Email spam attacks

In the last week I've found that I've gotten a huge pile of spam. Just now got one of those Bill Gates give a ways for forwarding messages. Is this happening to everyone, or just me, and my 4 email accounts.

I haven't gotten any and I am glad for this as well…

Ya, I know it'll only be for a few days, just wondering if anyone else is getting it.

I got the Bill Gates one over a month ago. Got about 5 in two days. Nothing since.

Nothing from Bill Gates, although I did get one at work over a year ago….

Lucky people. I get 1 or 2 every day, and about once a month I'll get 7 or 8 in one day.

A guy I know gets 20-30 every day!

Well, all of a sudden I've been getting about 3 to 4 a day.
But before about 2 weeks ago I got none.

So, no… I haven't gotten any. Yet….

I only get SPAM from things I signed up to. I have a shaw account, when I had a hotmail thing, it got 10-20 a day.. I never signed up with that email addy (hotmail one) to anything, still I got countless emails.

Yah when i signed up for my new email no later than 15 hours later i had 2 junk mails waiting for me when i havent even told anyone about my new email

Why would anyone want an email account at Hotmail or Yahoo, etc.???

You pay for a connection at home and get an email address anyways! With my hookup, I got 4 addresses.

The last time I received the "Bill Gates e-mail tracker" in my own e-mail, I sent the following reply to EVERY e-mail address that was on the list of senders, especially to those who looked like they were perpetuating it:

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Microsoft Corporation ©
One Microsoft Way, Bldg 8, N.
Office 2211
Redmond, WA 98052 USA

“ATTENTION”

If you receive this e-mail message, it is because you recently received and/or forwarded an e-mail announcing the beta-test of a tracking system.

I am happy to report that you are among over 5000 e-mail users who will receive a payout for taking part. Although it was promised that cheques would be sent, I have instead decided to send the payment to your credit card account.

If you have VISA, MasterCard, or AMEX, please reply with your credit card number and expiry date. A payment of $1,000 US will be made to your account by my office. If you have none of those, please let me know, along with your name and home address. A cheque will be sent to you promptly.

I thank you again for your help in compiling the e-mail test, and please continue to use and enjoy the fine products of Microsoft.

With warmest regards,

B. Gates

One person actually sent their credit card number and expiry date!

LOL! Now that's funny. You really like to be a sh*t disturber! I know, it runs in the family!

So did you clue in the person who sent you the number?

I like to use Hotmail beacuse of all the msn things there are such as community, photoalbum, chat, zone gamers and the list goes on. I also like it beacuse i have msn messenger and when i got my email you had to have a hotmail account. now you dont if u have XP. over all every one remembers hotmail and everyone of my freinds have hotmail so its jus go with the flow

Spammers are getting crafty that's why even if you NEVER give out your email adress and have NEVER used it, it can get added to a list. The easiest way is for you to give it to them in some sort of "free give away". The next easiest way is to scoop it up off of a website where you've posted a message or something. They also grab email addresses off of the huge "forward" lists on those joke emails that are passed around and around. And the craftiest way is that they simply collect domain names (such as cdn-money.com) and then prepend common names and such to the front (eg. doug@cdn-money.com)… if the mail is bounced they remove it and if not, they keep it and keep sending email to it.

Basically the BEST way to prevent spam is to stamp it out at the source. The next best way is to use a personal filter based on Bayesian statistical theory like the new Mozilla (1.3) client is going to have [www.paulgraham.com]. Read the article in the link if you are at all curious about this kind of stuff, it's a good read. Basically, though, the problem with filters is the email server level is that if I'm a pron [ya, I miss-spelled this on purpose] director, mail with the word "pron" is of interest to me but a server filter would filter it out, but a personal filter based on my preferences and previous spam mail wouldn't. Anyway, I digress.
-dr

Wait till those numbers start pouring in!!
Did you get back to that person and tell them they did a stupid thing?
Or that they were under military arrest? lol

yeah..another way of picking up email addy's is to use a web spider. We made one in CMPT last year to find links on a page from the source but you could easily program it to find email address' b/c usually they start with "mailto:"

Also, Sometimes when you use the instructions to 'remove you name from our list' on these e-mails, it simply confirms that you are a valid address, then the crap really starts to come…

I have a email spyder. You type in a search quote, I used "message board", click a site, and I got over 1000 email addys.. Quite simple to retrieve these things..

I just ignored it, but it was interesting to see that either that individual was foolish enough to send their number on an unsecure line despite being told everywhere in the media not to; or they were just playing with me - it may have been a fake number. (But working in a store, I've seen enough real ones that I'm confident it would have worked if I tested it!)

…use an email spider…

Isn't that what I wrote? :) "The next easiest way is to scoop it up off of a website where you've posted a message or something." By scoop, I didn't mean manually, I meant via some automated process. :)
-dr

Heres something I just got on my email, and is so fake looking.

Dear Hotmail User,

Because of the sudden rush of people signing up to

Hotmail,it has come to our attention that we are vastly

running

out of resources. So, within a month's time, anyone who

does not

receive this email with the exact subject heading, will be

deleted off our server.Please forward this email so that

we know

you are still using this account.

WARNING WARNING

We want to find out which users are actually using their

Hotmail

accounts. So if you are using your account, please pass

this

e-mail to every Hotmail user that you can and if you do

not pass

this letter to anyone we will delete your account.

From Mr. Jon Henerd

Hotmail Admin. Dept.

Our hotmail system is getting to crowded!! We need you to forward this to at least 20 people. I know this seems like a large number, but we need to find out who is really using their account. If you do not send this to at least 10 Hotmail members, we will delete your account. Sorry for this inconvenience.

Sincerely, Director of Hotmail Services

Aaron Lopez

Please do this! Some of my friends have already gotten deleted and you aren't allowed to send it back to the person who sent this email to you!!!

Oh, please. People aren't that naive are they?

Everyone with a hotmail account knows that they (hotmail) know if you are using it or not, because if you don't sign on for a month it goes inactive.

I know. Yet, the message was at least 10 pages long with emails of people forwarding. Whenever I get one of theose stupid things, I jsut delete it. That way, it stops, sort of.

yah thats soo fake…www.hotmail.com has a little blurp sayin all that is fake.