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Spammers mining email addresses from here?

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7 replies

by techalon

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I'd love to know how our email addresses used here are being mined by spammers, as far as I know our email addresses are hidden if we don?t use them as our ID. I'm relatively new to being a TR member and today I got spam (no, not an offer from a third party) from someone admitting to have mined my email address from here. Even if they hadn't admitted it, I use certain forwarders for specific signups so that I know where my spam comes from and then I can easily kill the forwarder if I desire and eliminate the spam. Below I'll copy and paste the message I received with their contact email addresses intact so those of you that would like can turn the tables on them if the addresses are legit. If desired I'll post the meaningful headers as well. I imagine others received it as well. Any assumption that just because I'm on TR I'm actively looking for an online business opportunity is quite a stretch since I'm so busy as it is, not to mention I'm not here to get spam. If there is something I'm missing about my email address being visable here I'd love to know. If not then maybe someone at TR can explain how a forwarder I use only for here is used this way because I find this problematic that I'm getting spammed with TR being used as a vehicle in some manner in that spamming.

"Hi There,
Greetings!!!
My name is Jocelyn
I am sorry for the unusual approach but I have acquired your email address xxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx as a person who is actively involved or is looking for an online `Business `Opportunity.

If this is the case I would be grateful if you would allow me to send you details of an opportunity that I am currently involved in at the moment.

I did not want to send you any details until I had mailed you to seek your permission first,as experience has taught me that not all leads that we acquire are genuine`Business Opportunity Seekers, If this is the case for you then please ignore this email as you have already been excluded from future mailing from me.

If however It would be ok to send you details of my Opportunity then please send an email to bigcompany@funmaza.com with "Send_me_details." in the subject line and your Name in the text body, without this I cannot send you any further information I am afraid.

So why not give it a try?... it's`FREE anyway!...
Just give me a chance to show you how our program works.

You can cancel your membership anytime you want.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thank you very much for your time and your cooperation,

God Bless You and your Family, HAPPY NEW YEAR 2006

Yours sincerely,

Jocelyn
mailto: jocell@riversongs.tv
9:22:48 PM
1/8/2006

To be remove in all of my mailing list:
mail to: aeiuo2@gawab.com with a subject Remove"

As you can see "Jocelyn" was polite, but that doesn't matter.

7 replies

by tony hopkinson

to be be emailed by your peers. As in people like me. Unfortunately certain unscrupulous types have joined TR and then used it to mail other members with crap. Just report them, TR will cut them off at the knees.
I even got that nigerian twit looking for me to get his money out of a european bank the other week.
There's even those who post questions to Q & A with the answer contact them and send some money. One particular illegitamate fornicating drinker of urine and eater of faeces even had the gall to reject my answer.

On top of all this spamming us through peer mail is very ineffiecient so spammers who do this are not only c*nts but stupid ones as well.

by techalon

I had the option of not allowing email from peers selected. I've now changed that selection after getting the spam today to allow it so I can see what happens then. It also was not sent via TR as the headers are not what you'd expect if sent via TR.

by jaqui

the isp for both email addresses she[?] put in there, report her activities to them by forwarding complete message including headers.
also report it as spam to your email provider.

generally the email providers kill accounts of spammers very quickly.

by dc guy

If you use the TR mechanism for sending me an e-mail you do not learn my address. The e-mail is forwarded by TR. Your address is included in the e-mail so I can reply to you directly, and only at that point will you have mine.

This spam was not sent through the normal TR e-mail mechanism. If TR is the only place that has this address, the only way anyone could get it is by hacking.

by smorty71

We don't make your e-mail visible to anyone. Even members who leave their e-mail as their alias get that address truncated on the site.

For example, bob@gmail.com would display as bob@...

And as DC Guy said, our e-mail tools (for messaging other members) don't disclose your e-mail address to the sender of the mail. The only way the sender of peer mail would ever be able to get your address would be if you responded directly to their message from your e-mail client.

Is it possible that the domain that your e-mail address uses got spammed.

For example, if your address was bob@domain.com, could it be possible that someone spammed the entire domain.com list, not just your e-mail address?

We've forwarded this thread to others internally to take a look. I'll follow up with any info that we find out.

I'd also be interested to hear if other members got spammed by this same sender.

by jaqui

has :

Message from a TechRepublic Member

as the subject of the email.
if any email came from the TR servers from a peer then you know it by the subject before opening it.

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