The ongoing battle against SPAM…

Yep we have all had it, that fantastic email advertising unwanted goods, especially when they land in your corporate accounts!

Well I try very hard to keep my email address hidden, or ensure only a select few people have access to it. That being said, my website form redirects all enquiries to my main email address and just recently I noticed I was receiving more enquiries than I should.

In the past I used to receive a tonne of SPAM emails, too many to mention, or delete! I guess I learnt the errors of my ways and decided it would be best to remove any email addresses from public access. With my current email address I have it advertised no-where and this has essentially stopped all SPAM email entering my inbox.

I am not surprised that SPAMMERS have found new ways to target users, and was in no way shocked to discover my first web form based SPAM arrive on my inbox a few months back. As it was on its lonely self I just deleted it, forgot about it and a few days went by until the next one entered. This carried on for a few months, and it wasn’t until recently, when I started spending a bit more time on my website, getting the name out there, trying to build links etc that I noticed the situation becoming excessively worse.

So I started to take drastic action and began blocking their IP addresses. The answer was finally at hand I felt, shockingly I noticed this only seemed to spur on the amount of SPAM entered into my form, in fact having just removed the last 10 pieces I can see that 2 more have entered my inbox. In the past I would have probably lost the plot smashed up my keyboard and replied to the email address with threats about spam acts, privacy laws etc etc, however now I decided I would let it go.

Instead of SPAMMERS harvesting my email address (which I hope that cannot do) I will instead be harvesting their IP addresses. Having double checked most of them out already (with the help of Google Search) I can see that a lot of them are SPAM offenders. My list has grown considerably, and it seems the more I block, the more frequent I receive SPAM messages, however whilst the frequency has increased, it does also seem that the mails are coming from the same IP addresses, which hopefully means I may well be that I am slowly winning the battle.

I respect the fact that some intelligent person has written some code to crawl the web and auto fill in forms promoting all sorts of things, however it would appear that these same people have not engaged their brains in the slightest when it actually comes to the whole concept of understanding their audience? Because surely if SPAM was successful they would know what percentage of their audience respond to their messages. They would have detailed reports about their ROI, demographic data, Cost Per Action etc. They would know what frequency to send messages to their audience, and of course they would have politely received opt-in before sending a message (this last point is of course questionable with web forms).

So why is it then, that someone like myself, who only happens to delete the messages, whilst harvesting the IP address, only sees an increase? SPAM is resource and marketing wastage, it is poorly targeted and I would guess conversion rates are now lower than 0.01%, but I suppose thinking about SPAM as a marketing tool would be too much for some techy person laughing because I have received more SPAM by blocking their IP address, well here is a little present for you all, a list of blocked IP addresses I have harvested so far, be sure to add these to your own blocked list:

85.185.174.5 
121.100.50.7 
72.55.160.180 
78.157.143.161 
150.146.129.51 
155.52.218.53 
61.19.54.164 
129.41.196.150 
147.91.1.41 
210.19.71.60 
83.236.157.231 
85.88.14.31 
74.92.242.25 
130.94.69.95 
81.200.16.36 
91.121.84.156 
89.149.242.88 
87.239.19.15 
12.150.181.20 
203.158.221.227 
84.47.226.221 
85.124.67.80 
217.149.246.98 
137.164.143.110 
218.75.123.214 
203.123.182.34 
64.47.112.164 
85.117.156.200 
192.192.35.235 
218.7.13.151 
132.183.13.4 
62.12.138.134 
87.234.234.66 
216.240.136.189 
203.234.238.195 
87.234.234.68 
193.37.152.250 
122.213.250.14 
91.121.87.207 
164.116.224.10 
91.121.124.37 
85.214.75.160 
62.101.95.202 
129.7.249.41 
222.73.41.9 
216.31.225.6 
74.52.73.210 
218.206.94.132 
121.32.26.82 
92.48.84.209 
89.28.127.255 
202.85.54.90 
193.146.209.5 
193.45.97.249 
220.218.98.194 
85.238.101.170 
121.11.69.194 
124.217.231.230 
203.82.52.210 
205.178.184.113 
203.121.133.22 
213.27.150.198 
203.94.85.66 
218.188.73.199 

I will of course be adding to the list, and will try and give an update in a months time. :) 

Filed under: Ramblings by Moley
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