[lug] email mystery

[D. Stimits]

Scott Herod wrote:
> 
> "D. Stimits" wrote:
> >
> > Thanks! I am going to see if I can get idcomm to look into this, I get a
> > ton of junk that is in no way addressed to me. RSS seems like a good
> > idea. I'm still confused as to how this could actually reach my
> > particular account without it being addressed anywhere...seems like a
> > bug being exploited.
> >
> > D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com
> >
> 
> I don't know if it still happens a lot but one old trick
> was to send the ad to a bogus email address at some machine
> and BCC: a huge list of addresses.  The mail would bounce,
> of course, but sendmail would still forward the BCC's.
> Then it would appear that mail was coming from that machine
> and since BCCs are not visible, you couldn't see all of
> the addresses.  SGI's sendmail was bad about doing this.
> 
> Scott

With all the anti-spam laws starting to either show up or be discussed
by various government bodies, it would seem that a law needs to be added
that says commercial advertisement is deemed spam if such tricks are
used. I keep seeing more in the headers that starts at
dns2.kokushikan.ac.jp, and appears to attempt being hidden this way. The
reply-to addresses are always to some free email account at excite.com,
or yahoo, or hotmail, etc, such that all they need to do is get a new
reply address for free the moment one gets banned for spam (and I report
all of them; yahoo and others usually reply to tell me the account has
indeed been banned). The free email places need a way to block spam
domains like dns2.kokushikan.ac.jp, but I doubt they have sufficient
interest, and too many objections to doing so.

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com