Tue, 09 Jun 2009
Fighting spam with spam
I've always found it mildly irritating when I get a response to an email message that says:
I'm protecting myself from spam. Please click the link below to complete the verification process. You have to do this only once.
When I receive one of these messages in response to email I did NOT send, it's not just irritating, it's infuriating.
It is a common technique of spammers to not only send spam to their harvested
addresses, but also to use them in forged From headers. With this type of
spam verification, you get to be a victim twice.
Spam filters have gotten quite good. I rarely received spam in my inbox. Any spam filtering technique that generates unwanted mail itself should be shunned. They are just adding to the problem.
The message I received came from Spam Arrest. It not only came with the verification, but an advertisement for the service. Isn't that the very definition of spam?
I've added an email filter. All mail from spamarrest.com is automatically reported as spam. If you happen to use Spam Arrest—sorry—your mail is undeliverable here.
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