On 5/24/16 10:17 AM, Vick Khera wrote:
As an ESP, we host mailing list signup forms for many customers. Of
late, it appears they have been getting pounded on with fraudulent
signups for real addresses. Sometimes the people confirm by clicking the
confirmation link in the message and we are left scratching our heads as
to why they would do that. Mostly they get ignored and sometimes they
come back as spam complaints.
One opinion I got regarding this was that people were using bots to sign
up to newsletter lists other bot-driven email addresses at gmail, yahoo,
etc., to make those mailboxes look more real before they became
"weaponized" for use in sending junk. That does not seem to be entirely
what is happening here...
The appearance of the confirmation email makes a big difference. If it
looks like an advertisement with lots of graphics, hidden tracking bugs,
etc. it's likely to be viewed as abuse and used by bad guys to harass
innocents.
I'm very pleasantly (and rarely) surprised with list confirmations that
look like this:
* A single small logo for branding or no graphics at all
* No advertising
* A statement like "On [date] at [time] [timezone] you or someone
claiming to be you requested to subscribe to [list] from IP address
[IP]. To confirm your request, click [link]. If you didn't make this
request, do nothing and you will not hear from us again. To report
abuse, [do whatever].
Of course that's assuming that the ESP bothers to confirm subscriptions
at all.
One extremely annoying new trend is websites that grey out after a few
seconds and present a popup demanding an email address. This irritation
is likely to result in the masses supplying an email address, any email
address, just to stop the annoyance. I've resisted the temptation to
complete them all with "abuse@<domain of website>". So far, I'm using
"nob...@example.com".
--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - j...@impulse.net
Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
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