From the tests that I have done with various honey-pot accounts I have seen
a great increase in the amount of spam that the account receives when I
"unsubscribed". I believe it depends a lot on the type of spam you are using
in your test. Was the spam mostly bulk, or was it semi-solicited? Where the
e-mails originated from somewhere the account you where testing with gave
the address out to that may have "shared" it with other organizations?
Shaun
-----Original Message-----
From: C Wegrzyn [mailto:wegrzyn(_at_)garbagedump(_dot_)com]
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2003 3:54 PM
To: Yakov Shafranovich
Cc: asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: [Asrg] 2.a.1. Spam Measurements - Data - Unsubscribe
From what I've heard about the unsubscribe issue is that once you "try"
to unsubscribe they actually know there is active account. There is a
spammer in Burlington MA that uses this technique to build email lists.
I also understand they will send out "free things" types of emails to
get you to come to the site.
Chuck Wegrzyn
Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
After trying to do unsubscribe from every spam that I got in a poisoned
account, I came with some interesting observations. Of course there is
not enough data to make this statistically correct but the empirical
observations are interesting.
From all the spams that were received in this account in the last 2
days, most seem to come from four specific sources. All these sources
had unsubscribe pages. When I tried to unsubscribe twice, I got a
warning that the address has already been removed. I tried doing this a
day apart, it still worked. You can see for yourself at:
http://www.med21sx.com/a.html
What I am getting from this is that these four specific spammers
maintain "remove" lists. One possible reason for them to do so, is that
sending spam to people that do not want it anymore, will not provide
spammers with any possibility of extra revenue, and may hurt them in the
long run because those people if still receiving the spam, will report
the spammers. Of course, the other reason could be that its all a ploy
or a verify operation.
In any case, we need more data on this and preferably a large-scale
study.
Yakov
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Yakov Shafranovich / <research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com>
SolidMatrix Research, a division of SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc.
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"One who watches the wind will never sow, and one who keeps his eyes on
the clouds will never reap" (Ecclesiastes 11:4)
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