How to get spam

Peter J · 03 July 2007, 15:08

Whilst smiling wryly at the latest email asking me to enter my bank details at the link below I wondered - is there any way of making an email address receive loads of spam?

I can extract the email address from which it was sent easily enough but then where do I input it to make sure it get sent as much spam as possible?

Any ideas?

joakimhansson · 03 July 2007, 16:04

Good idea

but i don´t know...

Sixy_the_red · 03 July 2007, 16:12

Send it to one of the 'online pharmacy' or 'free XXX girls' emails.

Chances are though that its either not a real email addy or it belongs to some poor sod who's caught a worm.

AndrewH · 03 July 2007, 16:13

I'm aware of a colleague who logged onto a "dubious" website and when asked for a email address which the "free access" activation code could be sent used the one he wished to be the target.

Clearly you'd never know for sure but I'd have thought that would've worked nicely

Poly · 03 July 2007, 18:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter J

Whilst smiling wryly at the latest email asking me to enter my bank details at the link below I wondered - is there any way of making an email address receive loads of spam?

I can extract the email address from which it was sent easily enough but then where do I input it to make sure it get sent as much spam as possible?

Any ideas?

If it genuinely belongs to the spammer - no one will be picking it up / reading it anyway.

The address is probably either completely non-existent or spoofed - i.e. belongs to someone else who has done nothing wrong (not even a virus infection) but made to look like it comes from him.

if you get lots of spam - then I think Spamcop have a personal (free) service which effectively lets you report the spam. Based on these rapid real time reports mail servers can quickly reject mail coming from hosts being used to relay spam.

alexm · 03 July 2007, 18:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polwart

The address is probably either completely non-existent or spoofed

I agree. Spammers usually pick a recipient from their database of email addresses (or take a guess at a valid email) and spoof the mail such that the From: field in the header is another email address from their database.

This means that if the first address rejects the mail, or it doesn't exist then the second address gets lumbered with the failed delivery report even though they never actually sent it!