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Do Unsubscribe Links Stop Spam?
Kaiten writes "Brian McWilliams of Spam Kings fame has just published a fascinating spammer exposé over at Salon. Using a pseudonym, he was hired to send junk email on behalf of a spam operation that has been burying people (me included) with spam for fake Rolex watches. The article details how the spammers handle the 200,000-plus unsubscribe requests they get each month. Seems that LOTS of geeks actually cross their fingers and click those remove links. And, surprise, surprise, the spammers usually ignore the unsubscribe requests."
A reply confirms there is a live person behind the email address. And for those with a HTML-enabled email client, a cleverly placed (and sized, ie 1 pixel) embedded image to an external site with a unquie string keyed to your email address is yet another trick spammers have for confirming your address.
And if you like what you read you can come and hear the author speak at the MIT Spam Conference on January 21.
John.
..But the big corps too. Coincidentally, I tried to remove myself from the iTunes list (which I had accidentally enlisted for when downloading QT) only the find that the unsubscribe-URL "contained no data". Hmm. Double hmm.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
That's how I introduced myself last month, when I sent Casper an e-mail asking to join his spamming crew. I fibbed to him that I was a full-time bulk e-mailer looking for a new sponsor. I said that one of my business associates had recommended his program. (For authenticity, I lightly sprinkled typos and grammatical errors throughout the message.)
I wanted to be one of Casper's sales affiliates. In today's world of spam, a sales affiliate sends out junk mail on behalf of a spam-site operator or "sponsor," who assigns the affiliate a special tracking code to include in his e-mail ads. For every sale the affiliate's spams generate, he is paid a commission by the site operator. Sponsors also provide "remove" lists, spamming software, and other support to help their affiliates successfully market the site.
Since September, Casper and his associates had been clogging my various e-mail accounts with ads for a watch shop called Royal-Replicas.com (formerly onlinereplicastore.com). I filed several complaints with the Chinese Internet service provider hosting the site, to no avail.
I suppose I could have just clicked the "unsubscribe" links in the dozen or so spams they sent me every day. But I didn't trust these people one bit. I was sure that if I could get inside Casper's operation, I would find hard evidence confirming what savvy Internet users instinctively know: Trying to unsubscribe from spam is a fool's game.
Just look at the place. Royal-Replicas.com provides no physical mailing address in its junk e-mails or at the site. The domain's registration record lists someone in Spain as the owner. The site is hosted on a server in China, but the order page cites prices in Indian rupees as well as U.S. dollars. The headers of the spams reveal that many have been sent via "zombied" home computers. Even the headers of Casper's private e-mails are a fraud. (He routed all his messages to me through proxy computers in South Korea.)
The "About Us" page at Royal-Replicas.com doesn't help much, either. It contains little more than a bizarre rationale for buying its $300 knockoffs rather than the real thing: "Many people purchase watches that cost thousands of dollars and render the wearer liable to get their hand chopped off while walking home from a posh cocktail party."
Bulk e-mailers are required to honor list-removal requests under the U.S. CAN-SPAM law. But still it's common knowledge that clicking an unsubscribe link or handing over your e-mail address on a junk e-mailer's remove page is insane. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) warns that unsubscribe links are "often just a method for collecting valid addresses that are then sent other spam." The FTC has sent warning letters to at least 77 marketers for their failure to honor unsubscribe requests.
Sure, a few spammers might take your name off to avoid trouble. But to most, you're merely confirming that they've found a live one. Next thing you know, they'll have sold your e-mail address to other spammers as "validated" -- or, in other words, ready for spamming.
At least, that's what I thought until Casper brought me onboard. My undercover mission into the heart of fake-Rolex spam didn't turn out exactly as I had expected.
I tried flattering Casper in my e-mails, gushing that he had astutely tapped into a timely and lucrative spamming niche. (You could probably find similar watches on the streets of Chinatown for $25, but hey, some people prefer the convenience of holiday shopping from home.) But Casper doesn't let just anyone join BlackMarketMoney.com. After I sent my introductory e-mail as "Chris Smith" from a free webmail account I had created, he asked to know the name of the person who had referred m
"Seems that LOTS of geeks actually cross their fingers and click those remove links"
I really don't agree. Any respectable geek shouldn't be getting spam in the first place, let alone be stupid enough to click the unsubscribe links.
Personally I haven't had more than 30-50 spams in the last 3 years or so.
I have my main address, which only 'real people' know, friends and family. It never gets any spam because it's totally secret.
Then for everything else I assign a throw away address on one of my domains, the mail on these gets checked only when I'm expecting something (like a signup confirmation/verification etc).
I also have a semi-secret address to give slightly less trustworthy people and to date that hasn't had any spam either.
Obviously I make sure none of my addresses get posted in plain text on the internet either.
It is simply a matter of keeping your address clean. The only way spammers can send me mail right now is if they brute force my email address, and that doesn't happen very often.
I'm not so sure. As an experiment early this year, march I guess, I went through my entire junk mail folder in an attempt to get as much spam as I could. What the hell, hey, I'm getting several hundred messages a day and more can't hurt, and even if it trebled it'll help train my spam filter, right? I entered my email address in all the unsubscribe links I could find.
I forgot about it for a while, and it wasn't until 2 months later I noticed an EXTREME drop in the number of spam emails. My last entire week of spam totals 51 emails. Curiously, not one of them contains an unsubscribe link. It's not down to "stopping spam" but it's a couple of orders of magnitude less. I never kept detailed stats on exactly when the drop off occurred, so I can't for sure say the unsubscribe links stopped it, but they certainly didn't add to it.
This story has inspired me to test entering a brand new unguessable email address into unsubscribe forms online, to see what happens coming from the other direction. That's going to take effort to dig up email archives though. I just don't have any spam available WITH unsubscribe links any more.
Fwiw, if you make it to the end of the article, you'll see that the Rolex spammers actually DID remove me from their lists. (Don't try this at home.)
www.salon.com/news/cookie.html
make it the first page before you visit the main salon.com site and it will bypass them forcing you to watch an ad.
I use it religiously.
-Meow.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.