How on Earth?

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Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:42 pm

Dora

Simply that, without using the email id anywhere else, save here, and within hours of it being created, it started receiving scammer emails.

No Viagara emails (as one might go on to expect if scammer emails are as easy to get so quickly). No other notes of any kind. The scammer email hit immediately.

I suppose I should try opening another email id, but not register it here as a new id as well, and see where that one gets. I'll do that and perhaps answer my own question about how this might have unfolded.

I hadn't thought to say a thing about it, until I saw this thread (above my first post) and recalled my first thought when it happened - "Eater is being harvested somehow".

Honestly, I didn't feel the least suprized. Wouldn't a lad-hugger, or lads themselves not get some glee from spinning folks here?

Just my thoughts and observations.

BTW,

Quote:

If NN doesn't appreciate your PM oddness, I am sure there are many mods that would. And I am sure a certain romance guru of woo.

? I am missing something in the above ?

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 9:05 pm

I think you're missing the point I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that no one has to "know" your address to get a spam (or scam) mail to you. They don't even have to harvest it. Spamming programs often have the ability to make addresses up by putting random strings of syllables or letters or numbers together from a "dictionary". Password generators often use the same process to create "pronounceable but not in the Oxford Dictionary" passwords. The one I sometimes use at work sometimes gets amusingly close to real words and phrases. In most cases, they're funny. In rare cases, I generate a second one, because I'm embarrassed by how close it is to an obscenity.

Sometimes spammers get lucky and it lands in an inbox. Sometimes they don't get lucky and it bounces. The recipient just knows about the one good guess. They don't know about the 50 other "close but no cigar" guesses.

If anyone, in the history of the ever-ever, had the same address before you had it (Which is possible. Hotmail deletes dormant accounts after 210 days. Another individual can then sign up for it.) the chances of you getting a spam soon after opening it go way up. Double if the previous owner ever used it on the net or to sign up for newsletters or to purchase things online or to reply to a scammer. I mean, at work, we still get marketing mail for someone who has been gone for longer than I've been here. I've been here a decade. If it ever gets put on a marketing list, it rarely gets removed.

There IS such a thing as coincidence, is what I'm getting at. Unless we've got several new members who see the same sort of thing, there really wouldn't be evidence to suggest harvesting of any kind from here. Thing is, harvesting from here seems pretty unlikely. Deliberately and knowingly harvesting from here seems even more unlikely. Especially when there's a much simpler possible explanation.

Once can easily be an anomaly. Twice is likely a coincidence. Three times might be a pattern, but it depends on the sample size. Again, not saying it's impossible, just highly improbable.

A quick google turned up software that can easily harvest 1500 emails per minute.

http://www.emailsmartz.com/asp/generator.asp

That would be over a million in 12 hours. Getting a computer to generate them rather than pulling them from the internet would be even faster.

http://www.email-business.com/products/email_generator_en.htm

You can even check that they're valid. By querying the email server. I imagine you could generate a handy few million possibilities and validate them with a decent connection and a desktop in a mere 12 hours. Or you could just email them all and risk the bounces. And these aren't super expensive products.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 10:03 pm

Thank-you MrsBean for your thoroughness.

What you describe (and more) is a constant problem for the perimeter DMZ servers that have to serve up an enterprise's presence on the web.

Quote:

Once can easily be an anomaly. Twice is likely a coincidence. Three times might be a pattern, but it depends on the sample size. Again, not saying it's impossible, just highly improbable.

Agreed. I count four instances (MeridianAlicante, mrsgrossman, HarvestMoon, and bruckner) above my first post, hence my chiming in.

Just an FYI - I've been in the IT industry since the late '70s ranging from a mainframe programmer through to present day management.

I'll let it drop.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:29 pm

I will let it drop too. However, you really haven't explained how you think anyone could have harvested your addy from Eater. If it isn't posted anywhere, and only mods and admins have access to it, then I don't see how it is possible at all, except as noted by mrsbean.

I really believe the mods and admins have better things to do then give out random users' email addys to scammers. (Well, except for NN. He really is just here because he has a sexy voice. Wink

)

Ishkabibble wrote:

Wouldn't a lad-hugger, or lads themselves not get some glee from spinning folks here?

I do take a bit of exception to this. A lad wants money. That's all he wants. His job is making money. What could he possibly get from 'spinning' a baiter? He isn't going to make any money from us. And we are just going to waste his time. Most, if not almost all, scammers can't figure out why we bait. We aren't making money from this and that's where they don't understand the concept of baiting.

And a lad-hugger? Are you actually thinking a badger? I have heard of them, but never seen one. And if they are true, I am pretty confident most experience baiters would catch on pretty quick. Wink

I am sure anything is possible. I just think this is more coincidence than anything else. Very Happy

And this:

Dora, who was talking to her girly friend Kate, wrote:

If NN doesn't appreciate your PM oddness, I am sure there are many mods that would. And I am sure a certain romance guru of woo.

It just was a comment to one of my bestest friends. Wink

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

Sheesh, this thread has taken off!

It wasn't the email address that I signed up to Eater with that was harvested. That's been getting spam since I got it however many years ago (mostly Russian these days for some reason).

It was an AIM name that happened to open an email account with it. I added it to my profile under AIM name (noticing that if you hovered over the aim button and looked at the bottom left of the screen I could see the name that I had entered).

It could be entirely possible that someone else had the name meridian419 set up on AIM, but it just seems a bit odd.

Probably just a random generator program got it.

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 9:31 pm

Meridian, that makes perfect sense that your AIM addy could have been harvested from Eater since it is visible in a sense. My YIM is available to all, so it could happen to me too. Although I have to be honest, no one has yet. Sad

I have gotten Eater members that want to chat with me though. And they are always welcome! Very Happy