Who is selling our names?

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone. Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow, look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip

"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern, computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad

Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase. -Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Jim,

I mostly only participate here at dpreview. I don't get many. Once every few months do I get an email that appears to be about photography but it turns out to be something else. I am not a real frequent poster though.

Ogre

Shutter. said:

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of
dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

--

Ogre - DSC-F707 - Just push the button and see what you get, it might surprise you.

I´m just guessing here, but don't they use (some kind of) bots to collect e-mail addresses from forums like this to find spam targets? I stopped using Hotmail some time ago, as it became extremely inconvenient to wade through all the carp to find the real e-mails... Sorry to hear you're experiencing these problems, they can be a real pain in the buttt. Mike Johnston summed it up quite well (and funny).

Shutter. said:

Shutter. wrote:
I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of
dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

Jim:

I most certainly do get spam for digital photography. I attribute it to either or both of the following:

1. The spammers troll these forums for e-mail addresses. Unlikely since only those logged in can see my address.

2. I've used the Kodak picture-of-the-day site for Times Square, and Kodak sold my address. Didn't I get that idea from you? Hmmm...perhaps you are the cause of my spam!

Until 2 days ago I never used Ofoto or EZPrints, so it's gotta be one of the two sources, for me.

Florindo

Shutter. said:

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of
dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

I too have been bombarded with invitations to enlarge my male member, improve my sexual stamina with Viagra, and watch dirty little websites. It's really sickening and a pain in the neck...interesting that all of these invitations go to my dsl provider website and not my yahoo email address. I get next to no spam at all with Yahoo.

I think I've chosen not to reveal my email address here but it hasn't done much good.
Isabel

http://www.pBase.com/isabel95
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipets/?yguid=11497599
pBase supporter

Arn said:

I´m just guessing here, but don't they use (some kind of) bots to
collect e-mail addresses from forums like this to find spam
targets? I stopped using Hotmail some time ago, as it became
extremely inconvenient to wade through all the carp to find the
real e-mails... Sorry to hear you're experiencing these problems,
they can be a real pain in the buttt. Mike Johnston summed it up
quite well (and funny).

Click to expand...

They are also referred to as Spiders. They search the front end and back end of web sites for email addresses and spam them with junkmail. Then often some of those people often compromise their own address book via virus' and the like and their pals then get spammed and so on and so on....

I had 214 spam-emails in my work account yesterday alone. Most were virus born. Somebody in our University opened an infected email attachment and compromised our entire global addressbook, so now everybody in our University is getting clobbered with junk mail (20,000 + employees)!

Its really getting out of hand, but I would guess that most of the spam you get is NOT because someone sold your email address to a list, but that is certainly a possibility.

Lou

http://www.pbase.com/loug
Sony F717, MCON 35, TCON14B, WCON08B
Sunpak 383, Cokin / Hoya Filters, Epson Stylus 890

Some "companies" use robots that "harvest" e-mail adresses on the internet. I did receive a lot of the spam you mentioned on my hotmail account (that why i stopped it) but... I don't have my hotmail account adres listed in my profile. I never received any spam on the adres i do use here.

I am very carefull not to leave my adres on any webpage that is publicly accessable (such as this forum). I did put my adres in my profile because I assume (can't know for sure of course) that these harvesting robots don't access pages that can only be viewed by members who have subscribed.

So as a general warning: never ever mention you e-mail adress on any forum or show it on a website.....

--
Hewy
F717
member.home.nl/huub.vermeulen

• ask not what a digicam can do for you, ask yourself what you can do with a digicam *

I used to get a ton, but I've attributed it to the joke list I'm subscribed to. I just assume they distribute my email. I couldn't even count how many my husband gets, and he isn't subscribed to anything. However, his spams started when he opened an account with Ebay. My mother in law says she got a lot when she signed up at Ebay too.

What I use now is mailwasher. It's a free/contribution program and it's reduced my spam by 90%. You run it before you open your email, it shows what emails you have coming in without downloading them from your server. Then you can choose to accept, delete, or bounce. When you bounce it back, the sender gets an undeliverable message just like if your email address doesn't exist. This way, they take you off their list. Works great.

