DSLReports Study: 8 Hours 'til the Spam Hits

Masem writes: "In a rather interesting study at DSLReports, it was observed that email addresses published on a web site recieved spam within 8 hours of being posted, showing how aggressive the harvesters are working. In particular, a special link was set up on the main page that by following the link, the site generated an email address that was trackable to the IP that called the link, and not published anywhere else at any time. In the specific case, in only 8 hours after the email address was created, it had recieved spam; since that time about 9 months ago, it's gotten around 100 pieces. Given the time and source of most of the emails, the authors believe that they've simply got someone at one end of a home broadband pipeline using open relay mail servers, and most likely being paid to redistribute spam on the email addresses they harvest."

Comments

Re:Hmm...

[no reason to be here]

the e-mail address is uce@ftc.gov

sneakemail

[doofsmack]

That's exactly why I use sneakemail. It gives you a random email address like asjglkjg176489@sneakemail.com. When an email is sent there, it goes to your inbox. You can have as many aliases as you want (They suggest 1 per site you sign up with). If you receive spam on one of them, you can just disable that alias. It's really great.

Re:Very interesting

[tandr]

http://www.sneakemail.com

I am VERY satisfied user.

Oh, and for some annoyances http://www.spamcop.net do the job really well.

Re:telemarketers

[TheFlu]

I have a similiar experience. I recently started participating in Spamcop.net's blacklisting effort...a few days after I started submitting SPAM to be blacklisted, for some reason, my daily SPAM intake has tripled. I'm not sure if it's just coincidence or what, but it doesn't please me. I hate to think of the reason why this has happened...

I'm seriously considering moving my mail servers over to using TMDA, which I hear stops about 99% of SPAM. At this point, I have to do something.

Re:Solution?

[reparteeist]

Although there is no federal law, some states have them forbidding unsolicited spam. For the details in your area, go here.

Matches my experience with Hotmail

[stph]

This report matches my own experience. While at a public library awhile back, I opened a hotmail account in order to mail a few URLs to my home account. I did nothing consciously to advertise this account other than the default hotmail settings. Out of curiosity, I checked this account the following day and had 20 SPAM advertisements. So much for privacy on the web. By the end of the week, I had received just under a hundred messages, all to an account I had never actively given out. Turns out it was those account defaults that bit me. Hotmail automatically publishes your account on their directory, to make it possible for other Hotmail members to find your address. Sigh....

Re:Matches my experience with Hotmail

[xX_sticky_Xx]

After having my Hotmail account for 2 or so years I have finally received my first piece of spam in it. This was quickly followed by another, leading me to guess that it's making the rounds now. In setting up accounts for other people in the past, I've noticed that by far the biggest spam magnets are addresses that have numbered extensions. A numbered extension means that the first part of the address is already in use, therefore it's a simple matter of just putting an x=x+1 function into the mailer once you have found a legitimate address.