New Spammer Trick

It isn't really a new trick as much as a play on an old trick. Spammers like to forge headers despite the CAN-SPAM act. They blindly send messages to email addresses to see what’s viable. It's all really annoying.

Anyway, over the last couple of weeks I've gotten a few sets of messages where I get 10 copies of the same message sent to the same email address. I figured the spammer had a messed up sending program or my mail server was chocking on the message. After receiving 2 sets of that mess, I blocked the receiving email address.

But the messages kept coming through the email address I blocked. That just didn’t make much sense. I decided it was time to take a look into the header to see how this could possibly be happening. Apparently they forged the TO address and sent the message to another mailbox. You don't realize it until you peak at the header details.

I guess I could just disable the catch all mailbox but I like using it to give different email addresses to different companies. It can come in handy to track down who leaks your email address to a nasty spammer. I caught one company once. Anyway, I went through all the headers and listed which email addresses they are targeting and am in the process of shutting them down.

As if I have nothing better to do!

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