Say you make a random mailbox (hotmail, gmail, whatever).
Then you put the corresponding address a bit everywhere on your blog, your web pages, but styled so it’s in visible (display:none).
Then you install a little application, and you give it the necessary data to retrieve the mail corresponding to that address (pop, imap, whatever).
This application parses incoming mails, stores the ip’s and addresses in a file. At the end of every month, this file gets sent automatically to a few spam blacklisters (ideal format to be examined).
This application is spread as much as possible, on as many platforms as possible.
Do you think it could work ? What would be your suggestions ?
Or you could publish a dns A record and proper reverse dns, for a dedicated ip address, let some host listen on smtp on that ip, and just sa-learn –spam everything that comes in.
Congratulations! You have reinvented the honeypot.
well, since i know practically nothing about spam fighting, i knew i had to ask people in the know
since it’s a pretty obvious idea, i’m not surprised something like that has been done, only better.
OK, i’ll just shut up and continue doing what i was doing
@Philip Paeps: too bad there no very few public and reliable dns based blacklists that are only based on honeypots.
Elise: mind you: you’d have to filter out mailservers of the bigger isps. If you have any real customers, you don’t want skynet, hotmail, … servers on that list
(although they *will* send you spam)
@frank you’ve got a point …
Here’s how to participate btw
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/
thanks !