Re: Spamming the spammers?

Adrian Tuddenham <poppy.uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Gareth John <g.john.hake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Adrian Tuddenham wrote:
> > > Having just had to abandon another couple of e-mail addresses because
> > > they were swamped with spam, I'm wondering if there is some way to
> > > reduce the chances of the spammers getting 'hits'.
> > >
> > > As a first try I have used a spread*** to generate batches of 1000
> > > random addresses at a time (always with some variant of "invalid" in
> > > the ISP). Then pasting these as 'mailto:' into HTML programs.
> > >
> > > Is this likely to have any effect if I use some of my spare website
> > > space to house a few dozen of these files? Can their programs
> > > distinguish between genuine and fake e-mail addresses, especially when
> > > the fakes occur in batches like this?
> >
> > If I understand it right, your method relies on having these duff
> > addresses picked up and used by spammers. If that happens, then it
> > will reduce the proportion of 'effectives' among their output.
>
> That was the idea.
>
> >
> > But that will only reduce the likelihood of anyone actually getting
> > spammed if there's an upper ceiling on the total volume of their
> > output. In other words, unless they're already constrained in the
> > number of output units they can send, it won't save anyone from being
> > spammed, if a real address is already present in their listing.
> >
> > So are spammers subject to that constraint (whether from their upload
> > limit, the capacity of their machinery, or the number of hours in the
> > day)? I'd suspect not.
>
> If a lot of websites did this, the spammers would eventually hit a limit
> of some kind. A ratio of (say) 10,000 fake addresses to one real one
> on each website would soon screw things up.


No they wouldn't - they would just have to hijack more PCs to send the
stuff out. It isn't going throught their accounts, and time will weed
out the duff ones.


> (I still can't understand why ISPs don't deal with the problem; it's
> not totally insuperable and it would be in their interest to reduce the
> amount of non-profitable incoming traffice, even if it meant loosing
> some profitable outgoing trade.)

Because they can get away by ignoring it.

> > If I'm right, then your attack on them will, sadly, only serve to
> > increase the total number of spams in circulation - with more of them
> > going to non-existent addresses.
>
> Might that not choke their own sending channels first?

Yes, but they don't own those so they aren't affected. We would be
increased mail server load.


> > I get roughly 2,000 items of spam in a bad week. I actually notice
> > around 5 of them, and that's because (after BT Yahoo has applied its
> > own and my 'bulk mail' filters) all incoming mail from domains ending
> > AOl.com, yahoo.com, msn.com, hotmail.com, .jp and .kr is filtered
> > (while still on the server) into folders that I simply inspect and
> > trash from time to time.
>
> My ISP marks spam items as {SPAM?}, but still sends them. Perhaps there
> is an option to change that preference, hidden somewhere on their
> website, ... but we are talking about UKonline's website here...

Sounds like spamassassin - there is probably a way of saying that things
with a score over X goes to the bin.


--
Woody

www.alienrat.com
.