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Any way to truly stop spammers from faking "return to" address?
Posted by mifbody, 09-25-2012, 08:03 AM My domain has become a favorite for spammers to forge the "return to" path. Unfortunately I use catch-all accounts on my domains - I generally will register to websites with the website's domain@mydomain.com so that way if I start receiving spam addressed to that e-mail address I know it was them that gave my e-mail address out. So if the answer is turning off catch-all, then I'm going to have to create a lot of aliases. I updated the SPF entry to hardfail instead of softfail, but alas I'm still getting slammed with bounced e-mails. I'm getting at least 100-200 bounced e-mails a day where the spammers are just putting jibberish@mydomain.com as the "From" address. Is there anything else I can do where my mail server would be able to automatically say "Nope that didn't come from me" and bounce it back to the e-mail server to encourage them to start using SPF?
Posted by MikeDVB, 09-25-2012, 01:41 PM No, not really. Email is a flawed system that was originally designed and intended for a 100% trusted network with 100% trusted senders and recipients. I don't imagine spam was even a consideration when SMTP was conceived. SPF and DKIM are just add-ons that help, but unfortunately they're not 'required' and, as such, are not universally used. Beyond that - I'd probably move away from catch-alls and take the time to set up a specific forwarder for each service you use (I do this, it's not that hard/time consuming when you do it as you need it). I would also look at turning off bounces to avoid backscatter.
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