Message Board

Newbie/Basic Questions

Third-level domains

Author: K.Yee (21 Nov 04 5:23pm)

The vast majority of people donating MX records are likely to donate subdomains (honeypot.mydomain.com), not entire second-level domains (mydomain.com). Couldn't a harvester get away just by skipping e-mail addresses with third-level domains? Collecting e-mail addresses with second-level domains would still yield a great many addresses they can use to spam people.

(I do believe this project is a good one. I just think these issues are worth discussing.)

Re: Third-level domains

Author: M.Prince (21 Nov 04 5:42pm)

We have a surprising number of "second-level" domains; there are also a surprising number of real email addresses that use "third-level" domains. If spammers begin skipping all domains with a third level as a result of the Project then we'll have effectively solved the spam problem: just have everyone start using legitimate email addresses with a three level domain! Obviously it won't be that easy, but what I think is so fun about this approach is that it starts to make spammers question the addresses on their own lists. That can only be good for legitimate users of email.