Spamology

March 20, 2009 / Regarding spammers’ address validation techniques, and occasional literacy.

Ask MeFi user majick on identifying e-mail spam:

“Are they just email harvesters trying to confirm that our addresses actually exist?”

Your spammer is tidying their spamlist to sort it into three categories:

1. addresses for which delivery cannot be completed
2. addresses for which delivery seems to complete
3. addresses for which the owner responds to spam

Typically your spammers have multiple sources of addresses of varying reliability. Your big spam operators are going to try to hone the list on occasion, and this is how they’re doing it this time around. Last round was blank messages and “hi” messages and such.

I have no idea why this spammer, of all possible spammers, seems to be literate where the rest are not.

Well played, friend.