Process
The precise process by which SPEWS gathered data about spam sources is unknown to the public, and it is likely that its operators used multiple techniques.
SPEWS seemed to collect some information from honeypots—mail servers or single email addresses to which no legitimate mail is received. These may be dummy addresses which have never sent any email (and therefore could not have requested to be subscribed to any legitimate mailing list). They may also be placed as bait in the header of a Usenet post or on a Web page, where a spammer might discover them and choose to spam them.
The SPEWS Web site makes clear that when spam was received, the operators filed a complaint with the ISP or other site responsible for the spam source. Only if the spam continued after this complaint was the source listed. However, SPEWS is anonymous—when these complaints were sent, they are not marked as being from SPEWS, and the site was not told that ignoring the complaint would result in a listing. This had the effect of determining the ISP's response to a normal user's spam complaint, and also discouraged listwashing—continuing to spam, but with the complaining address removed from the target list.
If the spam did not stop over time, SPEWS increased the size of the address range listed through a process referred to as "escalation". This process was repeated, conceivably until the entire netblock owned by the offending service provider was listed or the block is large enough that the service provider is encouraged to take action by the complaints of its paying customers.
Read more about this topic: Spam Prevention Early Warning System
Famous quotes containing the word process:
“The practice of S/M is the creation of pleasure.... And that’s why S/M is really a subculture. It’s a process of invention. S/M is the use of a strategic relationship as a source of pleasure.”
—Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
“The a priori method is distinguished for its comfortable conclusions. It is the nature of the process to adopt whatever belief we are inclined to, and there are certain flatteries to the vanity of man which we all believe by nature, until we are awakened from our pleasing dream by rough facts.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)
“To exist as an advertisement of her husband’s income, or her father’s generosity, has become a second nature to many a woman who must have undergone, one would say, some long and subtle process of degradation before she sunk [sic] so low, or grovelled so serenely.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)