E-mail address harvesting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
E-mail harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of e-mail addresses for use in bulk mail or other purposes usually grouped as spam. Methods range from purchasing lists of e-mail addresses from other spammers to the more common use of special software, known as "harvesting software", "harvesting bots" or "harvesters", which scan web pages, postings on Usenet, mailing list archives and other online sources to obtain e-mail addresses. Such software may use regular expression.
Spammers may also use a form of dictionary attack in order to harvest e-mail addresses. For example, a spammer may send messages to adam@example.com, betty@example.com, carl@example.com, etc. Any addresses to which messages are delivered, as opposed to being bounced back, the spammer can then add to his or her sending list.
The latest form of email harvesting is to get people to enter their email addresses with the promise of "free" products. A common example is the "free" Plasma TV's that are often posted on Craigs List (www.craigslist.org). People that fall for this sign up with the hope of getting the free TV but have to wade through mountains of spam that will fill their email boxes everyday. Most of the time they have to sign up for a service that costs money.
Once someone signs up they might as well dump their email and get another as they will never be able undo all the damage done.
Some get a free email address at some web portal and sign up using that account. Within hours their account fills up with pages of junk email.
There have been cases of people that actually get a free product after going through the junk email but those have not been verified. Most the of the people who say they got a free product are the ones that post the ads for the "free" product.
[edit] External links
- A Federal Trade Commission warning about e-mail harvesting
- A list of the current top-25 IP addresses used for e-mail harvesting, as identified by Project Honey Pot
- A list of the current top-25 IP addresses used for e-mail dictionary attacks, as identified by Project Honey Pot
| This article is part of the Spamming series. | |
|---|---|
| E-mail spam | DNSBL | Spamhaus | Anti-spam techniques | Spambot Address munging | E-mail authentication | Directory Harvest Attack |
| Spamdexing |
Google bomb | Keyword stuffing | Cloaking | Link farm | Web ring Referer spam | Blog spam | Spam blogs | Sping | Scraper site |
| Telemarketing | Autodialer | Mobile phone spam | VoIP spam |
| Scams | Phishing | Advance fee fraud | Lottery scam | Make money fast | Pump and dump |
| Misc. | Messaging spam | Newsgroup spam | Flyposting History of spamming |
