My email address harvested from forums by spammer???

Anybody else get the following message below my name with a subject line “Your Blog”?

Message redacted to not promote spam.

Gotta say, it’s rather sophisticated spam to include a link to a thread even though the link doesn’t direct to a post I made.

I have full message with headers if anybody need it.

Allen

Hey!

I came across your blog and was interested in talking to you about a
few things… maybe a partnership of some kind? The specific post im
interested in is discussions.flightaware.com/view … 4191#24191

Can you please give me a call at xxx.xxx.xxxx or shoot me an e-mail?
I’d prefer a phone call back - it makes the whole process go much quicker.

Oh… and if for some reason this email was sent to the wrong person,
my bad! Would you mind passing it on to the right one?

Thanks,
Christopher

:laughing: ya…the partnership would most likely be for you to email him your acct number so he can send you the 2.9 million dollars the govt of Nigeria has in the “safe” deposit box that can only go to you becuase…well…you’re you… :laughing:

Please email it to me (email address guessable) with full headers. Thanks!

Allen,

When you were banned, you had another member post your email address so others could contact you. Posting your email address in its proper format will get you spammed. You gotta kinda spell it out if you wanna post it - something like “lieberma at gmail dot com”.

Wouldn’t surprize me if some spammers don’t have some program to havest addresses by looking for that pattern (_ at _ dot com) and then convert it for their needs.

Always gotta be one step ahead of the spammers! :unamused:

Since they provided you with an email address, you can pay 'em back in spades by going to sites with links that say “email this to a friend” or whatever, and then fill in their address (but DON’T fill in YOUR address - use a fake one - and be sure to logoff of a site if you’re a member of it). Not only will they get that particular item you sent, they’ll likely end up on a few spam lists themselves. If enough people retaliate like that, their email address will become unusable! I’ll compile a list of such sites here:

news.yahoo.com/ (Click on any story)
motifake.com (Click on any poster and find the “Share It” link)

See PM. Gmail doesn’t include headers when I forward.

Thanks for checking into this!

Needlenose

Did some poking around. Searched for my full email address in the forums and it came up with 1018 matches

Did a search of my first part of my email address (without @gmail) and found one result that must have been posted in the banter thread (search doesn’t take you to the post itself). I asked the poster to post my email address so no problem there. The thread in the email wasn’t the banter thread which makes it even stranger.

So, my guess is it’s being picked up by the mailto tag if the 1018 represents the amount of threads I participated in and not the one posting where it really may have been typed out???

Dunno, total WAG here.

Those sneaky bastards! :open_mouth:
Yep - your address is embedded in the code of each page through your email button.

Not advisable unless you make sure that the address you enter is 100% fake and the possibility of someone else having that email address is less than 0.00000000001%. Otherwise all you’re doing is giving spam someplace else to go.

And isn’t having someone posting your email address here while you are banned going against the spirit (if not the law) of being banned? I feel if someone has started getting spam because he had his email address posted on the forum then they deserve any spam they get. I accepted my banishment as a man - both the law and the spirit of the banishment. (i.e. I didn’t give someone else information to post on the forum).

I doubt anybody has the following address:
jklfsdfkjjk@kweuhasdkjsd.net (typing random characters)
If they do have that address, they deserve to be spammed! :smiling_imp:

Give it rest!!! :unamused:

You guys have been playing nicely so far - please don’t start again now!!!

Ain’t that the truth…

Exactly what I was talking about. Good fake address.

Reminds me of the guy who owns example.com… he gets a lot of unintentional mail.

Speaking of which, how would a wannabe terrorist contact Al Qaeda by email? info@alqaeda.com ? Maybe they’ll get some spam now.

Rob-
Let me know if you need to be picked up at Gitmo- I know how to get there. and i can get a PPR

I wasn’t asking on my behalf. I was commenting on a news story.

come on man it was a joke

1-800-WHAAAAAAAAAAA

Nobody owns example.com (or .org or .net). They’re reserved by IANA (see RFC2606).

A few probably do. It would be easy enough, once you’re already set up to scan millions of pages. But mostly I think they wouldn’t bother. With the volume of addresses they already have, there’s no need to scrape the barrel that hard. Look how they found Allen.

I think the volume they generate from actual customers (suckers) would dwarf any volume you could generate with a casual part-time effort. You’d have to devote some real effort to create a noticeable denial-of-service attack on a spammer’s address. Remember, they send 10-100 million emails out and get back a blizzard of failure responses, hoping for 100-1000 workable candidate customers. They already have to be masters of colossal volume.

Mark,

This one (redacted and replace with ALL CAPS description) appears to have just harvested from discussions.flightaware.com

Not a big deal as Gmail did toss it in the spam folder but though you still may be interested? I can PM original with full headers if you want me to.

Allen

SUBJECT LINE SAYS Ref: discussions.flightaware.com

A few months ago, I sent an email informing you that after reviewing discussions.flightaware.com, our native technicians reported that your website could not be found on foreign search engines (they had tested it on Hispanic search engines, German search engines, Japanese search engines, Chinese search engines, etc.). I invite you to visit us online, where we offer to increase your international online visibility in 28 languages (without having to translate your site): WEBSITE URL

From the Japanese Google to the German Yahoo, get users to find your website when searching with your keywords in their Native language!

By the way, did you get to watch our online presentation? If not, I strongly invite you to do so as it explains clearly how to get top rankings on multilingual search engines with only 1 entry page per language: WEB SITE URL

REDACTED PRICE QUOTES DUE and additional email contents TO DEBUG ERROR

Regards,

Marc Schneider, Ph.D.
EMAILADDYREDACTED@os28.net

FULL WASHINGTON DC ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER REDACTED

Allen,

Why on earth did you redact their information??? :confused:

Hell… go 'head and post it here for other spammers to harvest! :smiling_imp: