Box trapper and SORBS Spamtrap address

[fmalekpour]

Hello friends,
2 month ago (25-NOV-2005) an idiot forged one of the SORBS spam trap addresses and sent an email to one of my clients who uses Box Trapper, Response message sent back to that address and this caused our IP address to be listed in their blocking system!

After lots of emails back and forth with one of their agents (?!) they are forcing us to disable box trapper.

Here is what he exactly said:

"Please let us know when you have stopped sending such abusive messages to 
the email addresses forged by spammers. SORBS considers such 
challenge/response messages to be spam. They are sent in reply to all email 
received, making them bulk, and they are certainly unsolicited by the 
recipients who had their address forged by spammers. Bulk+Unsolicited email 
= spam."

Then I tried to explain that our challenge/response system will keep the records of outgoing emails and will block any one who tries to abuse or bombard it, he finally said:

"There is no point in delisting your IP as it will just become listed the 
next time a spam is received that again forges a SORBS spamtrap as the 
sender. When you choose to stop sending spam to the email addresses forged 
in spam please feel free to open a new ticket. I am closing this ticket for 
now."

So basically any spammer can list all of the servers having a site who
- send challenge/response verification messages
- auto-responders for vacation or acknowledge of receiving email
- support ticket system
- Account activation notices
- Email verification for online registration
- Mailing list subscriptions and opt-ins.
- Invitation systems
- etc

Any idea? Any one else having such problem before? Should we stop using box trapper or there is a solution?

And yes, our IP address is still listed.

F.Malekpour
Dayana Networks

[chirpy]

That's a perfect explaination why challend/response systems are such a bad idea. They will get your server listed in RBL's and they only add to the spam problem by generating even more email. Filtering is a much better and safe solution.