How do the spammers get our addresses?

[JD]

I changed ISPs in July, 03, and for several months enjoyed the luxury of a
spam-free mailbox.
I have never posted to a newsgroup using my real e-mail address and the
limited e-mailing I do is with family and a few close friends.
I do some business on the Web, but always at "secure" sites.
Well, they have found me. It's just a trickle so far, but I'm now receiving
offers to buy Viagra online, refinance my home, etc.
How DO these people get our e-mail addresses?

 

[Jim Macklin]

Sometimes they use a computer to generate random addresses
on selected domains.


| I changed ISPs in July, 03, and for several months enjoyed
the luxury of a
| spam-free mailbox.
| I have never posted to a newsgroup using my real e-mail
address and the
| limited e-mailing I do is with family and a few close
friends.
| I do some business on the Web, but always at "secure"
sites.
| Well, they have found me. It's just a trickle so far, but
I'm now receiving
| offers to buy Viagra online, refinance my home, etc.
| How DO these people get our e-mail addresses?
|
|

 

[Tom Pepper Willett]

When you do business on the web, there are some sites that will provide your
address to a third party. You should read their privacy policies very
carefully.

Tom

 

[Anne.]

Besides the obvious scouring the web, they use a
randomized address generator. They take famous and not-so
famous ISPs' address and generate likely and randomized
addresses. Most emails would bounce but some get through.
Some such spamming programs put multiple addresses in an
email which you can see in the cc field. This is a dead
giveaway of this technique.

Once a mail does not bounce, it is filtered into a valid
email address list and then propogated to other spammers.

-A.

 

[someone]

Have you ever received emails from family and friends that
have been forwarded over and over and over so that in order
to see the actual message you have to open attachment after
attachment or scroll way down through all those forwards?
Have you ever got a message from someone who asks you to
send it to everyone you know? Those are great ways to
collect real email addresses. I have received things like
that with literally hundreds of email addresses.

 

[JD]

You don't suppose that Amazon.com would stoop so low, do you?

 

[JD]

Since I use a variation of my real name and initials, I can see how a random
generator could come up with it. Fascinating. And frustrating. Thanks for
that info.

 

[JD]

I have indeed. My mother refuses to take me off of her mailing list and she
forwards junk that has been forwarded dozens of times. I hadn't thought
about that as another source of "leakage."

 

[Michael Burk [MSFT]]

It is also possible to "guess" e-mail addresses. If you spoof the address
that it was sent from, the "mail undeliverable" will go to someone else.

--
Michael Burk
Longhorn Shell
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn
----===========================----
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Major Malfunction]

Dictionary Hacks, or maybe Telephone Book hacks would be a more appropriate
term, are another way. You take popular names (Bob, Bobby, Bobbie, Jane) and
tack on a string of last names / initials and send to the popular ISPs. Put
the initial first, then the name. You keep track of which ones come back as
undeliverable and don't use them. The others are probably good. You can also
get creative by sending to Name123 to get the people that tack numbers onto
their names. And lets not forget ". . .click here to be removed". You click
and congratulations, you've just validated a blindly sent e-mail. Now the
spammer is 100% positive it's good because you replied to it. There's no way
to be sure, but I would not be surprised if these "good lists" are sold /
traded and compiled as well. And let's not forget cookies, spyware and
malware. I'm surprised at the number of people with Weatherbug on their
desktop who never associated the increase in spam and pop-ups on their
desktop with the installation of this cute little program. Or Bargain Buddy,
Hot Bar, Keen Value. . . and the list goes on.

 

[JD]

I don't understand what you mean. Can you try different words?

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have never posted to a newsgroup using my real e-mail address and the
limited e-mailing I do is with family and a few close friends.
I do some business on the Web, but always at "secure" sites.
Well, they have found me. It's just a trickle so far, but I'm now receiving
offers to buy Viagra online, refinance my home, etc.
How DO these people get our e-mail addresses?

One possibility of the past few months is that one of your
correspondents, who has your address in the book, has got infected by
one of the worms that mails it self off to all addresses, picking
another one to spoof where it cam e from - and hence your email address
has escaped from the tight circle.

 

[JD]

A depressing thought, but I had, indeed, forgotten about those "worms." We
do the best we can, but still the spammers catch up with us.