Spam and some serious ill effects

A ‘joe job’ on WritersServices

Spam, as we all know to our cost, is very annoying. But targeted spam is sinister. It has the potential to break up business relationships and even damage friendships. There is a Portuguese proverb which loosely translated says ‘to understand all is to forgive all’. If you understand a ‘joe job’ you may not forgive, but at least you will know who to blame.

A joe job is a spam attack using spoofed sender data which aims to tarnish the reputation of the apparent sender. Because the "reply-to" in the message header can be easily forged, an unwelcome email might appear to come from a friend, business or colleague. The spammers normally pick a reputable site and since WritersServices is always in the top 1% of websites in terms of web activity, it is a popular name to use. Using a reputable name as the sender increases the probability that the sender will innocently open the email. The spammers used to use random email addresses but you have sensibly learned to delete emails from strangers. So now they are using brand names like ours.

If you were to take the email’s sender information at face value, you might conclude that WritersServices has moved away from its core activity of helping writers and diversified into offering things to swallow, wear, watch and do in the last few months. This can seriously damage reputations.

But horrible as this is, the problem for sites like ours does not end there. The tsunami that follows the earthquake is the millions of emails that are turned back because mail boxes are over quota or the spammers have sent emails to a defunct address. People are sensibly changing their email address to stay ahead of the spam. Others are only accepting email from people in their address book. So we reckon half of the emails bounce. The numbers are simply staggering.

So when all these emails that we did not send are returned to us, they block the email port. This stops legitimate email getting through so the sender gets a ‘could not deliver’ message. We’re sorry about this but the email server is dealing with the deluge of messages sent to it by other mail servers who naively assume that the ‘reply to’ email address is the actual sender.

And it gets worse. Innocent sites like ours can then find themselves being blacklisted or added to spam filters as they are identified as the sender of spam. So this tactic can have serious commercial implications for a business or individual. They might not be the target, just an innocent victim.

Internet service providers could alleviate the situation. They could, for example, recognise that the ‘reply to’ address is unreliable. The only bit of information in the email-header that can be trusted is the IP address of the original sender. A bit of cross-checking would soon tell the server that a load of messages were originating from one source and are therefore suspect. Industry best practice already discourages bouncing emails but almost all of the big operators ignore this. Although it does not set out as a denial-of-service attack, ‘joe jobing’ can effectively block a site’s mail server.

So please do not blame the apparent messenger. WritersServices is still in the business of helping writers, Ebay is still running auctions and the big banks are still being banks - and continue to take all your money and then make you pay to get it back.

November 2007

Chas Jones

 ©WritersServices.com 2000-2011