[SEDXC] W4 callsign spamming

[Tad Williamson]

Good evening Michael.  Don't feel alone with the
spammers.  One of my many duties at the lawfirm is our
anti-spam server and dealing with spam in general. 
Spammers go to great lengths to try and touch every
email possible.  They do things like send emails to
ajones at abc.com, bjones at abc.com, cjones at abc.com and so
on through the alphabet then they do the same thing
with smith and any other name you can thing of,
sometimes generating random characters at a particular
domain.  Remember their goal is volume not accuracy. 
I suspect what may happened in this case is they set
up some kind of websearch that looked for a pattern
that could be a callsign--one or two letters the first
of which is "W, N or A" followed by a number and then
1, 2 or 3 letters after that.  When it gets a hit, it
stores it and then they append the more common domains
like Yahoo.com, aol.com, msn.com, etc.  Unfortunately,
these patterns of our callsigns make it easier for
spammers to chase us down.  What you might try doing
is setting up another email address that breaks the
pattern like "michaelw4mja at yahoo.com"
Remember even that may not protect you from getting
spam.  Spammers will let robot computers do nothing
but search for email address patterns (xxx at yyy.zzz)
and compile lists for any they find.  So if your email
is listed anywhere on the web, it could possibly be
discovered.
At work, our anti-spam server reports show that around
90% of all inbound email is blocked as known spam. 
That number is pretty close to what most of the
anti-spam folks say is out there.  Just think, 90 out
of every 100 emails sent on the internet is some kind
of spam.
It's scary and frustrating but it's us against the
spammers.
Have a good evening.
73, Tad, WF4W 
--- Michael Almeter <w4mja at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It has come to my attention that spammers are taking
> W4M__ call sign's and sending spam offers. I got one
> my myself which was my call at Yahoo.com offering me
> a Rolex watch.... I have noticed about 7 call signs
> all beginning with W4M in them that have had this
> happen.  I noticed the calls were W4MM, W4MWG, W4MC,
> W4MSZ, W4MLH, and me W4MJA. I have changed my
> password, and am thinking of other ways to keep my
> call safe from spammers.
> 
> 
> Michael J Almeter
> 
> W4MJA
> 
> A 5WPM Know code Extra Class 
> 
> Certified S.C.U.B.A. Diver
>        
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