Fake subscriptions with real email addresses

[User]

Hi there

I am currently experiencing lots of newsletter subscriptions that look real. All of them belong to corporate domains [@company.com] and follow a [FIRSTNAME].[LASTNAME] pattern.
Checking, for instance, linkedIn or other professional networks, I can see the people in question are employees of said companies.
Surprisingly though, the have never heard of my site nor have they signed up for my newsletter.

Now, how is this possible?
After subscribing for my newsletter (www.offroad-days.eu), a confirmation email is sent out with an activation link in it. My site is not important enough to run a big attack against it. Also, I doubt email servers or accounts of several large and mid-scale companies are compromised (which is the most obvious explanation, if you ask me).

What else can be misconfigured on my end causing such issues?

[Michael]

Hi,

the “importance” of your website doesn’t really matter when dealing with fake subscriptions. What these spammy bots do is scraping the web (LinkedIn, corporate websites, other social networks) for lists of legit email addresses and then use them to subscription-bomb millions of websites with a subscription form. In your case, double opt in is already mitigating the issue, because of course those bots won’t be able to click on the confirmation link. However, please check that you have the antispam settings enabled by going to Subscription > Antispam.

Michael

[Author]

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