Message Board

Newbie/Basic Questions

Spam Trapping

Author: M.Spenard (22 Dec 06 6:14pm)

Hi,
I use openbsd's spamd which does spam trapping, i.e. any stmp server that
emails trap@mydomain.com gets blacklisted and studdered at.
I've been contemplating the idea of seeding that address (trap@mydomain.com) to spam harvesters. The idea being that if I can
get my trap address(s) in as many spam email lists as possible, a spam bot
should hit my trap address before hitting a legit address,.. the spam bot
effectively shoots itself in the foot.

1) Is this just a plain stupid idea.
2) How would I get the listed harvesters on this site to log my trap address.

mikes at signull.com

Re: Spam Trapping

Author: M.Nordhoff (22 Dec 06 8:42pm)

1.) I don't think it's a "plain stupid idea", but there is one problem with banning anything that emails it: if a spammer puts it as the From address in a spam run, badly-configured mail servers will send bounces and idiotic challenge-response systems will send challenges to it. Blocking them would be a bad thing (well, not so much with the C/Rs ;) ).

2.) Start pasting it all over the web, using it on Usenet and putting it in spam "unsubscribe me" forms?

Edit: Hah, I just realized #1 is a problem with PHPot, too. :P

Post Edited (26 Dec 06 11:20am)