Alfa Pages

Adam H · Posted: Sun Sep 28, 2003 3:23 pm Post subject: Damn Junk Mail

Has anyone been receiving loads of junk mail (complete with virus!) as a result of being subscribed/registered to the Alfa Pages?

I've tired of the recent waves of junk mail and decided to open a new email account. Did it (Thanks Yahoo!) and updated my alfa pages profile.

Less than 12 hours later (Overnight) my 6.0mb of mail space is overflowing with emails & viruses.

What is going on? Has anyone else had this problem? Is there anything I can do to fix it as its really long-winded going through the 'blocked senders list' for every unwanted email!

Adam H

paddy granger · Alfa Sprint Joined: 12 Aug 2003 Posts: 248

I always use a special hotmail email address when registering with forums. Hotmail accounts always get tonnes of junkmails, I must say that I didn't notice any rise in Junkmail after registering with Alfa-Pages. Rolling Eyes

Marcin · Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 8:34 am Post subject:

Hi,

quite strange. I've been registered to alfa pages for quite a long time and I've never experianced any problem with spam coming from that site. Actually yahoo! has a pretty good spam filter as I generally receive a really minimal amount of spam (one a month or less). You should be careful with filling polls like "what are your interests" etc when registering to webmail. Once the sites that provide stuff you indicated you're "interested in" get the hold of your email address, your mailbox will be full every day.

Marcin

Maximilian · Alfasud Joined: 04 Apr 2003 Posts: 39 Location: London, UK

Yeah, I've got a special Hotmail account for messageboards and usenet, as well. It doesn't get nearly as much spam as some of my other accounts.

Anyway, the Hotmail junk filter gets rid of nearly alol of it, and any ones that do get through I put on the block list. When it comes to 'pogobuzz' and all it's bastard derivatives, I out the whole domain on the block list.
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1988 Sprint 1.7 QV (35,000 miles)

Admin · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 1:44 pm Post subject:

Hi

I have had a load of junk mailk recently as well. Seem to be getting loads where the titles are giberish (presume they are Japanese character set or the like).

I control these pages and I have not (and have no intention of ever) given a list of the email addresses to anyone.

Looking at the pages it seems the link for the email address is quite obvious. Maybe it is being pulled off by some web crawling software (and phpBB is common enough t make it worth coding for it). I will investigate whether there are any patches to help disguise the email addresses to make it more difficult to peel them off.

All the best

Keith

Dreamracers · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 8:34 am Post subject:

runngin my own site, and having forums and mailing lists to deal with I am aware of Privacy Policies and the like, and I am sure that here as any other site run by "enthusiasts" (Dreamracers is too), that you work hard to build traffic, and dont risk selling off email addresses for a few quid at the expense of losing valued regulars.

Having been approached by email marketing companies who attempt to purchase the Dreamracers list, I am aware of the sort of rates that are paid, which to be frank are crap, and wouldnt even tempt the most unscrupulous person to give up the details to these leeches, so sure that there are not enough addresses here (on the forum) to even buy a beer.

So, I wouldnt worry, I am sure it isnt the admins giving anything away.

There is software about that "harvests" email addresses from the net (i.e visits pages and anything that resembles an email address - it stores it), so any time you post your email address or leave it available in a guestbook, chances are it will get picked up sooner or later.

Admin · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 6:12 pm Post subject:

Hi

Possibly part of the problem is the email address button on the bottom of each post. Looking at that it is a simple mailto function. Maybe I can try passing a slightly modified email address to a javascipt function that can correct the email address and do the mailto itself.

If you want me to modify the email address you are using (now you are registered) to something with an obvious NO_SPAM in the middle of it (so anyone can see it manually, but searches won't) then I can probably do that.

I haven't been approached to sell the addresses, and I have no intention of doing so even if they did approach me.

All the best

Keith

Adam H · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2003 8:13 pm Post subject:

Keith, Mark, what wonderful people you are!

I knew that I would get some spam as a result of making my email address visible but the recent bombardment of 144k virus messages to my sacrificial hotmail address surprised me. Moving the address 'pointer' to my new sacrificial yahoo.co.uk address filled 6mb with junk mail & viruses within 12 hours - I was astounded!

I'm not pointing to anyone here but I'm just amazed that it happened so quickly!

Anyone got a good 16v engine I can have????

Adam H

Admin · Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2003 12:14 am Post subject:

Hi

That is a hell of alot of dodgy emails. I get a fair few but it is rare to get anything more that a 72k attachment (got loads of those a few weeks back, around a dozen in one day). Using crude old Compuserve software I just delete them online.

All the best

Keith

Dreamracers · Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:56 am Post subject:

What I dont get is why companies would choose to market in this way? Surely there is not a sufficiant response to spams to warrent the cost? I suppose there must be for it still to happen. I have never bought any product or taken up any service originating from spam, but if you email several million, there are bound to be a few dozen morons.

Guest · Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2003 11:18 am Post subject:

I love that poll

Scott Sander · Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2003 2:03 pm Post subject:

I get more spam on my email address not associated with this site than the one I do have with this site.

Don't just use alfa-numeric Laughing

characters, also use a . or something else that seems to help reduce the amount of junk mail.

Junk mail usually gets around .01% response, from memory. That is why there is a lot of it. They'll pick a domain and then just use brute force methods to generate addresses like bill@blah.com, billg@blah.com, etc

I have started using a program called mailwasher. It means that I can check the headers before downloading the entire mail, and with this dodgy MS update spam mail, you can pick em and delete them before taking up your bandwidth.
_________________
Scott Sander
'91 Alfa 33 Boxer 16V Monza - Awesome
http://www.sanderfamily.com