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Summary

Email listbombing and bot sign-up attacks are increasingly sophisticated threats that flood inboxes with unwanted subscription emails, creating a significant nuisance for recipients and damaging sender reputation for businesses. These attacks, often originating from automated bots, overwhelm email systems and can lead to legitimate emails being blocked or flagged as spam. Understanding the tactics behind these attacks and implementing robust preventative measures is crucial for maintaining email deliverability and protecting your brand's standing.

What email marketers say

Email marketers often face the direct consequences of listbombing and bot sign-up attacks, which can quickly inflate their lists with bogus contacts and harm their sending reputation. Their insights typically center on practical solutions and the immediate challenges posed by these malicious activities, especially when relying on third-party platforms for user management.

Marketer view

Email marketer from Email Geeks observes an alarming uptick in bot attacks, particularly noting a shift from Mandarin-based attacks to Russian ones in recent weeks. This indicates a dynamic threat landscape where attackers constantly change their methods and origins.They highlight that the bots are creating users with names containing links to Russian sites and utilizing mail.ru addresses. The goal appears to be to trick the mail.ru users into clicking the embedded links in the welcome emails they receive.

16 May 2019 - Email Geeks

Marketer view

Email marketer from Spiceworks Community shares a critical issue where a subscription bombing attack is causing thousands of unwanted emails daily. This individual has tried implementing rules to block emails from overseas domains and non-English languages, but the sheer volume remains a challenge.The core problem lies in the difficulty of marking such a high volume of emails as junk in bulk rather than individually. This indicates a need for more automated and scalable solutions beyond manual filtering.

22 Jun 2023 - Spiceworks Community

What the experts say

Email deliverability experts offer a more technical and strategic perspective on preventing listbombing and bot sign-up attacks. They emphasize comprehensive solutions that go beyond simple CAPTCHAs, focusing on deeper analysis of traffic patterns, user-agent strings, and the overall security posture of web applications and integrations.

Expert view

Email expert from Email Geeks suggests that a new vector of abuse has emerged in the email world, one that individual brands find hard to catch, but its impact on reputation can be very severe, even leading to Spamhaus listings. They define it as "mail bombing," identifying it as an active and serious threat to both consumers and brands.The expert highlights the gravity of this threat, emphasizing its ability to cause significant reputation damage and disrupt email deliverability.

16 May 2019 - Email Geeks

Expert view

Email expert from Spam Resource observes that mail bombing attacks often target various web forms, rather than specifically focusing on large or well-known companies. This indicates that bots scan the internet for any exploitable forms, regardless of the site's size or profile.The expert's perspective implies that all website owners, regardless of their scale, must be vigilant and implement protective measures for all their public-facing forms to prevent abuse.

20 Feb 2023 - Spam Resource

What the documentation says

Official documentation and security advisories often provide fundamental and recommended practices for combating email listbombing and bot attacks. These sources typically focus on established security protocols, platform-specific defenses, and broader industry standards to ensure email system integrity and user protection.

Technical article

Klaviyo's help center documentation explains that they have a dedicated system in place to prevent list bombing, known as the List Bombing IP Management system. The primary purpose of this system is to flag or block suspicious IP addresses associated with list bombing activities.This preventative measure is crucial for maintaining the integrity of their platform and protecting their users' email lists from fraudulent sign-ups that can degrade sender reputation and deliverability.

10 Mar 2023 - Klaviyo Help Center

Technical article

Dartmouth College's Knowledge Base defines email bombing as a scenario where an attacker registers a target email address with hundreds or thousands of mailing lists. This type of attack aims to overwhelm the victim's inbox, making it difficult to discern legitimate emails from the flood of unwanted subscriptions.The documentation underscores the nature of the threat as a denial-of-service attack, highlighting its disruptive potential and the need for protective measures to secure inboxes.

01 Jan 2022 - Dartmouth College - Knowledge Base

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