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DNS queries are rarely logged. Ankara reports that the use of the domains in question is consistent with marketing campaigns in the hospitality industry. I'm

by cnst 5y ago

DNS queries are rarely logged. Ankara reports that the use of the domains in question is consistent with marketing campaigns in the hospitality industry. I'm still confused where the original DNS lookup dataset came from and why is it trusted. It cannot possibly be a complete dataset of all the requests for the domain in question. If anything, there's way more bot activity happening during a period of 4.5 months. A mere 10 IP addresses accounting for all requests that were ever made during a period of 4.5 months, for a public domain name (proof available from DomainTools per Ankara), is not realistic.

WoahNoun 5y ago
The trump domain wasn't set-up for bulk marketing email and wasn't configured like the other trump marketing domains. >The report notes that unlike other domains the Trump Organization used to send mass marketing emails, the domain at issue — mail1.trump-email.com — was configured in such a way that would have prevented it from effectively sending marketing or bulk emails. Or at least prevented most of the missives sent through the domain from ever making it past spam filters. >Nor was the domain configured like other Trump Organization domains that demonstrably did send commercial email, Jones’ analysis found. Also, the mail1.trump-email.com domain was never once flagged as sending spam by any of the 57 different spam block lists published online at the time. >“If large amounts of marketing emails were emanating from mail1.trump-email.com, it’s likely that some receivers of those emails would have marked them as spam,” Jones’ 2018 report reasons. “Spam is nothing new on the internet, and mass mailings create easily observed phenomena, such as a wide dispersion of backscatter queries from spam filters. No such evidence is found in the logs.”
WoahNoun 5y ago
The domain became public after the public reporting. Show me where in the Ankara report that shows that the domain mail1.trump-email.com was public during the period of the DNS activity. >Also, the mail1.trump-email.com domain was never once flagged as sending spam by any of the 57 different spam block lists published online at the time.
- cnst 5y ago
  It's right there in Ankura's report in the PDF. Ankura reports that DomainTools reports the First Seen for the FQDN — with the exact same IP address throughout — as early as 2010-07-02. If you don't believe Ankura, just purchase a report for the domain yourself from DomainTools or one of their resellers. Probably only costs a few bucks for a few lookups.

by cnst 5y ago

WoahNoun 5y ago

The trump domain wasn't set-up for bulk marketing email and wasn't configured like the other trump marketing domains. >The report notes that unlike other domains the Trump Organization used to send mass marketing emails, the domain at issue — mail1.trump-email.com — was configured in such a way that would have prevented it from effectively sending marketing or bulk emails. Or at least prevented most of the missives sent through the domain from ever making it past spam filters. >Nor was the domain configured like other Trump Organization domains that demonstrably did send commercial email, Jones’ analysis found. Also, the mail1.trump-email.com domain was never once flagged as sending spam by any of the 57 different spam block lists published online at the time. >“If large amounts of marketing emails were emanating from mail1.trump-email.com, it’s likely that some receivers of those emails would have marked them as spam,” Jones’ 2018 report reasons. “Spam is nothing new on the internet, and mass mailings create easily observed phenomena, such as a wide dispersion of backscatter queries from spam filters. No such evidence is found in the logs.”

WoahNoun 5y ago

The domain became public after the public reporting. Show me where in the Ankara report that shows that the domain mail1.trump-email.com was public during the period of the DNS activity. >Also, the mail1.trump-email.com domain was never once flagged as sending spam by any of the 57 different spam block lists published online at the time.

cnst 5y ago
It's right there in Ankura's report in the PDF. Ankura reports that DomainTools reports the First Seen for the FQDN — with the exact same IP address throughout — as early as 2010-07-02. If you don't believe Ankura, just purchase a report for the domain yourself from DomainTools or one of their resellers. Probably only costs a few bucks for a few lookups.