[DM-MUG] Spam

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Holly Welch <hfwelch at mac.com> wrote:
> I know this has been answered before, but,
> when you get an email that looks like it from yourself, but it is an
> advertisement:
>
> 1.)how do they get your email?

Many ways - you might have given your email to someone who has no
respect for your privacy, published it to a public place (and spam
bots harvested it) or someone you correspond with had their computer
compromised by a virus that collects email addresses. Also, there are
other ways but these are the most obvious and encompassing methods.

> 2) has your email or your computer been compromised?

Probably not. If the email contains personally identifying information
other than your email address or a portion thereof then be concerned.
For example, emails from ebay contain your ebay user id in them. If
you get an email that is not from ebay addressed to you and with your
ebay user id then you should be concerned. So for example, I often get
emails that say, "hello newz," that's nothing to be concerned about
because they just used part of my email address.

> 3)and, in the words of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  "Who ARE those
> guys? "

Sometimes they're mis-guided people who naively think it's a good idea
and a good bargain to send out 10,000 emails to solicit business.
These are becoming rare and in many cases they're people trying to
make even just a tiny bit of money by getting you to spend money for
some product or service (knowingly doing something that is wrong -
bulk commercial email), increasingly often they're people trying to
get you to disclose information that gives them the ability to make
money illicitly, or to get you to install malicious software on your
computer that lets them use your computer for bad things.

Best to just delete the email.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode