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"When you become the spammer"
12/24/2002 Entry
I hope this isn't getting boring, but new spam issues keep hitting me. I just realized that one of my free Web-based email addresses is now being used as a From address in spam messages.
I realize that often your own email address is included in the From field which I suspect is automatically generated to match the To field and draw attention to the message. I'm not talking about such use of one of my addresses though, unfortunately.
Rather, I have started receiving several Returned mail: User unknown messages on an account which I barely use for sending any email. So I started looking at these messages and realized that my address was listed as the actual From address. Ouch. So this is one more way to run over one's mailbox quota: get a bunch of user-unknown messages in your inbox.
I think the reason this particular address made it this far in the spam chain is because it is based on my first name and a popular free mailer. Although the spelling of my first name may seem bizarre to most of the readers of this blog, it's the regular spelling of a relatively common first name in Hungary. So once Hungarians started flocking to the Net, I started receiving all sorts of random messages on that address from people thinking I was their Eszter friend or relative. People would also include the address on mass forwards of silly things which I'm sure then got forwarded further and what better way to end up on all sorts of lists.
Sad, but I'm afraid I may have to retire that address at some point. (If I cared more and this was my main address I'd start implementing some new filtering rules, but it's not worth the bother on this particular one.)
To sum up, there are different spam levels an email address can hit:
1. be on a few lists from the same senders - fairly easy to deal with by implementing a few filtering rules for the particular senders
2. be on all sorts of random lists whose number increases quickly over time - can still try to filter
3. be featured on the From line but just as a trick to gain attention - can filter by From line
(I can't quite decide whether #2 or #3 comes first and from the filtering point of view it may be easier to deal with #3.)
4. become the actual From line - look for a new address
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