Targeting Spamvertisers?
After reading this article by the email and web security specialist company IronPort, it made me think. As spammers’ techniques get ever more sophisticated, is targeting or attacking the spamvertised sites (websites advertised through spam) still a valid tactic? According to that report, the turn around of links in spam is now on average less than 4 hours!:
In June 2005, the average length that a domain was advertised in a “spam” URL was 48 hours - allowing enough time for static URL “blacklists” to identify and block messages that contain these bogus Web links. Just one year later, the average duration of a spam URL has dropped to less than 4 hours. This means that by the time traditional block lists have identified and listed a bad URL, the spam message has already reached its targets and the spammer has moved on to sending spam using a new domain.
It also makes an interesting point on how this is made possible by the method they use to register domain names:
Spammers are also exploiting the domain name registration system by registering domains for a short period of time and then letting them expire before ever paying for them. In April there were over 35 million domains registered, 32 million of which were never paid for and expired after five days.
Therefore I wonder whether efforts to target those sites - such as Knujon, and the infamous former Blue Frog application - are going to be effective? I fear not. Which is rather discouraging, because using these methods gives the user an avenue to fight back and a sense of empowerment. That said - I am an advocate of those tools and have used them myself.
It’s a rather unsatisfactory conclusion I admit - and so in a future post I may take a look at some of the various email authentication standards which aim to target the problem of spam even reaching your inbox.
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