From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Observation
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 21:59:12 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Newton" <bnewton at ashcomp.com>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 12, 2004 8:26 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Spam Observation

> A while back, I was complaining about a sudden jump in the amount of spam
I
> received--it's gotten to about 2500 a day, and growing.  Couldn't
> understand why; just started using more filtering in Eudora and speed
> reading subjects and senders.
>
> Made the breakthrough discovery tonight:  almost none of those emails
were
> addressed to "bnewton."  They were almost all made-up names at my
> domain.  What was killing me was the switch I've had set for years, to
> forward all undeliverable mail to the account administrator (me).  This
was
> once a useful feature, because it allowed me to create any number of
> fictitious email id's without having to create actual mailboxes for
> them.  Unfortunately, that "feature" has had to be turned off.
>
> I am now hypothesizing that some purveyor of mailing lists has found it
> easier to generate listings rather than harvest them--a new low in
screwing
> the customer.  In a way, this is delicious.  Just glad the fix turned out
> to be so easy.

In other words, you were receiving all the spam addressed to anyone/thing
in your domain?

Telemarketers stopped using known/listed phone numbers years ago and turned
to automatic dialing, which simply *generates* numbers.   That spammers are
now doing the equivilent does not surprise me.

2500 spam a day, eh?   That's about a hundred times the number I get per
day.

--Ted White