How do domain names end up on spam 'blacklists?'

[blur]

I'm just curious because where I work we use ..uummm.. less than ethical ways of getting email addresses to import into our constant contact list. We send out a few hundred, maybe a thousand, messages a week using the company domain name. Fortunately the company I work for has been doing this for years (5+) and hasn't gotten one spam report.

But one thing I do keep noticing is that the contracting department keeps asking our clients to look for contracts in their junk email folder. I am wondering if somehow email clients communicate with junk mail services to identify what domains send out bulk email? Is this possible?

[AffiliateInABox1]

Originally Posted by blur

I\'m just curious because where I work we use ..uummm.. less than ethical ways of getting email addresses to import into our constant contact list. We send out a few hundred, maybe a thousand, messages a week using the company domain name. Fortunately the company I work for has been doing this for years (5+) and hasn\'t gotten one spam report.

But one thing I do keep noticing is that the contracting department keeps asking our clients to look for contracts in their junk email folder. I am wondering if somehow email clients communicate with junk mail services to identify what domains send out bulk email? Is this possible?

Lol, yes, it is. It is very easy to determine who a spammer is, sounds like you have gotten caught by something called a \'honeypot\'. But basically, yes, when you do mass spamming, it\'s very easy to figure out who did that usually in 5-10 minutes.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by blur

But one thing I do keep noticing is that the contracting department keeps asking our clients to look for contracts in their junk email folder. I am wondering if somehow email clients communicate with junk mail services to identify what domains send out bulk email? Is this possible?

Yes, and they may have their own spam filters too.

For example, on my mail server, I have a couple addresses that are not used for anything. They are not used to sign up on lists. They are not given out. They are only hidden away in a few spots where no real person would find them and, if they did, they would not think to use it as a contact method. But, they are out there for eMail harvesters to catch. So, when an incoming eMail goes to one of those addresses, it's marked as spam which triggers the spam filter so that the message does not also reach real addresses.

There are ways of using spammers' techniques against them.

[Todd Sampson]

Hmm... and why are you using "less than ethical" ways to get email
addresses? If you are doing this then you deserved to be black listed.
I find it hard to believe you haven't got a complaint in 5 years. Most
autoresponder services will ban you for this.

-Todd

PS. Nice method Dan! I will have to try that.

[AffiliateInABox1]

Originally Posted by Todd Sampson

Hmm... and why are you using "less than ethical" ways to get email
addresses? If you are doing this then you deserved to be black listed.
I find it hard to believe you haven\'t got a complaint in 5 years. Most
autoresponder services will ban you for this.

-Todd

PS. Nice method Dan! I will have to try that.

Actually thats kind of the honeypot method I was mentioning Variations are fake domain names that don\'t exist, solely for the purpose of catching spammers. At one point in time, dmoz.org was populated with fake domains to catch spammers, and did a pretty good job. (I believe the still do, but dmoz is not as important as it was 2-3 years ago).

[blur]

Originally Posted by Todd Sampson

Hmm... and why are you using "less than ethical" ways to get email
addresses? If you are doing this then you deserved to be black listed.
I find it hard to believe you haven't got a complaint in 5 years. Most
autoresponder services will ban you for this.

-Todd

PS. Nice method Dan! I will have to try that.

I'm sorry, their has been spam complaints but not enough for ConstantContact to shut the company I work for down (as a CC customer).

I just started with the company and have no control of how the addresses are imported to the service. It took me a year here in Michigan to find this job so I'm not going to make waves. I don't agree and can't find another full-time right now. Food on the table out-weighs sending potential spam. Some addresses are gathered from cold-calls and some are copy-pasted from the internet.

[ed41143]

blur, don't blame you in the least, if it were me and I had spent a year looking for a job, well, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to do exactly what they told me to do.

Of course, there are always the elitest among us, who talk big, but would probably be helping them scrap for email addresses themselves if they were in your shoes, so don't pay any attention to them, as they have probably never been unemployed "yet", but as this economy worsens, lets see what they are saying then.

Myself, I unemployed myself back in April, as I was in the real estate industry and didn't like what I was seeing, so I put my own license in what I like to call "escrow", but it is called something else. I simply didn't like what I was seeing happening in the industry and decided I didn't want to do it anymore. Nice to be in a position to do that, know what I mean?

Now am back at marketing and some other things and am so much happier now.

Good luck with the new job blur.

[blur]

Thanks ed41143, I appreciate that!

[patselby]

You might suggest that they use a software called message magic which is a skype add on to get contacts