Barracuda clicking all links in emails

A number of people have asked me recently if I know anything about appliances clicking all the links in emails. Some of those people have asked specifically about Barracuda, some have just asked if I knew of any filters that clicked links.
The answer is, yes, there are cases where spam filters have followed all the links in an email. One of the filters that I know has done this in the past is Barracuda. Based on discussions with the different people who are reporting this behavior, it does seem that this is happening more often. One person did mention that they were primarily seeing this with mail where the click domains were different from the From: domains.
I’m still working on getting more information from folks, and will update if I hear anything more. I’m also working on some advice for folks who get caught in this.
If you have experience with Barracuda (or other spam filters) clicking all the links in an email, drop me an email (contact)

Yahoo retiring user IDs: why you shouldn't worry
Strangers, connections and social media

Related Posts

Spamhaus rising?

Ken has a good article talking about how many ESPs have tightened their standards recently and are really hounding their customers to stop sending mail recipients don’t want and don’t like. Ken credits much of this change to Spamhaus and their new tools.

Read More

Uploading your address book to social media

I am one of the moderators of a discussion list working on a document about getting off blocklists. If anyone not on the list attempts to post to the list I get a moderation request. One came through while I was gone.
linkedinspam Now, I don’t really think Jim Mills wants to be friends with a mailing list. I think he probably gave LinkedIn his email password and LinkedIn went through and scraped addresses out of his address book and sent invitations to all those addresses.
I don’t have any problem with connecting to people on social media. I do even understand that some people have no problem giving their passwords over to let social media sites plunder their address books and find connections. What I do have a problem with is social media sites that don’t do any pruning or editing of the scraped addresses before sending invitations.
In this case, the email address, like many mailing lists, has in the email address “mailman.” While it’s probably impossible to weed out every mailing list, support address and commercial sender, it doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult to run some minor word matching and filtering. It’s not even like those addresses have to be removed from invites. Instead they could be presented to the user for confirmation that these are real people and addresses.
Yes, it’s friction in the transaction and it costs money to do and do well. But those costs and friction are currently offloaded onto uninvolved third parties.

Read More

Filtering is not just about spam

A lot of filters started out just as filters against spam. But over the years they’ve morphed into more general blocks against dangerous or problematic email. There’s a lot of crime and bad behavior on the internet, much of it using email as a conduit or vector. Filtering is so much more than stopping spam now. It’s as much, or more, about stopping crime.
Email filters are essential to protect us from scammers. Sometimes I forget this, and then I read about a grandmother getting swindled by a Nigerian scammer and ending up dead.
There are real consequences to poor filtering and there is real crime facilitated by email. It’s easy to forget this as we deal with the email that gets caught in filters when they shouldn’t.
Filters are one of the first lines of defense against online crime.
Not only does filtering stop crime, but they also keep email working. An unfiltered mail stream is an ugly, unreadable, unworkable mess.

Read More