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Spamtrap Race

Jan 17, 2003  By Carlie Fairchild
 in
Thought you'd never want to seek out spam intentionally? Think again!

Are you sitting around with some extra time on your hands? Excellent. We've got the perfect meaningless task for you. If you're lucky, you could even win a prize ("Oooooh", the crowd roars.)

Here's the task: Create a new spamtrap e-mail address and accumulate as much spam as you can in one week (7 days). You may do anything to publicize the address except, of course, subscribe or opt-in to any mailing list. Send us what you did with the spam, what you did to make the address visible and how much spam you received. The Linux Journal Staff will choose one grand-prize winner, who will receive a Lego Mindstorm Robotics Invention System. Entries will be accepted through January 31, 2003. E-mail your entry to: contest@linuxjournal.com.

Good luck!

email: contest@linuxjournal.com

______________________

Carlie Fairchild is the publisher of Linux Journal.

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spam address

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 10/26/2006 - 01:46.

fakemail@naplopok.hu

Oh, this is easy...

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 01/20/2003 - 03:00.

Just open a Hotmail account, no additional work necessary :-)

Re: Oh! it is very tough

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 01/24/2003 - 03:00.

It seems to be a tough job.

I need your suggestions and advices

on

kmvali@yahoo.com

I wanna become a s/w engineer related to linux based programming. SOmebody help me out.

I am from INDIA.

Re: Oh! it is very tough

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 01/26/2003 - 03:00.

post dumb questions on forums including your email address and wait for people to subscribe you to mailing lists... no further work required...

Re: Oh! it is very tough

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 01/24/2003 - 03:00.

If you think this is tough, you really, really, have no clue and should not even consider becoming any type of engineer.

Yeesh!

Re: Oh, this is easy...

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/22/2003 - 03:00.

Pst! Don't forget to fill in all those demographic data fields ;)

Choose winner...?

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 01/19/2003 - 03:00.

Uhm, I can think of some very, very Bad things to do that would attract spammers like gadflies, but I really don't want to do it...

But they're saying "choose winner", does that imply you just need to be creative and do a reasonably cool effort to catch spam, and the coolest will win, or is it just by volume?

In short, on what basis would the winner be chosen?

Re: Choose winner...?

dmarti's picture
Submitted by dmarti (not verified) on Sun, 01/19/2003 - 03:00.

It's just by volume.

The winner is the person who gets the largest count of unsolicited bulk email messags to a single address.

Re: Spamtrap Race

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 01/18/2003 - 03:00.

I wonder if uncompleted double confirms count? If I send the address, but decline or ignore the confirm, would that be allowed?

Re: Spamtrap Race

dmarti's picture
Submitted by dmarti (not verified) on Sun, 01/19/2003 - 03:00.

No; the confirmation messages are not unsolicited and therefore do not count as spam.

Re: Spamtrap Race

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 01/22/2003 - 03:00.

That makes sense. But what if you then start getting email *after* declining. I think that should count as spam.

--mdh

Re: Spamtrap Race

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 03/13/2003 - 03:00.

Yes, but the actual CONFIRM MESSAGE should not count as spam. And neither should the followup CONFIRM MESSAGE (which most systems send out after a couple of days, to remind you that you only have 24 hours left to click on the confirm link or such).

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