Williams, Jaymes wrote: > I've also received similar "unsolicited" email and I originally had no > idea how they obtained my address. But, after a bit of analysis, it > appears that f ree email "vendors," such as Hotmail, appear to be > selling their mailing lists to "Spammers." > It is widely known that Hotmail "leaks" their user's addresses much more readily than most other e-mail providers. AOL is also known to leak user's addresses. There is no credibility to the idea that AOL and Hotmail are selling user addresses, but there is pleanty of indication that they leak. Most other e-mail providers do not leak. To get spam, you have to do something yourself that will leak your address, such as posting something to a message board or public mailing list (such as this one), or giving your address to a web site. > I have received numerous spam mails of varying types at my Hotmail > account. The one thing they all have in common is they have > approximately a hundred or so addresses that are all Hotmail addresses > in alphabetical order. > The "100 alphabetically related adressees" effect is a clear sign that the sendier is a spammer. However, this effect has nothing to do with the collection technique. It is just how the spammer chooses to sort their victim list for processing. I've seen all sorts of interesting patterns in addressee lists. However, many spam filters reject e-mail with too many addressees, so the spammer's are starting to send out spam with short addressee lists, often only a single addressee. > When I contacted Hotmail about this, their response was detailed > directions on how to "filter" the mail using the Junk Mail folder and > they did not even address the apparent privacy policy violation. > Isn't Microsoft customer service great? :-) (for anyone who doesn't know, MS owns Hotmail) > I really don't object to Spam that much, it's not much different than > the junk you get in your snail mail. Whatever the laws end up > regarding spam, they probably should be in some sort of alignment with > junk mail. > I object to spam a GREAT deal. Unlike junk mail, spam is virtually free for the sender to send, and the costs of dealing with the mess acrue to the victims. Spam laws need to be much more like the laws against unsolicited FAXes. Read all about it at the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email http://www.cauce.org/ > Have any of you received this type of Spam? What are some ideas on > how to handle this? Obviously, I can cancel the email account ... > but, that's only running away from the problem and not a real solution. > See my post last week on "Spam Hunting Practicum". Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com Security Hardened Linux Distribution: http://immunix.org Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun May 26 2002 - 11:27:27 PDT