terrible, nasty idea. . .

[Peter Bishop]

On 27 Aug 2004 at 20:53, Marek Kowal wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> What I do not like about the whole idea of spamming the spamer is the fact
> that once your systems get widespread, they can be used to create DDOS
> attacks on completely innocent people/websites. Say, I do not like some
> website. I just put his/her URL in the spam message and send it to the
> sufficient amount of people who implemented the "terrible, nasty idea" of
> yours.
> 
Another possible downside is that the unsunscribe site might
be be getting useful contacts from the forwarded mail.

When I forward a mail, the following info would be in the headers:
Resent-by: me at myaddress
Resent-to: unsubcribe at address

The "To:" address in the spam might not contain my name 
(for simple non-specific spam) 
but the Resent-by address definitely does.

So all the harvester has to do is look for Resent-by; to identify a 
possibly new, but definitely live, victim for more spam.


-- 
Peter Bishop 
pgb at adelard.com
pgb at csr.city.ac.uk