--
--Kimberly--
I was raised by a pack of wild corn dogs...
My gallery: http://www.pbase.com/kimberlybrummitt

I've been on the net for quite a while had been a webmaster and have my email address all over the darned place. I get quite a bit of spam but I use Spam Sieve on my Mac and it's all just filtered. I check the junk mail folder for a quick scan of anything that might be incorrectly flagged but that's the only time I even see the spam.

I've used the [email protected] email addy for about 5 years...I get at least 50 spams a day on this account. Of course, I have other @mcbass.com email I use for most "important" things.

It started happening really hard-corps about a year ago...spam used to infuriate me...(once (3 years ago) I started getting a Christian newsletter from Florida, I kept "opting out", but they kept coming. I did a 'whois" and called the webmaster for the organization and demanded I be taken off the list..didn't work, so I called the person listed as the owner of this domain and demanded to be taken off..didn't work..so I took both their email addys and signed them up for several dozen, I mean SEVERAL DOZEN, hard-corpse porn photo of the day mailing lists...and somehow..I never heard from them again!
I get so much viagra, mortage, etc spam now I have to ignore it
.

Basically, if you have a hotmail account, you are rendered "victim" in a number of ways...
First...I'm sure MSN sells addys to advertisers..

Second..some apps are designed to develop millions of usenames and attach them to @hotmail.com...for example...andy@, andy1@, andy2@, etc, etc, etc...once they are mailed...they save the usernames that aren't rejected by mail servers and add them to their list.

Thirdly..there are the "bots" that "crawl" around web pages to get email addys. Certain places like forums, bulliten boards, etc that have addys listed in the open are easy targets. I can get an on-demand trafic report that describes in excruciating detail all the the comings and goings on mcbass.com...and have noted these "bots" account for at least 10% of my web traffic! (and I have to pay for traffic when it reaches a certain point)

Tertiarally (is that a word?)..companys you give your email addy to for ANY reason sell them very often. Do you have any idea how much your insurance company can get for a list of 10000 email addys? I don't, but I would know if I had a list that long!

This site seems a little more secure than some others due to the fact that you can opt out of having your addy listed, and that you have to be a registerd user to to see them anyhow...and I've never come across spam that I thought was generated via DPR...I seriously doubt that Phil, whomever he is, is selling lists of email addys...I don't know him...I just think the Brits are honest (or at least polite) to a fault! He clearly states that he will not share you email address with anyone, and I beleive him for some reason..(maybe I'm naive)...now whether or not someone "helped themselves" to them is a different story.

mc

Shutter. said:

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of
dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

--



http://www.mcbass.com

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau

I feel lucky. I only get 10-15 per day.

Lynn Towns said:

I feel lucky. I only get 10-15 per day.

Click to expand...

--



http://www.mcbass.com

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau

Search google for your e-mail address. If it shows up, especially if it shows up a lot of times, then spiders collecting e-mail addresses off the web can be finding it, spammers use that kind of software to "harvest" e-mail addresses from websites, searchable forums, usenet, etc. They use the addresses in their own spam, or sell or trade large archives of them.

-jeremy

--
Jeremy Birn
http://www.3dRender.com/

That is exactly why I no longer use...

Hotmail
MSN Explorer
ANY MSN related
AOL

All of which resulted in numorous UNsolicited messages such as....

(I'll be nice here, OK?)

Hi, Mark. I know you are really horny... come see what I have for you
Mark, we can help you out of debt (Like I have any? LOL)

Oh and one more tip for you SINGLE folks. Before I met my current girlfriend soon to be fiance', I went to Eharmony.com and tried filling out their "survey". Half way through it locked up on me and I NEVER returned again. However, I have since had no less than 30 emails from them, even though I "blocked sender" on their original email address from the first message i got. Leading me to believe that they are using multiple email addresses to avoid my attempt to block their emails. I did finally cut them off.... after a not so nice email from me, ofcourse.

So the moral of the story here is:

If you have a cable connection, you are less likely to get spammed, in some cases at least.

DO not use an email address with the above mentioned services....

you'll be labeled as horny, in debt, RWA to buy a car, looking for a 2nd mortgage, or who knows what else?

Thank you Jim for bringing up the whole subject....
it's on I think everyone can relate to at some point in time.

Oh, and for my brother in law (you know who you are lol) who appears to be following my STF thread posts......

