Re: [boost] Spamming through Boost mailing list

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-23 11:37:59

Keith MacDonald wrote:
> The message got through my spam filter because the body of it was actually a 
> bitmapped image of the text.  However, my point was that the only time I 
> have ever revealed that email address was when I signed up to the Boost 
> mailing lists.  The spammer sent the message directly to me, not through the 
> mailing list, so it seems likely that he got my email address from the 
> mailing list database - although it could have been a random guess!

Have ever heard of email harvesting? It's a process by which spammers 
scan web sites and usenet news groups for email addresses, names, land 
addresses, etc. They then sell this information to other spammers. 
Perhaps you've gotten spam about spam, ie spam selling emails to spam. I 
get about five of those a month... And since this list and thousands of 
others are archived in a variety of publicly available web sites, 
including Google. Additionally spammers also subscribe to mail lists, 
just as you subscribed to this list, to directly collect addresses of 
every post. Your address was likely harvested from one of them. You have 
a few choices:

1. Use better Spam filters.
2. Use multiple sequential Spam filters.
3. Since you say you got the text as an image. Don't view inline 
attachments. It's the number one way viruses spread through email.
4. Use safe email reading programs to protect your self from virus Spam. 
That is, don't use Outlook.

In the future you might want to investigate your claim before making 
accusations ;-)

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