outis: Fight AI spam by generating and sending a fake "user unknown" bounce emails
3 points by daniele
3 points by daniele
Outis fights spam generating and sends a fake "user unknown" bounce for an email you received, so the sender believes your address does not exist. This isn't a new idea: I created a similar program back in 1998–1999, but I decided to revive it because it should work well with the recent trend of automated emails generated by AI, where the sender might expect a reply; it helps remove your email address from their list.
Any idea on how to improve it? :)
Is there any evidence that those things learn from bounces?
Is there evidence that spammers remove addresses based on bounces? I always use unique addresses when I sign up to something and many of the addresses I have disabled over time due to spam continue to receive spam attempts years later.
I don't have strong evidence, but I'm testing it for few weeks and the spam noise seems reduced; I don't receive similar or followup emails any more. I hope that if I use it strictly, over time my email can be removed by many lists. I also started to use unique alias for signups, the problem are the "business card" emails.
Traditional spammers, no, I don't think they do. Modern AI driven nonsense may be different though. Particularly spammy agents let loose on e.g. GitHub, perhaps?