Get the site onto the frontpage of HN and hug the spammers to death? I like it.
A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
11–20 of 231 posts
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#12The design of this blog is delightfully readable: no popups, no banners, no FOUC as I wait for a beautiful webfont to load.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#13I wonder if most sites maintain any of the following addresses or not for externally incoming mail:
hostmaster@
postmaster@
webmaster@
dns-admin@
info@
contact@
root@
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.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#14Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#15I've been entering in short complaints as email addresses for a while now. My hope is that the right person will see "whythehhellwouldisignupforyournewsletterafter10seconds@nevercoming.back" and get the message.
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.
Care to share any?
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#16The trick works in analog too. Just stuff the pre-paid business reply mail with other junk mail.
That’s a classic. http://bash.org/?127039
I do occasionally wonder if it would still work, but most business reply mail type spam has been supplanted by email nowadays.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#17I 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.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#18I 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 you want some real fun, some systems only enforce validation rules via client-side javascript. If you block them, you might be able to submit some real chaotic entries.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#19I 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.
Re: A little trick to spam the spammers (2021)
#20I've wondered if thats why I can't always sign up for a webpage using their domain before the @ (ex. ycombinator@personaldomain.com). In that somebody else already signed up using webmaster@ycombinator.com and so in response they reject any emails containing "ycombinator".