[Scspamcop] Re: setting up a spamtrap

Sofa King Tyred of Lar Ting nobody at devnull.spamcop.net
Tue Jan 1 14:38:45 EST 2008


Andrzej Filip wrote:
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> Sofa King Tyred of Lar Ting wrote:
>> Andrzej Filip wrote:
>>> Sofa King Tyred of Lar Ting wrote:
>>>> Technomage Hawke wrote:
>>>>> what is the proceedure for setting up a spamtrap 
>>>> Wikipedia explains it well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamtrap
>>>>
>>>> It doesn't really help to reduce spam. It just makes it easier for you
>>>> to report offenders, since all email coming to a spamtrap can only be
>>>> spam.
>>> Not exactly. Some spammers are capable to "trick" mailing list like
>>> software to send invitations/confirmations to spam-traps especially
>>> "for *public* record" spam-traps.
>> Perhaps. But then such a "trick" would only be a "misdirected bounce"
>> (or an automated reply to forged sender), which is therefore spam
>> according to SpamCop.
> 
> Would you dare to promote subscriptions *without* verification? :-)

Of course not. But I would promote analyzing subscription requests 
properly. :-)

In most (if not all) of the "backscatter" spams I get involving 
subscription verifications, the initial spam is sent directly from an IP 
that has no rDNS or is on a DNSBL. When you eliminate these cases, the 
occurrence of the scenario you describe is very rare.

Spammers use arbitrary addresses as the "From:" in their spams, and 
sometimes those arbitrary addresses are spamtraps. If a server bounces 
to a spamtrap, it's just as guilty. Backscatterer.org lists them for 
this very reason.

> P.S.
> I have seen a few lists sending "requests to confirm subscription" in a
> single "non English" language.

Sorry, but I don't understand the importance of this.


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