address
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

Elspeth Kovar <ekovar at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> I've been getting messages addressed to capclave6 at wsfa.org, all of
> which are of the 'mail undeliverable' sort.  I believe that this
> means that someone is using the address to send spam, yes?

Yes, someone is forging the address in their spams.  (Nobody is
actually sending spam *from* wsfa.org.)

If you like, you can forward me some of the messages, with complete
headers, and I can trace where they are actually coming from.  But
there's little point, since chances are 99% that it will be some
infested Windows box somewhere on the planet, and there's nothing
anyone can do about them.  Microsoft isn't responsible -- they have
lawyers who earn more every day than you and I put together will earn
in a lifetime to tell us so.  And the box owner isn't responsible,
because it would take a real expert to safely place a Windows machine
on the net, but they're marketed to anyone and everyone.

> If so, I think that we should cancel the address.

That won't gain us anything.  The same happens to any email address
that can be found on any website.  You might as well try to protect
your garden from vermin by relocating it to the other side of the
house.  As long as Microsoft is ubiquitous, the vast majority of email
will consist of spam, forgery, bogus bounce messages, worms, viruses,
and similar garbage.  Filtering can help, but the only sure way to
avoid it is to stop using email.

Can you set up a filter that rejects all "undeliverable" messages?  If
you aren't using capclave6 at wsfa.org as a return address on your email,
there should never be any legitimate bounce messages coming to it.