[Hidden-tech] An Idea about Email

Chris Hoogendyk hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu
Tue Aug 26 10:25:22 EDT 2008



ussailis at shaysnet.com wrote:
> Here's an idea.
>
> Since I have become the owner of Shaysnet, I have had a chance to look at a
> lot of spam. What I have observed is many of my users get the same stuff.
> So, couldn't there be a program that says "if X users (let X be some
> reasonable number like 4) get the same mail, it is spam, therefore deal
> with it"
>
> Of course my "deal with it" would be to collect all the spam for one day
> and send it all back to the first spammer of that day. If enough ISPs did
> this...

Not good.

That's called back scatter.

Spammers forge the headers. The from and return-to addresses have 
probably been forged and are not going to be even the compromised 
machine that sent the spam, let alone the spammer. Those addresses may 
even be the target.

You probably get spam messages bounced back to you that you never sent. 
You may not understand why you are getting the undeliverable message. It 
is because of improperly programmed or mis-configured mail handlers that 
use the from or reply-to addresses to send back undeliverable messages. 
Some people are more likely to click on the links in such a case to try 
to figure out what's up. Spammers take advantage of this situation by 
identifying mail handlers that backscatter and sending mail to them with 
the return address being the target. It's a different angle on the 
targets that might work, and it hides the spammer behind one more level 
of indirection.


-- 
---------------

Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

--------------- 

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