email security issue

[dude]

I've received 3 emails last night that disturbs me about
the security of my own email address. Looking at these
can someone give me some advise on whats happening and
what to do, because i'm clueless. (I hope i'm not giving
to much information which would hurt me more.)


From : <[email protected]>
Sent : Sunday, December 7, 2003 11:59 PM
To : (e-mail address removed)
Subject : jake
Message : Account Update ( http://64.4.10.250/cgi-
bin/linkrd?
_lang=EN&lah=ede6533672502bafbe57b12208c655ba&lat=107090377
0&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2edelostop%2ecom%2fcgi%
2dbin%2f )
________________________________________

From : <[email protected]>
Sent : Sunday, December 7, 2003 10:33 PM
To : (e-mail address removed)
Subject : hello
message : Account Update ( http://64.4.10.250/cgi-
bin/linkrd?
_lang=EN&lah=5b2598681be61d10d9abfe65ddb14abe&lat=107090369
0&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fwww%2ebeststockcenter%2ecom%
2fcgi%2dbin%2f )



_________________________________________

From : <[email protected]>
Sent : Sunday, December 7, 2003 7:59 PM
To : (e-mail address removed)
Subject : I will not be home
message : heloo

 

[Veronica Loell]

dude wrote / skrev:

I've received 3 emails last night that disturbs me about
the security of my own email address. Looking at these
can someone give me some advise on whats happening and
what to do, because i'm clueless. (I hope i'm not giving
to much information which would hurt me more.)

You should _never_ post a real email adress in a newsgroup, since many
of the current email-spamming-viruses harvests adresses from newsgroups.
You should be safer if it is in the content than in the from-field though.

That said, there are many mass-mailing-worms out there, they harvest
email-addresses the same way spammers do. What you can do when recieving
this sort of thing is report it. Many people actually have a virus on
their machine that sends this sort of stuff out without them knowing it.

http://nakawe.sourceforge.net/MMM3/reporting.txt

How to report Virus-SPAM

1. Go to
http://spam.abuse.net/userhelp/howtocomplain.shtml
for help on locating the originating IP-adress
2a. Go to
http://www.abuse.net/lookup.phtml
for looking up the abuse-adress.
2b. An alternative to 2a. is to get the tool SamSpade
(http://www.samspade.org) and use it to do abuse.net lookups and
whois-lookups if there is no abuse.net-adress. There are of course many
such tools,
SamSpade is just one free tool that I happen to use.

Remember to
- 1. always include full headers (like you normally
would with spam-report)
- 2. always include a link to information about
the virus in question with your complaint/information-letter
- 3. never include the virus itself

Not every ISP or company will take it seriously, but some actually do.
If you spend a little time reporting just a couple you will probably
help cure at least one computer somewhere.

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