{"id":1376,"date":"2003-08-18T08:43:05","date_gmt":"2003-08-18T15:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/aa\/2003\/08\/18\/spam-in-my-name-and-challenge-response\/"},"modified":"2003-08-18T08:43:05","modified_gmt":"2003-08-18T15:43:05","slug":"spam-in-my-name-and-challenge-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2003\/08\/18\/spam-in-my-name-and-challenge-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Spam in my name and challenge-response"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently discovered<\/a> that some spam was being sent with my address as the return address–the bounces were coming to me.<\/p>\n

Other than pissing me off, I wasn’t sure what those smegma-sucking spamming scumbags hoped to accomplish by doing this. Now I have an idea: it may be to undermine challenge-response spam-blocking systems.<\/p>\n

These challenge-response systems are a klunky way of dealing with spam: if Alice sends Bob an e-mail, and she’s not on Bob’s whitelist, the system sends Alice an automated response asking her to visit a web page and prove that she’s a real human being worthy of Bob’s valuable attention. This usually involves looking at a graphic showing distorted text, and typing the text into a box.<\/p>\n

Even if this all works according to plan (and there are plenty of reasons why it might not<\/a>), it’s very annoying. But as soon as spammers start sending out e-mail purporting to come from real people, it really goes to hell:<\/p>\n