@amiga.org spam investigation

Hi,

To those of you who are receiving SPAM through your @amiga.org mailing address, I have a question.  In your account, do you have "allow others to view my e-mail address" checked?  

I think the spam spider went over our memberslist, which I have now disabled, but if that's true, we might not need to delete the e-mail forwarding (something I desperately do not wish to do).

Wayne

[whabang]

I have it activated, and I can't turn it off! :-o

[AmiNTT]

I do not have that checked and have not gotten any spam to that address.

[odin]

I had it checked, but switched it off a week ago or so. And I've not been receiving any notable junk on odin@amiga.org.

[Step]

I was not effected that much, but the stuff i did get was aimed for the @amiga.org adress, since i changed the mail adress to a yahoo adress that mail went there instead.

[Ivan]

Nope i don't have it checked but i have recieved a few emails addressed to users@amiga.org and similar. I thought you offered to bulk mail your userlist to some company so i didnt say anything. This latest 'wave of spam' has completly passed by me though so i guess checking it off works.

Ivan

Ivan,

I have never, and would never consider selling any account information to anyone.

Wayne

[Ivan]

>I have never, and would never consider selling any account information to anyone.

Good thing too. But thats not really what i was implying. These emails i got were before the time of advertisers here on Amiga.org. I only recieved a couple and assumed you had struck some deal to mail to all your users for a company and not exactly selling the userlist info. Kind of like Yahoo mails people for advertisers but dosent actually give away thier email addys to the companys. Just an assumtion but you were talking about funding for this site back then so i figured you were hard up for cash to keep this site going and didnt want to say anything. It was the odd To: address that threw me. Either way, i deleted them as spam and i haven't recieved anything else since. Certainly nothing from this last attack of spam. And i hope you can get it sorted too. Nobody should have thier site and user list hijacked like this.

Still, on the other side of the coin.. Have you considered allowing advertisers through mail here? It could solve the cash problem and i dont know if the users would mind so much if it meant funding this site. We can just delete the mails afterall right? I mean, i wouldnt really like it but it might help too. Just a thought.

Ivan

[odin]

@Ivan:

I'd think that would tick quite a few ppl off, unless there would be an opt-in option in the prefs ofcourse.

Hi Ivan,

No, I haven't thought of making the user information available, even to advertisers.  I know how objectionable that would be to me.  I can't even imagine the fury that would create with all the users.

[Kent]

The email address is unchecked here.  I get an average of 10 or so spam messages a day that are not stopped by my own spam filter system on my local mail server.  I have tried setting up the "blacklist" server to deny any possible spam but it seems all of the spam messages I receive are not yet listed on the service.  The blacklist server is collecting approximately two every three days.

When it comes time for the email forwarding system to be an option, I'm going to turn mine off simply due to the massive amounts of spam I get.

SpamCop.net is your friend.

:pint:

[Blomberg]

In your account, do you have "allow others to view my e-mail address" checked?

No, mine is not checked. And I still get the occasional spam directed at differentnames@amiga.org (mostly Blomberg (obviously) and bluewolf)

I think the spam spider went over our memberslist, which I have now disabled, but if that's true, we might not need to delete the e-mail forwarding (something I desperately do not wish to do).

I hope it doesn't require that kind of action, the member list is a big enough loss  :-(
But do what you have to do, I'm sure we'll survive  :-)

[Billsey]

Mine is on and I get one every few days. Deleting them unread is not a problem for me (yet).

I think what Ivan was getting at was not you making user info available, but, well, "forwarding" adverts to us. That way our info stays private, but you still get more advertising dollars coming in. For my own part, in my emailer I have "download HTML pictures" unchecked, so all I need to see is a "broken picture box" and I know It's spam. ;-)

[SlimJim]

I have had it unchecked since I first registered here, and
about the only spam I get is directed at slimjim@amiga.org.  
Not extememe amounts, mind you, but enough for me to note a trend...
.
SlimJim

[Steady]

I have the op0tion unchecked and I get about 10 a day. It has been slowly increasing over the past couple of months. Only 4 months ago I might receive one spam every 3 months or so, so something is definitely changing. It is definitely at the point of annoying for me. Whether this has anything to do with amiga.org, I don't know, but I don't use this account for any 'dodgy' net registrations.