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Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

spa.mnesty.com

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Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#42

Post by brightsize »

alpb wrote: post #31

It looks like in many cases [1] it's confusing the threads? Subjects and discussions start changing after a few messages in many threads I looked at. [1] https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/vkeezpyz/

I see this all the time and have assumed it's related to difficulties correlating outbound messages (to the spammer) with responses. Also within a message thread the service sometimes fails to respond to the most recent email from a spammer. An example thread showing both issues: https://spa.mnesty.com/conversations/caabzkyg/

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#44

Post by StavrosK »

robryk wrote: post #40
StavrosK wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to add more domains, as you'd need to own them all (to add DNS records for sending and receiving). I wanted to accept donations at some point, in the form of pointed DNS records, but realized that I couldn't do that without owning the domain, as if the domain lapsed or was transferred, Spamnesty wouldn't know and it would keep sending email from that domain, to no avail.

You could check if the MX records still point at your service, or, better yet, send a test e-mail to that domain every so often and see if it reaches your service.

Indeed, but it's added complexity and I'm not sure how many people would bother setting the DNS records I asked for. I might try it at some point, though.

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#46

Post by kevin_nisbet »

StavrosK wrote: post #26
kevin_nisbet wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but also being a bit more random where it's not trivial to filter the bot on the spammers side would make it just a little bit harder to ignore.

That's true. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to add more domains, as you'd need to own them all (to add DNS records for sending and receiving). I wanted to accept donations at some point, in the form of pointed DNS records, but realized that I couldn't do that without owning the domain, as if the domain lapsed or was transferred, Spamnesty wouldn't know and it would keep sending email from that domain, to no avail.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to track any stats about how often it reaches a spammer, whether it's interacting with the same spammer multiple times, etc?

While I think the donating of DNS records is an interesting idea, I personally wouldn't want to risk giving permission to an outside party for the domains I use, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and correctly maintain a domain just as a donation.

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#47

Post by StavrosK »

kevin_nisbet wrote: post #46
StavrosK wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to add more domains, as you'd need to own them all (to add DNS records for sending and receiving). I wanted to accept donations at some point, in the form of pointed DNS records, but realized that I couldn't do that without owning the domain, as if the domain lapsed or was transferred, Spamnesty wouldn't know and it would keep sending email from that domain, to no avail.

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to track any stats about how often it reaches a spammer, whether it's interacting with the same spammer multiple times, etc? While I think the donating of DNS records is an interesting idea, I personally wouldn't want to risk giving permission to an outside party for the domains I use, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and correctly maintain a domain just as a donat…

I don't have any stats, no. I assume most spammers are using random domains, so they wouldn't be very accurate anyway.

Re: Spamnesty – A Bot to waste spammers' time

#50

Post by bshep »

jdietrich wrote: post #19
superasn wrote: post #9

Well done. It does get the spammers frustrated. I remember reading about a similar thing[1] where instead of emails it was automated telephone replies and the scammers were cussing at the bots and generally super confused. It did also manage to flood their phone lines making their call center useless for a while. [1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj8wg4/we-talked-...

Some magnificent genius has created the perfect bot for hooking predatory telemarketers. "Lenny" is a slightly confused elderly man with poor hearing. He wanders off topic, he isn't sure what you just said and he is absolute catnip for crooks. If you haven't heard a call to Lenny, you're in for an absolute treat. This call from a tech support scammer lasts an exhausting 31 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJT…

i had a lenny bot running on my home phone line for a bit, i had an asterisk server with a whitelist ( i only get land calls from 2-3 numbers ) and recorded some hilarious calls, i even have a few from the church of scientology ( the prior owner of the number apparently was a member) and from bill collectors ( and she also owed a bunch of medical bills )
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