It's nearing the end of the month, and I suspect that the folks at Koli-Lõks OÜ are getting ready to post another month's worth of spam trap data. For fun, I thought I would share March's data, with their permission.
Who are they and what is this data?
I went to their very own Atro Tossavainen, whom I have known in anti-abuse circles for years, and asked him how he would describe things. He writes:
Koli-Lõks OÜ is a spam intelligence company, that is to say, we provide information about who is sending bulk or transactional email to whom. We track email to email addresses around the world. A majority of the domains that we report on are actually owned by ourselves. Our domain portfolio includes domain names in legacy TLDs, a decent subset of all the ccTLDs, and new TLDs, and consists of dead domain traps, typotraps and a smattering of pristine domains.
Is it interesting? What does it tell us?
I find this data very interesting. It's a realm I'm familiar with (I run my own spamtrap networks, but on a much smaller scale than theirs), and this kind of data is very, very useful for those of us in the anti-spam and anti-abuse world to be aware of various malicious sources of email traffic.
This data shows spamtrap hits -- mail to invalid/typo and other email addresses and domains -- being sent by some of the most well known email sending platforms out there. This traffic shows a mix of things; some amount of this mail could just be legitimate send attempts to legitimate signups, where those submitting their email addresses fumbled the entry (things that could be potentially helped by email validation, or even better, by double opt-in), and others could be mail being sent forever to addresses who are never opening and engaging with the mail (senders not paying attention to the subscribe lifecycle). It will also include purchased list data and some significant amount of malicious or unwanted content, whether it be spam, phish or spoof.
I highlight this data not to name and shame anyone, but to shed a bit of light on a challenge that those of us trying to stop spam have to deal with -- those of us manning these "spamtrap networks" just see these big firehoses of traffic and none of it is mail aimed at legitimate recipients.
Smart folks who work for abuse and compliance teams at various email service provider and newsletter platforms monitor data like this and work on ways to help reduce their measurable footprint on charts like these; and it's one reason why you might hear people like them (and me) advocating for list hygiene, proper bounce management, and double opt-in signup processes.
It's nearing the end of the month, and I suspect that the folks at Koli-Lõks OÜ are getting ready to post another month's worth of spam trap data. For fun, I thought I would share March's data, with their permission.
Who are they and what is this data?
I went to their very own Atro Tossavainen, whom I have known in anti-abuse circles for years, and asked him how he would describe things. He writes:
Koli-Lõks OÜ is a spam intelligence company, that is to say, we provide information about who is sending bulk or transactional email to whom. We track email to email addresses around the world. A majority of the domains that we report on are actually owned by ourselves. Our domain portfolio includes domain names in legacy TLDs, a decent subset of all the ccTLDs, and new TLDs, and consists of dead domain traps, typotraps and a smattering of pristine domains.
Is it interesting? What does it tell us?
I find this data very interesting. It's a realm I'm familiar with (I run my own spamtrap networks, but on a much smaller scale than theirs), and this kind of data is very, very useful for those of us in the anti-spam and anti-abuse world to be aware of various malicious sources of email traffic.
This data shows spamtrap hits -- mail to invalid/typo and other email addresses and domains -- being sent by some of the most well known email sending platforms out there. This traffic shows a mix of things; some amount of this mail could just be legitimate send attempts to legitimate signups, where those submitting their email addresses fumbled the entry (things that could be potentially helped by email validation, or even better, by double opt-in), and others could be mail being sent forever to addresses who are never opening and engaging with the mail (senders not paying attention to the subscribe lifecycle). It will also include purchased list data and some significant amount of malicious or unwanted content, whether it be spam, phish or spoof.
I highlight this data not to name and shame anyone, but to shed a bit of light on a challenge that those of us trying to stop spam have to deal with -- those of us manning these "spamtrap networks" just see these big firehoses of traffic and none of it is mail aimed at legitimate recipients.
Smart folks who work for abuse and compliance teams at various email service provider and newsletter platforms monitor data like this and work on ways to help reduce their measurable footprint on charts like these; and it's one reason why you might hear people like them (and me) advocating for list hygiene, proper bounce management, and double opt-in signup processes.
Somthing to Keep an Eye On
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