[BBLISA] sender-specific addresses

[Tom Metro]

Theo Van Dinter wrote:
> ...I came to realize that source-addressing doesn't really do me any
> good. If it's spam, the spam filtering is good enough that I probably
> won't notice it.

I have to admit that, although one of the big claimed benefits to using
sender-specific addresses is that you can direct ones that have fallen
into the hands of spammers to /dev/null, in 10+ years of using such
addresses I've rarely done so.

One notable example is the address I used with Mozilla's bug tracker. A
few years ago they got harvested, and I've been getting plenty of spam
at that address, but Gmail's spam filters have been dutifully catching
them, so I've never bothered to create a rule to discard them.

Still, it is comforting to know that if they weren't being caught by the
filter, I could easily add a rule to definitively take care of it.


> Sure, if I start receiving messages I don't want I would be able to
> figure out where they got the address from ... but so what?

I guess I value that more and find it quite satisfying to know the
source of a leak, and use it to inform who I do business with.


> If it's for filtering, I can likely filter on other headers.

Of course, but you're always at the mercy of the sender altering their
headers. It's rare, but even mail lists will change their software from
time to time and break filtering rules. With vendors that often cycle
through different means of sending bulk mail (switching among different
internals apps and external service providers), filtering can be more
challenging.

Almost nothing fouls a filtering rule looking for a specific recipient
address on the Delivered-To header line (assuming your MTA/LDA adds such
a header, which derives from the SMTP envelope and is guaranteed to
always be present).


> So I don't create these sorts of addresses anymore...

Understandable. It's admittedly a geeky solution that isn't for
everybody, and if your filters are top notch, the contrast between using
the technique and not may be subtle.

I tend to favor solutions that need to depend on spam filtering as
little as possible.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/