Bruce Lilly wrote:
before "my" spammer got the SPF FAIL idea,
Do you have definitive proof that SPF played any role
No, this spammer failed to inform me why he started to abuse
xyzzy.claranet.de resulting in 1000 backscatter mails per day
for about six moths, and s/h/it also failed to inform me why
s/h/it stopped.
Two other plausible reasons except from "got the SPF idea":
- it was the time when two hurricanes hit Florida
- after deleting most of the backscatter for weeks, and only
occasionally informing admins about patterns of a dictionary
attack etc. (always with a hint about using SPF), I started
to report yahoogroup backscatter again about 10 days before
it stopped. Including dubious "subscription confirmations".
Abuse reports and Yahoo! were as always a PITA, but if you are
very persistent you might find somebody doing something about
unresolved / miscategorized issues (e.g. they don't know MIME,
that won't fly with my style of abuse reports).
So maybe that was the reason, the spammer did "something" with
my (forged) addresses and yahoogroups, and my fresh complaints
to Yahoo! disturbed this "something".
But I think s/h/it simply tested the spam setup with a new SA
supporting SPF, and s/h/it found that forging my addresses was
a stupid idea.
Bye, Frank