nanog mailing list archives
Re: Spam with no purpose?
From: Michael.Dillon () radianz com
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 15:00:18 +0100
A message like this will usualy contain an html portion with an image in
it
that is a single pixel in size, that is white-on-white. It doesn't show
up
when you look at it, but it sends a request to the sender's specified website to get the pixel, thus showing them which email accounts are
active. What would happen if an ISP's mail server were to collect the URLs in emails and then retrieve the URL. Wouldn't this create a lot of false positives for the spammer thus screwing with their business model? And what if some scumsucking bottom feeder were to create a whole bunch of fake email addresses pointing at the servers of ISPs who do this. And then this evil waste-of-space no-buts were to sell that list to spammers for a good price based on the fact that these were all good active email addresses? Criminals victimizing other criminals... oh what a surprise! And what if ISPs would get together and share the IP addresses of these 1-pixel web servers via some type of real-time feed so that they could engage in cooperative blocking of validation traffic? Would they be helping the spamming criminals or would they be helping the scamming criminals or would they be good guys?
Current thread:
- Re: Mail with no purpose?, (continued)
- Re: Mail with no purpose? william(at)elan.net (Apr 01)
- Re: Mail with no purpose? Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine (Apr 01)
- Re: Mail with no purpose? Richard Cox (Apr 01)
- Re: Spam with no purpose? Jonathan Nichols (Apr 01)
- Re: Spam with no purpose? Gregory Hicks (Mar 31)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Mar 31)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? william(at)elan.net (Mar 31)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Paul Jakma (Apr 02)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Mar 31)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Mar 31)
- Re: Spam with no purpose? Michael . Dillon (Apr 01)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Apr 01)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Apr 04)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Todd Vierling (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Paul Jakma (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Scott Call (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Todd Vierling (Apr 05)
- Re: Spam with no purpose? Chris Adams (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Scott Call (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Michel Py (Apr 05)
- RE: Spam with no purpose? Paul Jakma (Apr 05)