I was thinking about ways to stop spammers, and I thought : what if we set up fake SMTP relays?

A fake SMTP relay could be set up such that it looks exactly like the real thing, but rather than relaying the messages just throws them away.

If enough people set up servers which are indistinguishable from SMTP relays, the spammers will have a much tougher time finding real ones.

There aren't *that* many open relays anyway, and they don't generally stay open for very long (I hope). So if you managed to outnumber the real relays say, at least 2:1, then it would become much more difficult for spammers to find the real ones.

This would in turn, reflect the market price of spamming services increasing dramatically, thus discouraging companies from using this decreasingly effective method of marketing, and decrease the spam for everyone.

Good idea?

Are there existing fake SMTP relays out there?

Comments please

Slarty