SPY !!!!! LOL

Mark J

Shutter. said:

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of
dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

I added another account that I planned to use for photography. I thought it was nice and simple, [email protected] Actually I was surprised to get it. Well I guess it was too simple. My total is not the most impressive, I get about 100 every 3 days.
my other account... 2 a day and only starting the last 2 weeks.

I had started clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the page and after about 10 I thought "how long until a Virus programmer makes that a link to a virus?" or "the top right X to close a pop up window"
Hope none of them are reading this.
Mikeeee
--
We want fun 'cos we medically need it! A.W.K.

take a look at http://spampal.co.uk

I'm using it for a while now and I'm very happy with it.

--
Take care
Sascha http://a.photoblog.de

srh said:

take a look at http://spampal.co.uk

Click to expand...

pfff, idiot me

http://www.spampal.org/ - this will work.

--
Take care
Sascha http://a.photoblog.de

Hi Jim

As someone else says, harvesting emails via websites/forum coding by robots (computers with the software ability to trawl the internet looking for email addresses) is probably how your email address has been picked up. I have an email address which I have never used to send email but I have it in some html coding to generate a feedback form that I get emailed. This is the only place it has ever been used. If you visit this website, you cannot see the email address unless you view the coding.

It took a little while before my page got harvested but this email address now receives about 20 emails a day often with subjects that can be linked to my page so as to get me to look at them.

My son started receiving spam at his email address and he has NEVER used it! I also have another email address which has never been published anywhere or used and occasionally I get email for that too. I suspect, that quite often these spammers take a chance and just generate emails addresses with random usernames in the hopes some might reach a target.

My ISP has implemented a great spam filter that accesses all email by certain crtieria.. It tries to identify spam emails and tags them with SPAM in the subject line. All I have to do is set SPAM in my email program filter to be picked up and sent directly to trash.

Spam is certainly a pain in the posterior

Cheers Ko.

--
My aim is to live forever.....so far so good.

I get 50 mails per day with "mail undeliverable" messages from system admins.

Someone with me on their mailing list has a computer infected by the latest set of worms ... their computer sends out 100's of messages "spoofed" under my name. I get reply's for the ones going to unreachable addresses.

I can't figure out who it is ... reply's come from slipcovers.com, toledonet, etc ... no smut strangely enough. I've started to get a little spam ... with my e-mail is being sent all over the place this is not surprising.

For those of you who haven't ... install the patch.

Geoff

Shutter. said:

I used to think the spam email I received was received by everyone.
Then I started noticing that a lot of the subject lines included
the words "picture" or "I saw your gallery"... but when opened up I
find out that I'm either in debt or desperately horny. I'm talking
like 20-30 of these a day, often more.

I started asking friends who also use hotmail how many they
received, and they would respond with "sometimes". Then, I started
hearing from a couple of frequent forum members (not just this
forum, but many forums) and just in passing they would make
comments like "once I deleted all my viagra emails..." or "wow,
look at that, I'm in debt and didn't know it".... then reading Mike
Johnston's Sunday Photographer article on Luminous-lanscape.com, he
referred to it...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-03-08-31.shtml
snip
"If anyone’s interested in the data, I got 1500 e-mail messages in
the twelve days I was on vacation, only about a tenth of which were
for me. But even that pales against the new record: 145 spam
messages in the space of about 15 hours. Apparently, modern,
computerized market research has urgently pinpointed me as someone
a) who is in need of another mortgage and a larger *****, b) who
honestly believes that some Nigerian dude needs my bank account to
transfer $20 million, and c) who enjoys an endless stream of

dirty-talk about “teens” and (I’m guessing here) male chickens. I
plead innocent of all these concerns — or would, if I had any say
in the matter."

Do all of you receive these emails? Do your friends who don't
participate on the forums?

I guess I'm just wondering which one(s) if any are selling my name
all over the place... it could be many.

Curious to read your replies. I likely won't respond to all of
them due to time constraints lately.

Thanks

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.
-Percy W. Harris
Our existence is determined by the truths we tell.
Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries

Click to expand...

--
http://www.pbase.com/geoffb

jr60004 said:

I had started clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the
page and after about 10 I thought "how long until a Virus
programmer makes that a link to a virus?" or "the top right X to
close a pop up window"

Click to expand...

A word to the wise: don't click on the "unsubscribe" links in
spam emails. They just use that to verify that yours is a valid
email address so they can use it or sell it to others.

Steve