My dpreview-only email address was just spammed!

Prognathous said:

Too bad "Keep my email address private" was not set. Don't you
think this is the kind of setting that should be on by default?

Click to expand...

How about this one.

Next time you attach your email address, make it something like this:

[email protected]

So do us a favor and read a bit before trolling, it will at least make you look like a knowledgeable troll.

Prog.

For starters, I never got any email to this address besides mail from dpreview.com (e.g. account confirmation).

And manual harvesting is still harvesting. The result is I got spam, aka "unsolicited commercial mail". If this address ends up on spammers lists, I'll just shut it down for anyone but dpreview.com (using Sieve), but why should I have to bother? Why should people without knowledge on how to write Sieve scripts should be exposed by default?

Prog.

1. I never said dpreview are spammers. I just said my address was harvested off dpreview by a spammer.

2. I don't need any special tools to fight spam. I already use disposable addresses, subdomains, aliases, Seive scripts and so on. I have very active email account with virtually zero spam in years, so I can safely say I have the upper hand on spammers. Too bad most people don't have all those tools and are thus very exposed to this mis-chosen default.

Prog.

Please explain.

Prog.

Bottom line: I got unsolicited commercial mail due to a spammer harvesting my address off these forums.

It doesn't have to be like that.

Prog.

IF the email address was taken from your profile then it was done manually by someone (not harvested automatically), it's easy to protect your email address by checking the option in the profile.

Prognathous said:

Bottom line: I got unsolicited commercial mail due to a spammer
harvesting my address off these forums.

It doesn't have to be like that.

Prog.

Click to expand...

--
Phil Askey
Editor / Owner, dpreview.com

we have used this service for several years now and it works better than any software or other anti- spam device that we have found

http://spamarrest.com/affl?222804

they have a 30 day trial version
we tried it for about 10 days and went with it and have been very satisfied

--
Steven Lott
http://www.LottsPhoto.com/ProTips.htm

Make a new mailbox. Don't use it, dont disclose it to ANYBODY. Occasionally check your email. In my experience it does not take longer than a few days to get the first spam email.

Sadly, this is how it works. I am not particularly happy about regular junk mail either. When I found out that university sells their student addresses - I was furious. But americans think it is acceptable. Strange world.

a

amitis said:

Make a new mailbox. Don't use it, dont disclose it to ANYBODY.
Occasionally check your email. In my experience it does not take
longer than a few days to get the first spam email.

Click to expand...

If the user name is guessable, and spammers know the mail server exists, it'll eventually be found. But both of those conditions must be met.

I have had two yahoo! email account for years. One is a combination of a dozen randomly chosen characters. It has never received any spam. Another account is my initials and last name, and it receives thousands of spams every week.

My work email address, and the addresses of all of my coworkers, stayed spam-free until late last year. They are all easily guessable addresses (first names), but we're a small company and the domain wasn't known to spammers. At first the spam trickled in to one or two addresses (harvested from an infected computer at a client?). Within a few months all addresses were hit.

Here are a couple of questions.

1. Was the account with a well know email provider or isp provider or have you received spam on a different account through the same email provider?
2. Was the name you used a common name with no distinguishing numbers on it?

3. Have you used the that name with a different email account that has been spammend before?
4. Have you upset anyone here before?

If the answer is yes to most if not all of the questions above, the spammer probably just guessed your email address. There are plenty of bots out there that just go through and guess email addresses based on previously known good addresses. In other words they take the name from one account and apply it to numerous email providers.

for instance [email protected], [email protected], etc.

Or even if you have a specific spam account that you use to sign up for things and say the name on the account is [email protected], a spammer will take hotrod1 and apply it to @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc.

Now if you had your own website, like Idontlikespamatall.net, chances are that a spammer wouldn't try to guess email addresses at an email account from this site like [email protected] would not be guessed. Unless of course your junk email address is [email protected] in which case there is a small possibility that they might fish for email addresses using that url.

Prognathous said:

For starters, I never got any email to this address besides mail
from dpreview.com (e.g. account confirmation).

And manual harvesting is still harvesting. The result is I got
spam, aka "unsolicited commercial mail". If this address ends up on
spammers lists, I'll just shut it down for anyone but dpreview.com
(using Sieve), but why should I have to bother? Why should people
without knowledge on how to write Sieve scripts should be exposed
by default?

Prog.

Click to expand...

--
Brian

All it takes is one of the employee's using his or her email address to sign up for some freebie on the net and the rest is history.

