Slashdot Mirror
Where Do Dummy Email Addresses Go?
ajain writes "Maybe a year and a half back or so, I started using someone@somewhere.com as a dummy email id in online blogs, guestboks, forums, and sundry pages. But then I started wondering what if someone actually tried to email me on that email address. I was sure that it would bounce because I assumed that there wouldn't be an actual email address like that. In any case, just for fun, I decided to google on someone@somewhere.com. And lo behold, there are some 4090 results! I have written a small article at my blog and a reader says NoOne@NoWhere.com is another contender. Do you use some common dummy email IDs too, to get around the privacy problem online? Isn't there a potential for malicious misuse of someone's email ID in this way?"
Strangely enough, somewhere.com offers anti-spam services as well as other consulting things. Could it be that they have set up someone@somewhere.com as a black hole to track spammers? That sure would rock. There is always some misuse when you post your email address online. Don't do it. Simply code a form for contacting you via email and let PHP or whatever send it to you behind the scenes. This halts any kind of email harvesting, and results in the use of faked email addresses, or obvious ones, like admin@DOMAIN.com or whatever. If you have a catchall, you should disable it and let them all bounce. When enough email bounces, someone somewhere will figure out something to solve the problem of spam, or run of the mill spammers will just give up.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Once Upon A Time, a friend of mine had a domain that spelled a major ISPs name backwards (he registered it on purpose, and joked that he was the "anti-big vendor" and gave shell accounts to friends, friends of friends, etc.
Then, someone started posting to usenet a lot, who was a customer of Big Vendor , and he 'spam-proofed' his address by ever so cleverly spelling it backwards.
Suddenly dozens if not hundreds of undeliverable messages started landing on Mike's server for some clown over at ReallyBigISP.
So, like any good sysadmin, he corrected this oversight, adding a sendmail rule to deliver mail for jrluser@psigib.com to jrluser@bigisp.com.
The moral of the story: Do not create harm for some innocent third party with your spam evasion techniques. It may come back to haunt you.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Even better, don't use a fake email. I use me@privacy.net. If you send mail there, you get an auto-reply that says the submitter likes their privacy and you generally suck for being an email harvester. Go ahead, send me@privacy.net an email and see what I mean...
One I have used for years. I am sure Mr. Irvin Tsnot at Real Networks is wondering why he gets so much junk Email...
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
1 - you are falsifying your identity with intent to deceive.
2 - you are assuming the identity of someone else, again with intent.
3 - improperly using others resources, or causing harm to others resources..
Doubt anyone would ever be tried and convicted under the law, but in this day and age, when people are jailed just for speaking, and the government will monitor what books you read, anything is possible..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I've used root@127.0.0.1 here and there... This exists on all *nix machines, but is there a single address that means superuser at localhost on every platform?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
someone@somewhere.com VS none@none.com
4090 to 6660
Round 1 goes to None@None.com
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
uce@ftc.gov is my favorite when someone with no legitimate use for my email is requesting it. If that won't take, next in line are postmaster@site.com, webmaster@site.com and root@site.com - where site.com is whatever site is demanding my email. After that comes abuse@aol.com, abuse@hotmail.com and abuse@earthlink.net. I don't expect AOL or any of the other big ISPs to do anything, but on the off chance they do, it means a site that's trying to abuse my email will run afowl of someone who can cut them off from a large number of customer/victims.
Heh. I actually registered that to put up a parody/protest about sitefinder. The domain turns out to get a lot of spam; some stuff from people who obviously just typed it into a form, but also however from people who had their mail systems configured to divert their spam/bad mail to nonexistentuser@nonexistentdomain.com (or some variant). All were happy to stop when asked, but if you must configure your mail like this, possibly better use an *impossible* domain (I did get a fair bit of private email bounced on to me by badly configured mail systems).
i use this alot.. but i mix it up by also putting abuse@(the domain asking for my email) and then i sign up for every newsletter they have... i figure it saves me alot of time by just letting them report the spam to themselves... 8)
Ah reminds me oh a time back in the day (was before spam in the early 90's).
I was using a time sync script that used the daytime service instead of ntp (ntp clients for linux weren't as prevelent at that time).
well in the script it listed (I think it was):
system1.com
system2.edu
system3.net
as servers to get daytime info from. Well that config worked. It didn't dawn on me when I was setting it up that those were just examples and should be changed. Mainly becuase it did work, I mean even back then responsible folks were shutting down "extra" services and or only allowing access from proper locations.
Well the net admin who ran what system1.com pointed to got really irate at someone hitting that service on his machine. He contacted the ISP I was on (an old community based one called punk.net).
And the guy was too much of an idiot to understand the explaination of what had happened. said things like 'what system1.com?'. Not only had he forgotten he had pointed it at his system (it was the same org by checking whois), but he didn't even know how to check what system1.com was aand where it pointed. To top it off he then threatened to drive up from LA and physically assault me and started port scanning my network. (and yes this was after I had pointed elsewhere for time updating). So I sent him a nice e-mail saying to go ahead and try and I would be contacting the police if he continued... never heard from him again...
One of my first exposures to someone who was runnng a box on the Internet that didn't understand basics (like how to run a whois/hostname lookup).
So my point is yeah example.com is now a IANA reserved, so you should use it. or point it at a spamtrap service you run or have permission to use. it is what I do, provides for some interesting data analysis.