Antispam list gets spammed

by admin May 4, 2006 at 8:42 am

They may’ve signed up for the service to stay free of unsolicited e-mail, but people in Blue Security’s “Do Not Intrude Registry” are getting spammed, the company said Wednesday.

What’s more, a spammer is attempting to intimidate the Blue Security customers by sending them threatening messages, according to the Israeli company, which launched its spam-fighting service in July last year.

“It had to happen. We’re amazed it’s taken so long,” said Richi Jennings, an analyst at Ferris Research.

The Do Not Intrude Registry is a list of e-mail addresses that should not be spammed. It’s encrypted, so spammers can’t extract the actual addresses. Blue Security fights spammers by crippling their Web sites, in the name of its users, with a flood of complaints. About 500,000 people have signed up for the service, Blue Security said.

But it was simple for spammers to get hold of at least some of the e-mail addresses in Blue Security’s registry, Jennings said. “A spammer has taken his list and ‘cleaned’ it against the Blue Security list. He then compared the original list with the cleaned list to figure out which addresses were removed.”

It appears spammers are passing around this list of names that purports to be the Blue Security do-not-spam list. “Levels of spam received by members of the Blue Security list have roughly doubled since May 1,” Jennings wrote.

Full story: CNET News.com