Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: spam return address backlash
From: Mark Borrie <mark.borrie () OTAGO AC NZ>
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2007 11:18:39 +1300
From time to time we get this occuring on a significant basis, i.e. large
numbers of bounces (> 100 a day) come through. This first occurred several years ago when a HOD's email address was used and he received approx 70 000 bounces a day for a number of weeks. Today many of the bounce messages get quarantined in our spam system so users don't see them. The trend I am more concerned about at the moment is the mass subscription of an email address to "random" mail lists. This generates huge volumes of unwanted emails for the recipient who then doesn't know which are real lists that can be unsubscribed from which are not. Several of our users have opted to change email address rather than try and clean up incoming email. The only reason I can work out at the moment for this mass subscription is to cause a DOS on users. Mark On 9 Jan 2007 at 14:43, Roger Safian wrote:
Greetings, In the last couple weeks we have seen several of our addresses used as the from address in spam. This causes few serious problems, but does generate an increase in the number of spam complaints to our abuse aliases. It does cause a serious issue if the chosen address used by the spammer, also happens to be a real address in use here at Northwestern. We have heard of people receiving hundreds of bounced messages per day if this happens. We recommend filters, but there's little else we can do to stop this. My questions are two. Is this happening elsewhere, and if so, have you recently noticed an increase in this activity? -- Roger A. Safian r-safian () northwestern edu (email) public key available on many key servers. (847) 491-4058 (voice) (847) 467-6500 (Fax) "You're never too old to have a great childhood!"
-- Mark Borrie Information Security Manager, Information Technology Services, University of Otago, Dunedin, N.Z. Ph +64 3 479-8395, Fax +64 3 479-5080, Mobile +64 27 609-6409
Current thread:
- spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 09)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: spam return address backlash Ken Connelly (Jan 09)
- Re: spam return address backlash Conor McGrath (Jan 09)
- Re: spam return address backlash Russell Fulton (Jan 09)
- Re: spam return address backlash Mark Borrie (Jan 09)
- Re: spam return address backlash Gary Flynn (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Dick Jacobson (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Russell Fulton (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 10)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Jeff Giacobbe (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash H. Morrow Long (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Cal Frye (Jan 11)
- Re: spam return address backlash Roger Safian (Jan 11)
(Thread continues...)