Re: Dealing with Spam and other canned meats

From: Todd Kellner <todd.kellner_at_list-universe.com>
Date: Thu 01 Aug 2002 13:44:44 -0500

At 09:53 AM 8/1/2002 -0500, Pesach Lattin wrote:
>The fact is that 95% of
>the "spam" that you will get will be because you didn't bother to read the
>find print on the site that you signed up for.

Greetings,

The figure 95% is patently untrue. I figured I'd conduct
a brief, unscientific check of all the mail received by
our feedback@, submit@ and support@ aliases for a more
realistic figure, since none of these addresses are ever
used to sign up for offers or newsletters.

There are about 30 domains in the network, and our support
team separates them out as they come in to "subscribe,"
"unsubscribe," "autoresponder," "undeliverable," "spam,"
etc., so it was very easy to go into the spam folder and
check on what we've received over the last week.

Out of 2207 UCEs sent 7/25-7/31, 2074 were sent to multiple
aliases, a (relatively) sure sign of harvested or extracted
email addresses from our Web sites. A closer look at the
remaining emails showed a handful of recognizable "opt-in
emailer" names, but most were straight-up obscured header
spams or email newsletters.

Many of the newsletter subscriptions were likely added
by hand ("the Ezine-Tips folks need to see my cruddy
Internet marketing 'zine"), but most, I believe, are a
result of the Klez worm, which spoofs "From:" fields and
gets join and double opt-in confirmation message
autoresponders "talking" back and forth. But that's another
story.

In the end, I'd surmise that around 93% of the UCEs received
by our support and feedback aliases are harvested from
our sites and re-sold to other spammers, a complete reversal
of the percentage stated by Pesach. Granted, personal accounts
are used differently, but looking at aliases which are only
used to receive messages gives a good picture of the scope
and volume of what we're dealing with.

Cheers,

Todd Kellner
VP, Operations
http://List-Universe.com/
http://Opt-Influence.com/





Received on Thu Aug 01 2002 - 13:44:44 CDT