Ask HN: Why does my newsletter get so many spam sign ups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does my newsletter get so many spam sign ups?

3 pointsjoemanaco5 comments

On my website I have a simple self coded (double opt-in) newsletter sign up form.

I receive lots of spam sign ups (gmail, yahoo, aol accounts) that never get activated. I automatically clean those up after a few days.

I have no captcha because I don't like them from a UX perspective. My assumption was that because of the double opt-in process I don't need one.

But now as I get so many spam sign ups I'm wondering if I'm missing something. What's the motivation from a spammers point of view? Do they check for security vulnerabilities this way? What kind of goal do they try to achieve?

The newsletter form is on the bottom of this page: https://asylumsquare.com

Do you have anything (end subscription form etc) that might reveal if an address opened the email or accepted the signup? Could be spammers probing for valid addresses? not sure if thats a thing with email.

Yes, I do a simple email validation in PHP using the FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL filter. But it sounds silly to use a external site for this kind of validation, right?

No, I meant something that actually tells if there is a user behind the address or not.

Ah ok, I see. I have a "confirmation-thank-you" page, but it's behind a one time token that is only in the email and only valid for 48 hours. And once it's validated the token is no longer valid, so there is no way to get further information.

Once confirmed there is no other public page or anything to get a hint if the email got validated or not.

Newsletters on any site are prime candidates for spammers and malware distributors. One email reaching thousands or potentially hundreds of thousands of people is very tempting. Spammers and malware authors are getting more clever too. They have bots that pose as people and ask naive leading questions, then ultimately direct people to the watering holes.

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