Strange Spam
- Thread starter LunarMist
- Start date
Stereodude
Not really a
Guessing, dictionary attack, testing all possibilities?
Is it a long e-mail address, or only a few letters before the @ sign?
Is it a long e-mail address, or only a few letters before the @ sign?
Spammers commonly send to every Email address that they can construct using any permutation and letters, numbers, and names that they can think of.
What's interesting, to me, is that I created a email address Nul@comcast.net intending it for situations where I was required to supply a legitimate Email but I didn't ever want to deal with any response -- Everything gets deleted without opending. What I found though that it immediately started collecting massive amounts of spam, virus/trojens; phishing attacks addressed to everyone, but me, as if Comcast uses that as a default address if the address is invalid. I was spending hours a day DL'ing many hundreds of spam. It was rediculous. I had to kill the account.
What's interesting, to me, is that I created a email address Nul@comcast.net intending it for situations where I was required to supply a legitimate Email but I didn't ever want to deal with any response -- Everything gets deleted without opending. What I found though that it immediately started collecting massive amounts of spam, virus/trojens; phishing attacks addressed to everyone, but me, as if Comcast uses that as a default address if the address is invalid. I was spending hours a day DL'ing many hundreds of spam. It was rediculous. I had to kill the account.
When I was with Comcast I had an address I never used. I checked it once when they claimed they sent something there and there were thousands of spam emails in it.
I'm guessing spammers just send every possible permutation to all the popular domains.
I'm guessing spammers just send every possible permutation to all the popular domains.
ddrueding
Fixture
There was an article featured at Slashdot a while ago where they showed that e-mail addresses that started near the beginning of the alphabet received more spam than those that started near the end of the alphabet. Least affected were those starting with numbers.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
I don't think they have to be popular. My domain, which is more or less unadvertised, gets 2K+ spams per day. Nearly all are for accounts that don't exist.
Now, as some bogus accounts get lots of spam I think some people have signed up for crap using bogus emails at my domain, but that doesn't account for nearly all of it.
Also funny is that 1-2% of the spam isn't in English; most of that is Chinese/Japanese with the occasional ones that look like Cyrillic.
Outlook's junk mail filter catches about 97-98% of it; the rest is an easy cleanup.
Now, as some bogus accounts get lots of spam I think some people have signed up for crap using bogus emails at my domain, but that doesn't account for nearly all of it.
Also funny is that 1-2% of the spam isn't in English; most of that is Chinese/Japanese with the occasional ones that look like Cyrillic.
Outlook's junk mail filter catches about 97-98% of it; the rest is an easy cleanup.
ddrueding
Fixture
My entire domain is dumped to a single mailbox (anything@ddrueding.com goes to me). I deal with less than one spam a week, and I can't remember the last false positive. Google rocks.
Fushigi
Storage Is My Life
I can see that. If I let a bunch-o-spam accumulate in my junk mail box, it is definitely slanted towards the beginning of the alphabet. I'd say A-M get 70% or thereabouts.
mubs
Storage? I am Storage!
Eric, I'm glad you're back. You're in full form too! 