Backscatter victims unite!
I am currently getting over 300 backscattered messages/day at one of my email addresses. I suspect that there is a huge potential to fight spam with this opportunity, since the bounces come in practically in "real time" from spam runs. If you have concrete ideas or resources about how to use this information, send me an email (my address is in a link at the top of the page).
I have contacted Backscatterer.org, but they are only interested in my backscatter if I host my MX on UCEProtect.net's system. Apparently their backscatter-reporting is hard-coded from that system. Sadly, I would lose the backscatter if I were to move my email there, as it's coming into an email alias, which forwards to my Gmail system. Gmail does a great job at classifying spam.
I am able to report all backscatter (and other spams) to SpamCop quite easily using a combination of Gmail, FreePOPs, Thunderbird and SpamCop's quick-report feature (which is free). See the link below that explains this setup. Contact me if you have questions.
Useful spam-fighting links
- Report spams to SpamCop.net.
- Download spams from Gmail's Spam folder, using FreePOPs and a pop client to facilitate mass-reporting of spams to SpamCop.net via attachments in Thunderbird.
- Report a spamvertised blogspot.com URL to Blogger's help page as a violation of its Terms of Service.
- If you use Gmail and you get a spam from another Gmail account, you can't report it with SpamCop. This is because such spams never leave the internal Gmail system (all the IP addresses are internal). However, you can report internal Gmail spams with Gmail's abuse form.
- Report spamvertised Geocities pages to Geocities.
- Report bounces to postmaster@example.com to RFC-ignorant.org.
- View a spamvertised web site's HTML contents without loading it into your browser with Rex Swain's HTTP viewer.
- Use the OpenRBL web site to see an IP address' reputation on various block-lists.