Spam Mail - TM hacked?

Kerioak · #1 (**permalink**) 07-07-2008, 05:25 PM

I have a query for the Admins - who can see the emails we signed up with? I used a disposable one (from a secure source) that has been used for nothing else but I have started receiving spam mail on it.

Curious

thesupe87 · #2 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 02:37 AM

I'm just a moderator, I have no idea. This is more of a Doug question - you might want to send him a PM.

RacePhoto · #3 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kerioak

I have a query for the Admins - who can see the emails we signed up with? I used a disposable one (from a secure source) that has been used for nothing else but I have started receiving spam mail on it.

Curious

No guarantee that this is the answer, but I have an email address or two that I've never used for anything, and they have received Spam messages.

Some spam software writes messages to names it has found, or common names, at every server it has found. Hypothetical name "John1957"@someplace.net well everything from john1 to john99999 has probably been sent a message.

Plus when some of these spammers don't receive the unknown address response, the software logs the good address and it gets sold to someone else on a list of confirmed live addresses.

Most of the time, the people who buy the address lists are sending blind messages, and don't track or care if the address bounces, because they have hacked into some server and mailed to everyone, with an untraceable spoofed address.

And then, it's possible that someone knows how to get into this kind of bb and download email addresses, in which case, everyone registered here should be getting the same spam?

Last email message I have received on the email account that I registered with on TalkMicro was 6/24, and it came from TalkMicro. The three before that came from Sportshooter BB, and one from the other microstock forum on 6/17.

e-person · #4 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 06:34 AM

Yes, I run a mailserver. I can confirm spammers use all sorts of techniques in order to send SPAM. They have spiders crawling the web and create e-mail addresses out of words you use on forums, plus dictionary.

Say my e-mail is e-person@mysite.com, then I write a message about istock and microstock, they will try to send messages to:

e-person@mysite.com
microstocke-person@mysite.com
microstock-e-person@mysite.com
istocke-person@mysite.com

And so on.

I can't exclude that these public domain softwares used to run these forums contain backdoors, tough.

morch · #5 (**permalink**) 07-08-2008, 09:20 AM

I am pretty sure that nobody can see the email addresses you signed up with. They are not published anywhere and ive not heard of any security problems with this version of the software we use. I hope!!!

Ive had lots of spam on accounts ive never used - @talkmicro.com gets hundreds of spams a day now!

That said if a trend develops and it does seem TM could have been compromised please do let me know!

Doug

thesupe87 · #6 (**permalink**) 07-11-2008, 11:08 PM

Yahoo webmail and Gmail have awesome spam filters - only 1 or 2 slip through a day at best. If you're having trouble with spam, try changing your email client to Mozilla Thunderbird. I prefer it over MS Outlook.