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Addresses from this NG being targeted for Spam

rbuserrbuser
edited November 2003 in General
Email addresses of the contributors to this NG are now being targeted with
spam. I know because in the distant past I contributed using a mis-spelt but
operational email address (the only place I made that particular mistake)
and now I am receiving various junk advertising email of the "if you want to
unsubscribe..." kind, when I have not subscribed in the first place.

For example Walk & Talk of gogadget@netvision.net.il have just sent out a
mail shot of this kind.

So this is both a *warning* to contributors - if you use your real email on
this NG (as DM sometimes ask you to) then you will be spammed, and a request
if DM can do anything to prevent these addresses from being grabbed.

Dave
(now older and wiser and not using a real address even if DM ask!)

Comments

  • nardmoseleynardmoseley
    edited November 2003

    Thanks for supplying that info. Our newsgroups are publicly available - I
    know of nothing that we can do to prevent this kind of activity.

    Please continue to post with your real name - just as you have done here.
    When I read the newsgroup I can see that a post was made by Dave Blake.

    Rather than post with a hotmail address why not use a modified version of
    your real address?

    We have in the past asked that customers not use hotmail - we have found
    hotmail to be a hotbed of fraudalent activity. We do not allow RB licenses
    to be registered with a hotmail address.

    Any e-mail sent to support@digital-metaphors.com should have your registered
    e-mail address.




    --
    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    http://www.digital-metaphors.com

    Best regards,

    Nard Moseley
    Digital Metaphors
    www.digital-metaphors.com
  • rbuserrbuser
    edited November 2003
    Hi Nard

    Spam is such a pain. It has only just started to come in on my DM newsgroup
    typo address, so I guess someone has trawled it and made themselves a nice
    marketing list to sell.

    I now use Hotmail for ALL newsgroups, just in case there is a valid reason
    to reply to me direct. It fills with spam to bursting point, but it is not
    my normall address so I just don't care.


    Did that once, a REMOVESPAM varient, and DM support at the time complained
    it was not a real address so they could not reply to me directly - spotting
    the spam trap was obviously too hard! Anyway, the trawlers are now
    intelligent to circumvent simple modfications (even if DM support are
    confused by them!)


    Yes, I can understand that. But there is no reason to use a registered
    customer address in the newsgroups. In fact, given that DM can not protect
    contributers and the addresses become public knowledge then surely DM should
    advise people NOT to expose their email addresses in this way?

    How about a friendly warning to users that using your real name is polite,
    but using your real email address on newsgroups is dumb because the NG is
    public and it will expose you to spam.

    Sorry to winge, but we all need to do what we can to limit spam.
    Dave Blake
  • rbuserrbuser
    edited November 2003


    There is an interesting discussion of why a "munged" address is not such a
    good idea here
    http://www.softrock.co.uk/misc/2003-06-21.html. Things I had not thought
    about :) And you have to take great care how you mung or you can cause
    problems for others.

    So I'll stick with using hotmail as a spambin.

    Dave
This discussion has been closed.