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I love the use of the subdomain and email sp@mnesty.com to hide the name from spammers. But won't human spammers eventually figure out what mnesty.com is and st

by maxyme 9y ago

I love the use of the subdomain and email sp@mnesty.com to hide the name from spammers. But won't human spammers eventually figure out what mnesty.com is and stop responding?

StavrosK 9y ago
Sure, but the goal is to waste their time a bit, you can't fool them forever anyway.
- kevin_nisbet 9y ago
  True, but also being a bit more random where it's not trivial to filter the bot on the spammers side would make it just a little bit harder to ignore.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    That's true. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to add more domains, as you'd need to own them all (to add DNS records for sending and receiving). I wanted to accept donations at some point, in the form of pointed DNS records, but realized that I couldn't do that without owning the domain, as if the domain lapsed or was transferred, Spamnesty wouldn't know and it would keep sending email from that domain, to no avail.
    - robryk 9y ago
      You could check if the MX records still point at your service, or, better yet, send a test e-mail to that domain every so often and see if it reaches your service.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        Indeed, but it's added complexity and I'm not sure how many people would bother setting the DNS records I asked for. I might try it at some point, though.
        Operyl 9y ago
        This is HN, I’m sure there’s plenty of us who have spare unused domains that would do it.
        srett 9y ago
        I have one domain at hand that I don't use for mail at all, so people counter >= 1. I could set any MX/SPF records you want as long as I don't have to change them every two months or so... ;-)
    - kevin_nisbet 9y ago
      Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to track any stats about how often it reaches a spammer, whether it's interacting with the same spammer multiple times, etc? While I think the donating of DNS records is an interesting idea, I personally wouldn't want to risk giving permission to an outside party for the domains I use, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and correctly maintain a domain just as a donation.
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        I don't have any stats, no. I assume most spammers are using random domains, so they wouldn't be very accurate anyway.
    - gerdesj 9y ago
      You could request people to home sub-domains or even register full domains for you and populate MX records etc. You simply have to test the domain records before sending. You could periodically generate a TXT record, say annually, that should be updated. I already support several projects like this.

by maxyme 9y ago

I love the use of the subdomain and email sp@mnesty.com to hide the name from spammers. But won't human spammers eventually figure out what mnesty.com is and stop responding?

StavrosK 9y ago

Sure, but the goal is to waste their time a bit, you can't fool them forever anyway.

kevin_nisbet 9y ago
True, but also being a bit more random where it's not trivial to filter the bot on the spammers side would make it just a little bit harder to ignore.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  That's true. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to add more domains, as you'd need to own them all (to add DNS records for sending and receiving). I wanted to accept donations at some point, in the form of pointed DNS records, but realized that I couldn't do that without owning the domain, as if the domain lapsed or was transferred, Spamnesty wouldn't know and it would keep sending email from that domain, to no avail.
  - robryk 9y ago
    You could check if the MX records still point at your service, or, better yet, send a test e-mail to that domain every so often and see if it reaches your service.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Indeed, but it's added complexity and I'm not sure how many people would bother setting the DNS records I asked for. I might try it at some point, though.
      - Operyl 9y ago
        This is HN, I’m sure there’s plenty of us who have spare unused domains that would do it.
      - srett 9y ago
        I have one domain at hand that I don't use for mail at all, so people counter >= 1. I could set any MX/SPF records you want as long as I don't have to change them every two months or so... ;-)
  - kevin_nisbet 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to track any stats about how often it reaches a spammer, whether it's interacting with the same spammer multiple times, etc? While I think the donating of DNS records is an interesting idea, I personally wouldn't want to risk giving permission to an outside party for the domains I use, and I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and correctly maintain a domain just as a donation.
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      I don't have any stats, no. I assume most spammers are using random domains, so they wouldn't be very accurate anyway.
  - gerdesj 9y ago
    You could request people to home sub-domains or even register full domains for you and populate MX records etc. You simply have to test the domain records before sending. You could periodically generate a TXT record, say annually, that should be updated. I already support several projects like this.