a fanthom IP address

received a spam from a non-existing IP address

[hon]

Hi all,
I've received a spam from a non existing url: eProgresso.it.
It was associated with a site which ip address in the url was not listed in whois search.

Never heard something like that.
Is it the 'hidden-internet'?
Do you know the subject?

[toolman]

Hi hon and welcome to WebMaster World.

The phenomenon known as "spam" is a many faceted thing ;)
There are those involved in the industry of Bulk Emailing thousands upon thousands of worthless and useless emails who can manipulate the "system" as we know it. It appears they have struck yet again with some sort of spoofing tactic so as to make it difficult for people to trace them.

The best thing to do is nothing at all.

[Marshall]

Anti-Spam Resources
You'll find even more on most of the sites mentioned.

- Federal Trade Commission - [e-mail] - Forward copies of Spam to them.

- UXN Spam Combat - [combat.uxn.com...] - This site allows you to do reverse look-ups on ISP numbers and domain names.

- Get What Route - [whatroute.net...] - Also allows you to do reverse look-ups.

- SPAMAUS - [spamhaus.org...] - Provides live reports on known Spammers and ISP's and hosting services who help them.

- Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email - [cauce.org....] Increases Spam awareness.

- EuroCauce - [euro.cauce.org...] - The European sister to CAUCE.

- Spam Recycling Center - [spamrecycle.com...] - Literally recycles Spam sending it to the appropriate agencies.

- NetDemon - [netdemon.net...] - Offers a downloadable program which very easily allows you to identify accurately the information in Email headers.

- And you can always write you local, state, Federal governments and complain. Through actions like that, the sale of Email harvesting programs have been outlawed in two states (only 48 to go, plus the rest of the world).

In case it's not obvious, I hate spam with a passion.

[Woz]

>NetDemon ... a downloadable program

[samspade.org...] also has very good FREE downloadable program to do DNS lookups.

Onya
Woz

[Marshall]

Here's a trick I think you'll appreciate. On my home page, I have two hidden links. They're periods the same color as the background. One links to a page with about 1,000 bogus Email addresses with NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW in the header. Email harvesting robots tend to ignore that tag. The theory is that you will contaminate their mailing list and hopefully they'll dumb it and you'll be on it. I got the idea from a program I read about that does this on the fly.

The second hidden link is an Email address: [e-mail]. It's the only place where it appears and can only be found by harvesting robots. I just love when I get an Email addressed to it telling me how I "opted-in" for their mailing list. When I can track the origin of the Spam, I note the fact that only a harvesting robot could have acquired it. I also have in my site's Terms Of Use a provision that no contact information may be used for unsolicited Emails, faxes or snail-mail.

And if you every got a Spam with "This Email is sent in compliance with the new Email Act 1618 section 301 - that happens to be the Medicare Wellness Act - in case you were ever curious. Not that spammers would make something up :)

[mdchachi]

Marshall,

have you been able to empirically
determine whether or not the reverse-
psychology email page works? e.g.
are you getting less spam to those
addresses than to the deliberate bait?

While it's probably true what you say about the robots I somehow think that there are probably so many older harvesters out there, those emails would get picked up and distributed as well. And once they're on a list, they'll be thrown on to more lists ad infinitum.

[toadhall]

One other way to mess with email harvesters/spammers is to plant an email address like this:
<a href="mailto:postmaster@[127.0.0.1]"></a>
Sweet revenge!

[Marshall]

mdchachi,

I went from literally 100 spams a day to maybe 6 a week. However, I can't say which of my tricks contributed most to the reduction.