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Ask Slashdot: Spoof an Email Bounce With Windows?
An anonymous reader writes "One cool feature I used on KMail years ago was the ability to generate a spoofed email bounce for any given message I had received, which claimed delivery failed because of an unknown recipient. While this doesn't exactly align with expected behaviour from a mail client, it was a useful way of easily getting off mailing lists (automated, or manually created by freaky acquaintances!). This is something I really miss, so I'm wondering if there are any mail clients for Windows that provide similar functionality?"
I'm not a fan of MS Outlook, but it's integrated VBA makes writing a custom plugin easy and painless. Visual Basic in any flavor had a bad stigma, however, having a development environment right in the application is exactly what I would think would solve your problem effectively.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Doesn't KDE run on Windows these days? You could probably just run KMail directly...
#!/bin/csh cat $0
Not even a 550 SMTP session will get you off most mailing lists because, even if it is a legitimate list, the marketers are too aggressive to care. Also, a NDR after a successful session will likely go to either an unmonitored mailbox, a hapless user who won't understand it, or null. Weed through some email logs and you'll see. I see some lists that have been emailing the same address for ten years and I always disconnect with a 550. That said, try Pegasus Mail. I find that it does almost anything.
Eudora had this feature in the past, so you might want to look at it and see if it still does.
http://eudora.com/
It's apparently open source now, so if you could add this feature if it doesn't exist.
While the spammy advertisement would normally warrant no attention, it does raise a point that is worth noting:
Because the from address is invariably forged, you do nothing with a bounce. In fact, it's worse than nothing, because you create backscatter. I have suffered from backscatter and it is a pain - it just multiplies the spam problem. So, could I request that you just stop it!
alpine is also truly free software now.
FYI, alpine was pine. UW forked it, added a better build system, put it under a new license, released it as alpine, then discontinued development. The community has taken that and created the re-alpine project on sourceforge, where you can find the latest version. re-alpine
Development continues, but isn't exactly what I'd call "active". But it's an ancient email client, and there's really not all that much that could be added. I still find it indispensable and use it constantly and I'm quite happy with it.
You never said you needed a windows-like UI, so this qualifies for the request, but YMMV.
At least since KDE 4, and from what I recall, maybe 3.4 or even 3.3, this feature was dropped.
Your time to bitch about it? That would be thataway.
I own a domain of (for example) example.org that I have wildcarded to my INBOX. I get A LOT of all sorts of interesting misdirected emails meant for exampleinc.org and example.org.au including invoices, meeting confirmation messages, and frantic "why aren't you answering my email messages"
In Mail.APP on the Mac I used to do a bounce and they'd see that they screwed up and stop. If I send a personal email explaining often people go ape shit and get paranoid wondering why I am reading their email. (Unfortunately Apple removed that functionality as well)
So sometimes a more impersonal response IS better.
ps, yeah, I know, I could fiddle with my MTA and have it refuse the repeat offenders.... and I do now. Not as convenient though.
I just fucking Googled it. Last result on the first page nails it.
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