Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Should I Publish My Collection of Email Spamming IP Addresses?
An anonymous reader writes: I have, for a while now, been collecting IP addresses from which email spam has been sent to, or attempted to be relayed through, my email server. I was wondering if I should publish them, so that others can adopt whatever steps are necessary to protect their email servers from that vermin. However, I am facing ethical issues here. What if the addresses are simply spoofed, and therefore branding them as spamming addresses might cause harm to innocent parties? What if, after having been co-opted by spammers, they are now used legitimately?
I wonder if there's a market for all the thousands of webmail addresses that send Slashdot nothing but spam.
Ya know ive been reporting spam to the FTC for years and nothing and i mean nothing happens. I don't see any spammers getting arrested,fined by the FTC. I also send an email asking a congressman just what the FTC is doing with all the reported spam and all he did was send me a personal info form to sign and release. which i laughed at since ya have to give the very same info when ya send an email to them.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I trust Spamhaus one hell of a lot less since they effectively blackmailed the company I worked for.
Basically they blacklisted tens of thousands of domains (with no advance warning or contact) and refused to remove the listing until we stopped hosting a domain they unilaterally decided they didn't approve of. The domain wasn't spamming, it didn't even have any email accounts set up.
There was no reasoning with the guy at Spamhaus I spoke with, who came across like some kind of rabidly insane cult member. Hardly a glowing endorsement of their business.
I've been inclined to trust blacklists a lot less ever since, and have started taking the stock "they would say that, they're a dirty spammer" response to complaints with a metric tonne of salt. As far as I see it, both extremes are as bad as each other.