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Re: [SAtalk] Getting yourself removed from spam lists
From spamassassin-talk-admin@lists.sourceforge.net  Fri Sep 13 16:51:45 2002

On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 03:21:08PM +0200, carlo@alinoe.com wrote:
> So... it seems to me that they DO clean up
> their lists, but only when a spam fails to
> deliver - or can't they detect that?
>=20
> What do spammers do with email addresses in
> their database that are undeliverable for a
> few years?  Do they still continue to spam
> them?
Well, here's my semi-coherent rant for the moment.  ;)
I have >3100 spamtraps on my machine (you can multiply that by each domain
if you really want to).  The vast majority (all but, say, 10) have never
ever existed.  Yet, spammers would semi-continuously connect, try to
deliver mail to 40 of them, disconnect, connect again, try delivering
to 40 more...  over and over, they kept getting "User unknown" until I
got around to making them spamtraps.
So my evidence would suggest that it depends who you're dealing with. :)
If your "business" is to sell address lists to people who would then spam,
it's in your best interest to never clean your list.  Therefore you can
say "10 million email addresses" and not technically be lying, even if
the majority of them don't work.
If you're a spammer, you'd want to know who doesn't actually exist, but
then again you don't really care: you probably want to relay through
someone so it's harder to trace you, if you could you'd send to every
email address available, you don't want to setup a valid bounce address
because again it's easy to trace you.
So I would say this, if you technically spam people but actually think
you're running a legit service, you probably really do have a way of
opting out (even though the user didn't opt in) and you probably don't
relay, and you probably pay attention to bounces.
Everyone else doesn't really care.
That's my view anyway. :)
--=20
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