What is a Dictionary Attack?

A Dictionary Attack is a spamming technique where spammers submit thousands or millions of email messages with random addresses, such as joe@domain.com, john@domain.com, etc. Very often these email messages contain hidden code that reports back to the spammer when the email has been opened, thus letting the spammer know which email addresses are valid. These are then added automatically to the spammer's list, which is then resold to spammers world wide.

Attacks such as this also consume your network bandwidth and system resources since your server needs to process each request, even if it is an invalid address.

If you're using FilterPoint, there's an excellent chance that the original SPAM email will not be forwarded to your mail system, so your risk is lowered. When deciding which administration method you want to use on your FilterPoint.com Mail Handling page, there are choices that you can make to further reduce your risk against a dictionary attacks (see MicroManager method).