On Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:17:42 -0700, Bob George wrote:
> Mail bombs are generally considered poor practice. How
> is this technique any different?
I don't think let the spammer receive his/her own spam
is the same as mail bombing. Unless if you refered to
that little unfortunate mishap where the spammer has
a spam filter installed. But actually this is a distant
possibility... According to my anti-spam script logs, so
far there's only *one* out of 1736 blacklisted spammers
who doing this. Luckily the mail loop was detected, and
the alias was set to "unknown" (equivalent to delete an
email account) fast enough before either end suffered any
damage. But guess you're right, thank god this automated,
if the same happened with a regular mail forwarding account
(i.e. myownemail.com, iname.net, etc.), most likely I already
accused doing a Denial of Service attack... =8O Well, face
it, spamming any John and Jane Doe is *not* illegal (yet),
but spamming a spammer (even indirectly) could be... <sigh>
> Nothing personal towards Eko or others!
No, nothing personal at all... <g> I just risking being
viewed as a "bad cop" or even perhaps a "loose cannon",
and you as a "spam advocate" ;-) Too bad no spam products
imported here, are they really that delicious?
> I just think there are some downsides to mailbombing and
> related retaliatory methods. Lest I sound too preachy, all
> I'm doing is echoing sources such as
> http://spam.abuse.net/spam/dontdo.html !
Again, *if* the spammer has no spam filter, then I don't
think let the spammer receive some (his/her own) spams could
be categorized as mail bombing. The traffic level is far
less than mail bombing. Basically it's just the same as the
risk of receiving some "unknown account" bounce errors when
you sending out spams to unverified addresses with your own
live address as sender. Guess that's why spammers tends to
send their junks with a fake return address, and even taking
the trouble installing spam filter? Ironic isn't it? A
spammer with a spam filter! ;-) Looks like sending out tons
of bulk emails is a lot more cheaper than receiving, even
for spammers...
> The spammers are scum, and hopefully their days are
> numbered. There are some great techniques for those
> inclined to pursue them.
Actually SpamCop, ORBs, and MAPS RBL are quite effective
(my script actually using their email interface); but
probably not for the last two. We have successfully
blacklisted many open relays, both at ORBs and MAPS RBL
(along with all other wannabee "spam hunters" of course),
but keep receiving spams from _the_same_ relays! Seems
being blacklisted has no effects at all. Guess their
sysadmins really ignorant, bribed by spammers, or perhaps
for some reason they never receive the notification from
either ORBs or MAPS? Besides, seems spammers easily find
a bunch of open relays for there use. If one gets plumbed,
they just hop to the other. Its really like a severely leaky
roof! Too many open relays out there... Perhaps John O was
right, spamfighting is more like a battle than a hunting
sport... ;-)
Thanks for your explanations about those "in between"
systems. Frankly, I'm not aware that there are so many
obsolete UUCP and non-QoS links out there that still in
use. Guess these are SurvPC-related materials anyway?
BTW, there's a section about anti spam mailing list in
alt.spam FAQ (see my previous post). But only the majordomo
list is still active. Feel free to join there for a whole
lot more of this topic ;-) Altough I still don't understand
why anti spam mailing lists tends to be short-lived... Out
of three listed, only one still OK, the rest are long gone.
--Eko
http://www.survpc.net/ - Older PC and DOS Internet
http://survpc.virtualave.net/ (noframe)
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