Re: [LUG] Rubbish emails

[John Allsup <lugs@xxxxxxxxx>]

I still use catch-all.  The lugs@ address I use here is such a 
catch-all.  I've had it in mind to write a few scripts (probably in 
Python3) to fetch mail from the catch all box and filter it 
appropriately, but I've not got round to it yet.  The thing with spam 
tracking with catch-all is that you need to:
a) keep track of which company you have what email address
b) not use the company name in said email address so that they don't 
know you're doing that.  You need emails of the form 
myname456@xxxxxxxxxx, which look similar to the sugared gmail/yahoo/etc 
addresses to ensure they look sensible.

I had also planned to write an app for my android phone that kept track 
of other people's emails and the address I gave them. Additionally, 
writing an email sender (rather than using Thunderbird) that understands 
that I can send from an as-yet-undefined address, and can add them 
easily, and possibly integrate with the mail and address handling app 
that I've yet to write.

John

On 28/11/2013 18:24, Julian Hall wrote:
> On 28/11/13 17:13, Simon Waters wrote:
> > Worst I've seen to date was whilst checking mail logs for a new 
> > client who reported spam to their shiny new email address.
> >
> > When I checked the mail logs the first (failed) attempt to spam the 
> > address was made 4 hours before I created the account. Obviously in 
> > that case the email address was a relatively common first name, and 
> > it was the peak of spambot life.
> Thanks Simon(s :) )
>
> My previous domain host was run by a friend and allowed mail to 
> anything at my domain, which in a way was handy as I could do as Simon 
> A suggested and give each new company a distinct email address as a 
> contact.  The only time I had an identifiable source with that method 
> was from Warner Brothers years ago, but otherwise they may have had 
> the intelligence to realise what I was doing and not pass it on.  
> Either that or if their database was hacked the thieves knew the theft 
> source would be tracked if they used it. Whatever the reason - 
> probably neither of those - I had almost no spam from those specific 
> addresses.  The new host only allows me to create more generic 
> addresses such as this one; albeit it allows 50, it would mean going 
> through creating a new email address each time, adding that to 
> Thunderbird and checking up to 50 addresses each mail check.  Not 
> worth the hassle for the small amount of spam I now get.
>
> Julian


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