Understanding How Spammers Steal Your E-Mail Address: An Analysis of the First Six Months of Data from Project Honey Pot

This paper summarizes and analyses data compiled on the activities of email harvesters gathered through a 5,000+ member honey pot system that issues unique addresses based on a visitor’s IP address and specific spidering time. The project, known as Project Honey Pot, has provided data about the geographical source of harvesting and mail processing, the sending patterns of different types of spammers as well as list management behavior. In addition to providing guidance for website administrators trying to forestall harvesting, the Project data also suggest that anti-harvesting regulations offer a new, potentially successful prosecutorial avenues against spam as well as inform potential amendments to current anti-spam laws that may help those efforts.