RE: [anti-spam-wg] Domains with MX set to localhost
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To: "'Jay Daley'" jay@localhost, anti-spam-wg@localhost
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From: "leo vegoda" leo@localhost
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Date: Wed, 11 Jan 2006 15:48:04 +0100
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Organization: RIPE Network Coordinations Centre
> -----Original Message-----
> From: anti-spam-wg-admin@localhost
> [
] On Behalf Of Jay Daley
> Sent: 11 January 2006 15:24
> Subject: Re: [anti-spam-wg] Domains with MX set to localhost
[...]
> Is there any legitimate reason that anyone knows of for people to set
> their MX records like this? If not then it seems too easy
> for a registry
> to scan the zones of all the names it knows about to look for these
> telltale indicators and compile a list of spam domains.
A while back, spammers used to send mail for a domain directly to the
lowest priority MX, rather than choosing the highest priority MX and
falling back to a lower priority MXs in order. I believe this was
because lower priority MXs would often accept more mail than the highest
priority MX.
Setting the lowest priority MX to localhost ensured that anyone
specifically targeting MXs in reverse order would be less likely to mail
you. However, spammers learn quite fast and I would guess that this
technique is probably not very useful any more.
Regards,
--
leo vegoda
RIPE NCC
Registration Services Manager