Since the site is down, what's the trick?
A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
31–40 of 231 posts
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#32Since the site is down, what's the trick?
The entirety of the post:
> published: 26/07/21 (dd/mm/yy) > updated: not yet
> A little trick to spam the spammers.
> When I find a "get X free" button on a website that then asks for my email address, I like to search for the email of the company behind the website (sometimes it's on the legal page, or the privacy policy page) and I submit their email. I also make sure to check the "sign me up for the newsletter" box, to make sure the spammers get at least one of their messages.
> I don't really know why I do this, it seemed funny a few months ago when I started and now I do it out of habit.
> I now keep a list of emails from these spam sites, and subscribe them all to the various newsletters I find if I have 5 minutes.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#33I run marketing email databases. This is cute, but it doesn't actually do anything in most systems - either the employees all already get the marketing emails or there is a system-wide rule to suppress against the email domain. If you actually want to (potentially) break something, try submitting some obscure characters or malformed html into some fields. Blank spaces in emails can particularly be a nuisance. And if…
I would also recommend naming yourself Viagra, Cialis or CBD.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#34I wonder if most sites maintain any of the following addresses or not for externally incoming mail: hostmaster@ postmaster@ webmaster@ dns-admin@ info@ contact@ root@ (And if they do, if anyone is actually reading the mail coming to those addresses.) I used to but I got so much spam and 0 actually legit mails to these addresses on my own domains so I stopped accepting externally incoming mails for those names/aliases…
I suspect spammers might have given up on that. I get almost nothing for webmaster at a domain that receives plenty of spam and phishing attacks on other email addresses, and a constant barrage of spam into the web contact form.
Not given up, I'd expect them to avoid those addresses to avoid blocklists and abuse reports.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#35I wonder if most sites maintain any of the following addresses or not for externally incoming mail: hostmaster@ postmaster@ webmaster@ dns-admin@ info@ contact@ root@ (And if they do, if anyone is actually reading the mail coming to those addresses.) I used to but I got so much spam and 0 actually legit mails to these addresses on my own domains so I stopped accepting externally incoming mails for those names/aliases…
Every email to legal@ has to be read by any legitimate site, thanks to GDPR/CCPA. Not that you'll get a response.
I do not believe that is how the joke laws that are GDPR/CCPA operates.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run an email marketing database. You might be pleased to know we keep a little "wall of honor" of the best fake emails we've been given.
> the best fake emails we've been given If I were to do this, the email wouldn't be fake! I have hundreds of email aliases on my (main) domain, and the list keeps on growing.
I have a catchall for my domain, so most sites get a unique website@mydomain.com email and a unique password. Not only does is help against password leaks but I also can find out very quickly if someone sells the unique address.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#37The design of this blog is delightfully readable: no popups, no banners, no FOUC as I wait for a beautiful webfont to load.
Except for the "beautiful webfront" bit, that was my experience too - no popups/banners/ads while waiting patiently for it to finally load the "Connection timed out" page.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#38I run marketing email databases. This is cute, but it doesn't actually do anything in most systems - either the employees all already get the marketing emails or there is a system-wide rule to suppress against the email domain. If you actually want to (potentially) break something, try submitting some obscure characters or malformed html into some fields. Blank spaces in emails can particularly be a nuisance. And if…
A trick I like is to fill every form with "null".
The extent that this bugs us though is pretty minimal. Any publicly facing form is going to have to handle massive amounts of garbage data as it is (if not just from people, from bots as well) so records that cleanly identify themselves as garbage save us a ton of time.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#39your website is down homie.
"What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?"
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#40I run marketing email databases. This is cute, but it doesn't actually do anything in most systems - either the employees all already get the marketing emails or there is a system-wide rule to suppress against the email domain. If you actually want to (potentially) break something, try submitting some obscure characters or malformed html into some fields. Blank spaces in emails can particularly be a nuisance. And if…
The zero-width char seems to be a good candidate, thanks !
Unicode Character “⠀” (U+2800)