Collecting Proprietary Email Addresses and Increasing Spam
Spammers today use sophisticated techniques to bypass typical email server checking mechanisms in order to retrieve valuable information, such as a list of valid email addresses. One of these techniques is called a Directory Harvest Attack, or DHA.
During a DHA, spammers attempt to deliver messages to multiple addresses, such as johndoe@yourcompany.com, jdoe@yourcompany.com, and john@yourcompany.com. Addresses that are not rejected by the receiving mail server are determined as valid. These addresses are compiled and sold to other spammers worldwide. Within hours, a brand new email box can be full of unsolicited, junk email.
A successful DHA can net a spammer thousands of corporate email addresses in just a few minutes. The results force unprotected corporations to incur higher email system costs, face increased breaches in security and decrease their email system's reliability.
