Spam domains that plague my email • Hacker News Board

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#61

Post by chmike » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 8:07 PM UTC

sylware wrote: post #49

chmike wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spammers use vpn nowadays. This make these spammhaus like services useless. They change IPs every week. Most mail protection models against spam don't work. I have an idea of a method that could help reduce spam and undesirable mails. It would be free for non-spammers and spammers would pay. The problem is that I'm not sure if people would be ready to adopt it. There is also many different ways to execute, and I'm no…

spammhaus is blocking self-hosted smtp servers. Have a look at grey listing.

Spamhaus is blocking by IP which can be an smtp server or a client. The SMTP protocol does not allow to distinguish a sending SMTP server from a client.

By using a VPN, you "randomize" the IP address and thus make spamhaus and equivalent services useless. I created my own IP blacklist and tracked it.

The only method I found to filter my spammers is to reject mails from hosts without a name. This eliminated 80% of spam, but it won't last long.

The mail system is completely broken.

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#62

Post by mxuribe » Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

dpifke wrote: post #6

lwf wrote: post #4

Surprised to not see gmail.com in the list[1]. [1]: https://drewdevault.com/2021/02/25/Gmail-is-a-huge-source-of... , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26265329

DARPA invented a communications network that could survive a nuclear war. Instead, everyone uses Gmail. If any other source of spam was so resistant to receiving abuse reports, they would be blackholed by everyone. Thanks, antitrust enforcement.

> DARPA invented a communications network that could survive a nuclear war. Instead, everyone uses Gmail.

So sad, but so true!

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#63

Post by sylware » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 12:16 AM UTC

chmike wrote: post #61

sylware wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spammhaus is blocking self-hosted smtp servers. Have a look at grey listing.

Spamhaus is blocking by IP which can be an smtp server or a client. The SMTP protocol does not allow to distinguish a sending SMTP server from a client. By using a VPN, you "randomize" the IP address and thus make spamhaus and equivalent services useless. I created my own IP blacklist and tracked it. The only method I found to filter my spammers is to reject mails from hosts without a name. This eliminated 80% of spa…

use grey listing

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#64

Post by chmike » Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

sylware wrote: post #63

chmike wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spamhaus is blocking by IP which can be an smtp server or a client. The SMTP protocol does not allow to distinguish a sending SMTP server from a client. By using a VPN, you "randomize" the IP address and thus make spamhaus and equivalent services useless. I created my own IP blacklist and tracked it. The only method I found to filter my spammers is to reject mails from hosts without a name. This eliminated 80% of spa…

use grey listing

I have spammers retrying 20 times before giving up. This protection is well known and easily circumvented be spammers.

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#65

Post by sylware » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 2:16 AM UTC

chmike wrote: post #64

sylware wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

use grey listing

I have spammers retrying 20 times before giving up. This protection is well known and easily circumvented be spammers.

but it filters a lot already because many do retry 20 times in less than 20 minutes.

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#66

Post by johnklos » Wed, Jul 20, 2022, 1:05 PM UTC

chmike wrote: post #60

johnklos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't set up email servers on VPN endpoints. That's not how email works.

You don't need a mail server to send mail. One can send mails through a VPN as client.

Then the spam is coming from the email servers which are used to relay that spam. Headers can be forged, so the source before the spam server can't be trusted as real.

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#67

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #57

xmodem wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a marketing company that is constantly adding me to new spammy lists they are creating. They are using AWS SES / SendGrid / other reputable providers. The emails all pass SPF/DKIM/DMARC and filing abuse reports seems to get me taken off the list I complained about but I quickly get added to a different one. I am this close to auto-blocking anything from these large providers and switching to allow-listing th…

I feel this. Because of a Google Group I briefly followed one of my email addresses got incorrectly associated with my Kickstarter account on some marketing list somewhere and gets added to so much "legitimate" marketing lists for fly-by-night Kickstarters. It's really frustrating and the accident of it being a "wrong" email at least makes it somewhat easier to manage (though I worry if I ignore that mailbox too much…

> For a while MailChimp was the only one of the major/reputable providers I trusted the Unsubscribe button on

Mailchimp is up there with Marketo and Sendgrid for me. Getting unsubscribed from something I never opted into… well I still haven't figured out how to do that.

Re: Spam domains that plague my email

#68

Post by inferiorhuman » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

sylware wrote: post #49

chmike wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spammers use vpn nowadays. This make these spammhaus like services useless. They change IPs every week. Most mail protection models against spam don't work. I have an idea of a method that could help reduce spam and undesirable mails. It would be free for non-spammers and spammers would pay. The problem is that I'm not sure if people would be ready to adopt it. There is also many different ways to execute, and I'm no…

spammhaus is blocking self-hosted smtp servers. Have a look at grey listing.

With Sonic I have to use their servers for outbound stuff since they block outbound SMTP without a static IP (and they don't offer static IPs with fiber). It's a price I'm willing to pay since I typically don't see false positives (and ye I check my logs periodically) with Spamhaus.

Unfortunately I've moved to Proton and the increase in spam is pretty damn frustrating.