I usually use email addresses like [email protected] or some other stupid websites name for an email address to sign upfor freebies on the net.

nickleback said:

My work email address, and the addresses of all of my coworkers,
stayed spam-free until late last year. They are all easily
guessable addresses (first names), but we're a small company and
the domain wasn't known to spammers. At first the spam trickled in
to one or two addresses (harvested from an infected computer at a
client?). Within a few months all addresses were hit.

Click to expand...

--
Brian

A much better solution: http://www.invisible-city.com/bulletins/164/dodging-spam-with-mailinator

Prog.

All I’m saying is that my e-mail address is connected to this forum and only this forum. If that address was harvested, I’ll be getting spam through that address, which I don’t. This is why I’m saying that this forum is not harvested yet (at least not my address after 10 months).

Cheers,
Alex.

Brian said:

Here are a couple of questions.

Click to expand...

Actually, these are four questions, but what the hell ;-)

Brian said:

1. Was the account with a well know email provider or isp provider
or have you received spam on a different account through the same
email provider?

Click to expand...

No. None. Never.

Brian said:

2. Was the name you used a common name with no distinguishing
numbers on it?

Click to expand...

No. It's "dpreview". Hardly a common first name.

Brian said:

3. Have you used the that name with a different email account that
has been spammend before?

Click to expand...

No.

Brian said:

4. Have you upset anyone here before?

Click to expand...

Not lately.

Brian said:

If the answer is yes to most if not all of the questions above, the
spammer probably just guessed your email address. There are plenty
of bots out there that just go through and guess email addresses
based on previously known good addresses. In other words they take
the name from one account and apply it to numerous email providers.

for instance [email protected], [email protected], etc.

Or even if you have a specific spam account that you use to sign up
for things and say the name on the account is [email protected],
a spammer will take hotrod1 and apply it to @gmail.com, @yahoo.com,
etc.

Now if you had your own website, like Idontlikespamatall.net,
chances are that a spammer wouldn't try to guess email addresses at
an email account from this site like [email protected]
would not be guessed. Unless of course your junk email address is
[email protected] in which case there is a small
possibility that they might fish for email addresses using that url.

Click to expand...

Sorry, none of that applies in my case. It's just common harvesting, perhaps with a manual twist to get through the initial login.

Prog.

Alekko said:

All I’m saying is that my e-mail address is connected to this forum
and only this forum. If that address was harvested, I’ll be getting
spam through that address, which I don’t.

Click to expand...

Give it time. Manual harvesting takes longer.

Alekko said:

This is why I’m saying
that this forum is not harvested yet (at least not my address after
10 months).

Click to expand...

10 months? I registered November 2003 and only got my first "dpreview spam" the other day.

Prog.

"it's easy to protect your email address by checking the option in the profile."

That's my whole point. I expect you guys to set it that way by default. I'm registered to a lot of forums. This is the only one that doesn't hide users addresses by default.

Let's keep in mind that non-geeks are not commonly aware of harvesting. I wonder how many of your users would change that setting if they knew how prone it makes their email to getting spam. I bet many.

Prog.

Brian said:

All it takes is one of the employee's using his or her email
address to sign up for some freebie on the net and the rest is
history.

Click to expand...

Absolutely. That our email addresses remained spam-free for years, until late 2004, shows that employees were careful with their addresses.

The only protection is to keep it hidden. you can't hardly blame Phil, if it was manually harvested.

Prognathous said:

Too bad "Keep my email address private" was not set. Don't you
think this is the kind of setting that should be on by default?

Here are the whois details of the spammer:

Domain: alldigitalservice.com
Status: Active

DNS:
ns1.thaiserver4u.net
ns2.thaiserver4u.net

Created: 2005-05-18
Expires: 2006-05-17
Last Modified: 2005-05-18 10:21:20

Registrant Contact:
alldigitalservice
Sirion Aramwit ([email protected])
88/5 Ramkhamhaeng 21 Yak 15
Bangkok, , th
P: +669.8112552 F:

Administrative Contact:
none
Sirion Aramwit ([email protected])
88/5 Ramkhamhaeng 21 Yak 15
bangkok, , th
P: +669.8112552 F:

Technical Contact:
none
sirion aramwit ([email protected])
88/5 Ramkhamhaeng 21 Yak 15
bangkok, , th
P: +669.8112552 F:

Billing Contact:
none
sirion aramwit ([email protected])
88/5 Ramkhamhaeng 21 Yak 15
bangkok, , th
P: +669.8112552 F:

May his address be harvested by his kind,

Prog.

Click to expand...

--
Brian

Change the default.

Prog.