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Email Subscription DDOS Attacks: Why You Should Secure Your Email Signup Forms Now
Email Subscription DDOS attacks can turn into the biggest threat to your website since these attacks can land your website in SBL (The Spamhaus Blocklist). The Spamhaus Project is one of the world’s most leading organizations that provide precise intelligence threat to internet networks all around the globe.
Its prime goal is to track down the spam emails and other spam-related activities. The organization has launched its blocklistto save the mail users from email subscription bombing. SBL blocks the IP addresses and URLs that are involved in sending, tagging, hosting,or, creating spam emails.
But what all of this has to do with your marketing campaign? Email Subscription DDOS attacks can damage your marketing email. Let’s dig into the details.
What is an Email Subscription DDOS attack?
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS attack) means to interrupt the traffic of a service provider (website) to make it inoperable. Nowadays, Email Subscription DDOS attacks are the lingering threat for websites since many websites have become the target of email bombing subscription attacks without being aware of it.
Email bombing means sending a great number of emails to mail users that make their email accounts unusable or cause the network to crash. To start email bombing, the attacker uses basic details that present the user's email address to a huge number of subscription forms through multiple unprotected sites.
Websites withunprotected subscription forms are highly prone to becoming a victim of DDOS attack and ultimately ending up on aSpamhaus deny listing. If a website gets added to that list, it would fundamentally reduce its email delivery up to 40%, which will negatively affect its marketing campaign.
Therefore, if your website collects email addresses of people for email marketing then you need to secure your email signup forms now.But before jumping to that here is some basic information about DDOS attacks that you must know.
Why Do DDOS Attacks Even Take Place?
You must be wondering that why DDOS attacks even exist? Why does email subscription is being used for email bombing? And maybe you are trying to think through the motive behind the email bombing?
Well, the very common reason behind this malicious activity is just to irritate the mail users. It is also usually done to target mail operations and disturb their work. You might find this surprising, but email subscription attacks are also used as a component of a bigger plan. DDOS attacks can be part of fraud schemes.
For instance, targeting someone’s bank account or any other financial depository to gain unauthorized possession. When the bank or the relevant financial institution noticesunusual activities and they send you a warning email. Since your mailbox is filled with spam emails due to email bombing, that warning emails go unnoticed. Hence, you fall prey to a bigger fraudulent trap just through email bombing.
Hence, if you've ever experienced email bombing thenperhaps the attacker’s purpose was to interrupt your operation and divert you away from a forthcoming danger.These ongoing email bombing attacks are especially difficult to deal with because they direct a whole stream of email that manages to skip spam filters.
Therefore, email bombing is hard to prohibit without upsetting the conveyance of genuine email from the websites you have subscribed to receive emails from.
DDOS Attack’s Effects On Your Business
It’s not an exception that your website falls prey to these malicious activities on the internet. Many of you must be experiencing it on different levels. In such situations, when these activates hurt your website and business by abusing the Internet, you need to consider the following scenarios:
The very first situation, you need to consider, is how Email Subscription DDOS attacksare affecting your website and business?
After the detailed analysis of the DDOS attacks on your website, you need to monitor your email and website’s features to find out if they are permitting this type of attack?
Then consider the actions you need to take immediately to prohibit such attacks. Also, you should consider protecting your recipients or subscribers from being the target of DDOS attacks.
How to Secure your Email Signup form?
Here are a few tips to skippingemail subscription DDOS attacks and making your email signup forms more secure:
1. Use reCAPTCHA:
The very first thing you should do to secure your sign-up formsis to use reCaptcha. Even if you don’t know what reCaptcha is, you must have used it. Remember how many times you have answered a question or marked the boxes with the picture of a hill? Well, that’s exactly what reCaptcha is. With the help of these questions or scrambled letters, it is verified that the activity is being done by a human being and notby a Spambot.
2. Use COI (confirmed opt-in):
Another thing you can do to make your email signup subscription form more secure is to use COI. Have you ever filled a firm or signed up somewhere and then you are asked to review the confirmation email in your mailbox? You must have.
Therefore, you can use Confirmed Opt-In and send an email to the mailing address of the recipient at the time of sign up. This confirmation email has a link that the account holder should click to confirm that it’s a human activity and not a computer meditated.
Once your recipient has confirmed through COI, you can add them to your email subscriber’s list.
3. Clear Email List:
Another tip for you to not become the victim of DDOS attacks is to clean up your email list. A little more sorted email list will not onlymake your work easier but also will help skip email bombing.
Pro tip: remove all the inactive emails; even if a Spambot enters your email list, it will not be able to attack a lot of your subscribers.
Conclusion
Email subscription DDOS attacks are becoming more and more severe and if you want to skip these attacks, you need to take the precautionary measures which we have explained above. In this rapid spread of frauds, the businessmen and marketers need to be aware of these forthcoming schemes. Thus, stay vigilant, stay updated.
