[Scspamcop] Re: setting up a spamtrap

[Chris Wright]

Sofa King Tyred of Lar Ting wrote:

> 
> Now, if the spammers had ways of getting spamtrap address *subscribed*
> to mailing lists, I could "buy" the discredit problem. AFAIK, that's not
> possible with a serious list.
> 

They don't have to subscribe to a mailing list, all they need to do is
identify that you have a 'honeypot' sat on www.example.com/ with the
address of honeypot at example.com

They then "attempt" to sign up honeypot at example.com to 'a list'
Of course, being a good list, it will send out a confirmation email
requesting that you confirm your membership request.

Except, it's written in Chinese...
And you are not going to hand verify every email that is sent to your
'honeypot' / spamtrap.

And if you did, you'll see some weird Chinese email that you don't have
a clue what it's about. You'll assume it's spam, and report it.
But it was a bonafide request from a properly run list server to verify
that 'someone' at IP a.b.c.d requested to join list at
www.another-example.com.

So you'll report it as spam, the list owner complains that it was a
valid list membership request, and your honeypot/spamtrap is discredited
(when the said spammer signs your spamtrap up to multiple valid and well
run lists).