Mail Drop: An email address set up to receive email resulting from spam sent from a different ISP. The spammer will cancel the account from which the spam originated in an attempt to avoid detection.
Munging: A technique to protect email addresses from harvesting by changing them and rendering them invalid. Recipients of an email from a ‘munged’ address are told how to decode it, so that they can then reply to a valid address. (See also obfuscation.)
Morph: A method that a spammer uses to avoid detection by anti spam software that involves modifying an email header.
Mousetrapping: A technique that page-jackers use that trick the user into visiting an illegitimate site, and after doing so, when trying to leave, they encounter only additional, unwanted pages.
NDR Spam: Uses a faked standard email non-delivery report (NDR) that a recipient will think is genuine, tricking them into opening an attachment that is spam. Spammers can send such an NDR directly or make a legitimate server send it for them, adding to its credibility.
Network Check (also known as reverse DNS check): When an anti-spam engine uses a Domain Name System to check an email’s IP address to ensure that it originated from a valid domain name or web address.
Newsgroup: An electronic forum where readers post articles and follow-up messages on specified topics. Newsgroups are often targeted by spammers seeking to harvest email addresses.
Obfuscation: When spammers attempt to hide data to prevent its detection. This also occurs when email recipients use HTML or JavaScript to obscure mailto links and email addresses so that addresses remain readable and clickable, but cannot be harvested. (See also Munging.)
Open relay: An SMTP email server that allows the third-party relay of email messages. The relay feature is a part of all SMTP-based servers and it has legitimate uses, but spammers have learned how to locate unprotected servers and hijack them to send spam.
Opt-in: The process of agreeing to receive email from a business source. Double opt-in refers to a double-check procedure in which a decision to be included on a mailing list is confirmed.
Opt-out: The process of declining to receive email from a business source or unsubscribing if the recipient is already on a mailing list.
Page-jacking: This involves stealing the contents of a website by copying some of its pages, placing them on a site that appears to be legitimate, and having the contents indexed by major search engines, so that unsuspecting users can be tricked into linking to the illegitimate site. (See also Mousetrapping.)
Phishing: Pronounced “fishing,” this involves creating a replica of a legitimate web page to hook users and trick them into submitting personal or financial information or passwords.
Phreaking: This involves illegally breaking into the telephone network to make free long-distance phone calls or to tap phone lines. This term is also used to include the act of breaching the security of any network.
Ratware: Software that spammers use to automate spam campaigns, coordinate spam services, and generate, send and track spam messages.
Real-time Black List (RBL): A publicized list of IP addresses known to be sources of spam, which can be used to create a network blacklist to filter out mail originating from these addresses. (See dnsBL.)
Spam: All unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and unsolicited bulk email (UBE) that a recipient does not want to receive. (See also CSS spam, NDR spam and ham.)
Spambot: A program that spammers use to harvest email addresses from the internet.
Spam Trap: An option in an online form that is pre-selected by default, so that unwary users opt-in to receive spam. It can also be used to refer to a software filter that blocks email addresses known to send spam.
Spoofing: When spammers forge an email address to hide the origin of a spam message. Email scammers and virus writers also use this trick. Scammers spoof address lines to fool people into thinking an email has arrived from a legitimate source, such as an online bank. Similarly, virus writers have passed off viruses as security patches by spoofing their origin as being, for example, from Microsoft technical support.
Tarpitting: The use of traffic monitoring to identify remote IP addresses sending a suspiciously large volume of email. Access to the mail system from suspected spam addresses can then be slowed or temporarily suspended.
Teergrube (or tarpit): An intentionally slow server that aims to trap spammers using harvesting programs.
Web Bug: A Web Bug is small graphic that is inserted in an email or web page that alerts a spammer when a message is read or previewed.
Whitelist: A list of external email addresses, IP addresses, and domains trusted by the entire organization or individual users. All mail from these addresses is delivered, bypassing the spam filters.
Note: Just like blacklists, there are four terms that map to analogous black list terms:
RWL — Real-time white list. These are lists of IP addresses that have somehow been verified to be from a known good host. Often to be on a RWL, companies will pay to be listed and there may be a penalty if they do send spam.
DNSWL — same as RWL
Whitelist — a user-defined list of email addresses, hosts, domains, subjects, etc.
Static Whitelist — same as Whitelist
Zombie: An insecure web server or computer that is hijacked and used in an DoS Attack or to send spam.
Hope you found this helpful.
Take care,
Larry Phelps
