MindComet

Major Spambot Killed

According to theregister.co.uk, a botnet (also know as Mega-D or Ozdok) which was responsible for 1/3 of all of the world’s spam has been wiped off the proverbial map. The responsible party, FireEye, analyzed the ins and outs of this botnet and attacked it’s commands and control channels, ultimately paralyzing it and rendering it useless.

The botnet operated through various control channels that sent out instructions to “zombie” machines in their network that would in turn send out spam.

Although this is great news in the long run, it won’t garner as much change as one might think, though. All of the IP addresses (more than 264,000) the botnet used were already blacklisted. For now, the ISPs will have to identify each individual IP address that was under the botnet’s voodoo hex and clean up the mess from there.

In 2008, a staggering 200 BILLION spam emails were sent per day. But now, without Mega-D looming around, that daily total will drop to around 134 billion daily spam emails. I know it’s still an overwhelming number to digest, but at least it’s a bit more manageable.

View Comments

Posted by Bryan Quilty on Nov. 10, 2009

Neosporin for your IP

If your email campaign has been experiencing an ungodly amount of bounces it may be caused by a number things: namely, your IP.  I’ve never really known the methods in repairing an IP, but recently – especially after reading this post – things have become a bit clearer. If your IP is getting bounces left and right from an ISP such as yahoo, the best “ointment” for this deliverability-wound is to send small amounts (within the 1 – 5 thousand range) daily.  Then double that amount after a week…then double that the following week.  Within 3 to 4 weeks of the ISP monitoring your messages, they should become more receptive to your bulk sends.

One thing to keep in mind for future sends: remove any and all invalid email addresses immediately.  If you keep trying to contact a Yahoo or Gmail account that isn’t there anymore, you’re going to wind up on their respective blacklists.

View Comments

Posted by MindComet on Sep. 11, 2007