terrible, nasty idea...

[Lee Dowthwaite]

This reminds me of something I read that Paul Graham had written (not sure
if it was his idea or not), about the possibility of all antispam
programs/devices chasing up the URLs in spam, not only to check the site
content for rating, but also so that, as a mailing goes out, their servers
are overwhelmed by the response. Kind of an unintentional DoS attack,
although they can't say they didn't ask for it (literally).

I like this idea a lot. The downside is that it uses the bandwidth of the
recipient (or his antispam agent). The upsides are numerous. I doubt
spammers pay for high-bandwidth server space, since their margins are so
tiny, and they aren't going to use it for SMTP since they multiplex their
mailings over a load of ISPs to keep themselves from getting closed down. So
you either effectively DoS their little server, or you make them pay for
exceeding the bandwidth quota of their big, hosted server, which normally
only gets about 5 or 10 hits a day. And if you find one that does have a
high bandwidth server specifically for SMTP, then you hit the very bandwidth
they ant to use when you start chasing up the URLs.

Nice.

Lee


-----Original Message-----
From: bogofilter-bounces+lee=dowthwaite.net at bogofilter.org
[mailto:bogofilter-bounces+lee=dowthwaite.net at bogofilter.org]On Behalf
Of David Relson
Sent: 25 August 2004 17:55
Cc: bogofilter at bogofilter.org
Subject: Re: terrible, nasty idea...


On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:31:22 -0400
Bob Vincent wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 09:17:53AM -0700, Jef Poskanzer wrote:
> > What percentage of spam do you think has a valid return address?
>
> No, no, no.  Not subscribe the return address.
>
> Subscribe the "email here to unsubscribe" address.

A quick bit of grep'ing and sed'ing shows 791 unique unsubscribe
addresses in my email this year.  The list includes gems like:

unsubscribe-alib9nlemae9gtmqc2voqv2c at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alib9nlli2ojwcmqc2voqvaa at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alibb3eo1mafxwmq82vsr98d at valuevalet.com
unsubscribe-alibb3eo1malzwmq82vsr9rc at valuevalet.com
unsubscribe-alibfyon11zf9umqj2vcrfpb at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alibfyon1d152vmqj2vcrf1d at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alima3mn11zf9umqc2vcrffb at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alima3nemae9gtmqc2voqkhc at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alima3nli2ojwcmqj2voqknd at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimah3p1mafxwmqc2vsrv5b at valuevalet.com
unsubscribe-alimah3p1malzwmqc2vsrvwa at valuevalet.com
unsubscribe-alimahegmae9gtmqj2voqk5a at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimaheoi2ojwcmqj2voqked at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimahxl11zf9umqj2vcrfaa at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimahxl1d152vmqc2vcr93b at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimg8lfmae9gtmq82voqd1a at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimg8lni2ojwcmq82voqdfd at mailestate.com
unsubscribe-alimggcp1mafxwmq82vsrkqd at valuevalet.com
unsubscribe-alimggcp1malzwmq82vsrklc at valuevalet.com

Yecchh.

David
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