On another mailing list (still waiting for permission to quote),
someone running an ISP made the following claim.
He says that if he sets up his mail server to blackhole spam instead
of bounce it, the spammer shortly shifts to a different IP address
with slightly different text. He claims they are seeding the spam
with known bad addresses, and if they don't get back a failed status
from the SMTP server, they know that their spam is getting trapped by
filters.
I don't have any idea what methodology he's using, and without a good
control group to compare with this could be just a case of seeing
lots of spam. However conceptually it makes sense. It's the inverse
of checking for bounces on valid addresses, and it would allow a
spammer to fine-tune their message to get through filters.
Can anyone confirm this?
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Anti-Spam Service for your POP Account
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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