[DM-MUG] Spam

[Brandon Carlson]

> 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.

I'd add in that when you forward those long e-mail chain letters it
leaves your e-mail address in the chain, so when you hit that forward
button you're giving out e-mail addresses to everybody you send the
message to, even when they probably don't have a need for it.

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:
> 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
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