Re: [boost] Spamming through Boost mailing list

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-09-23 12:50:19

Keith MacDonald wrote:
> My spam filters protect me from thousands of spams and viruses each day, 
> sent to unavoidably public addresses.  My email client allows Windows .BMP 
> files, because they cannot be harmful to fully patched Windows XP systems, 

Not that you know of :-)

> and anyway Norton AV passed it.

Note, I was speaking in general terms when I mentioned what you can do 
to prevent spam and guard against viruses. I guess it's good you are 
using Norton AV. Does it also filter Spam?

> It's not possible to harvest any email addresses from Boost mailing list 
> messages,

Sure it is, and I mentioned a way to do it in my previous reply. A 
spamer can subscribe to the list receiving all postings, which have 
email addresses of the person posting and add that to their spam list. 
Also they can log into the email list web page and read most of the 
email addresses directly from there if they are subscribed to the list. 
Do you think spamers are not motivated enough to do this? Did you change 
your list setting to hide your email from that list?

> unless you are silly enough to type them in a message, perhaps in 
> your signature.

You mean like you just did by including in your quote my email address?

>  However, if the server containing the email database has 
> been compromised, a spammer could easily harvest them.  Personally, if this 
> was my mailing list, I hope someone would make me aware of such issues, so I 
> could check if my security had been breached.  However, if you'd rather 
> blame the messenger ...

I was only pointing out that becoming aware, through education, of the 
more likely possibilities of why you received spam. I'm not disclaiming 
that the server is compromised, although it doesn't look like it on the 
surface (nothing immediately strange in the logs I can look at).

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