Came across this interesting article. But what do you all think?
Interesting. That reminds me, I need to update one of my scripts.
+time.sleep(1.2)
Wouldn’t this effectively mark all messages from a user who isn’t using JavaScript as spam? 🙃
Additionally, any spam tools could end run around this with Selenium and a sleep. idk if that would introduce enough of a delay to make running the spam campaign not worth it, since you wouldn’t really know what sites have the form delay you’d have to sleep on all of them for whatever time delay you think is worth it for maximum coverage.
This is a super interesting defense in depth strategy that i’d never thought of before though.
Apparently the rate of users not using JS is about 0.2% (and has been that way for 10 years), so just applying this solution the the large margins as he’s doing, I’d probably just make an alternate message saying “please enable javascript to contact me” and let that be that.
Eh. These sorts of metrics aren’t always accurate. And the source company did the study in 2016, which was a very very different internet, and doesn’t go into detail about how they were able to determine this number. I would take that with a grain of salt. I agree that just having a notice somewhere is better than not, though.
Speaking of a “black hole” email address, are there any addresses set up for the purpose of catching spam? Like if Gmail had an address for spam that contributed to its spam detection.
The Stalwart mail server allows for that. They call them “spam traps”.
Basically, it’s a real email address that literally never gets used or referenced anywhere, thus assuring any email received is unsolicited by definition. Stalwart’s spam engine uses any such email to help train the spam filter.
I can’t imagine that Stalwart is only one implementing such a system.
I’ve never used Stalwart, but it’s the email server I’ve selected should I decide to do what everyone tells me I shouldn’t: run my own server for me, my wife, and the two domains we control. Their documentation is basically a master class in email.
“Spam trap” and “spam honeypot” are exactly the keywords to search for. I found a bunch of info about some services you can use to set them up. I’d recommend adding “-avoid” to your search filters because every email marketer has their own article titled “About Spam Traps and How to Avoid Them” which just pollutes search results if you’re actually looking to set up your own.
Thanks!
