[TowerTalk] Fwd: Unwanted crap msgs

W0MU Mike Fatchett w0mu at w0mu.com
Sat Mar 31 18:36:50 PDT 2012


I have had my work email spoofed 3 or 4 times in the last year.  I get 
about two days worth of bounces of bad email addresses and a few people 
actually responded to me.  There is nothing you can do about it other 
than change your email address which for my business would be bad.

I have never been hacked into.

Mike W0MU W0MU-1 CC Cluster w0mu.net
On 3/31/2012 7:33 PM, David Gilbert wrote:
> Actually, it is true ... all of it.  Reread my post and you'll see that
> I said that if the spam messages are sent to other addresses from your
> address book it is likely that your computer was hacked.
>
> a.  "Likely" means probably, not exclusively
>
> b.  Not only do you (as a potential spammer) know that I subscribe to
> TowerTalk and that the list will accept a message from me, you know a
> whole bunch of other people from which TowerTalk will accept a message.
> Why would you stop at spoofing messages only from me when you could be
> doing the same thing from several dozen other subscriber addresses that
> have currently posted a message?   They wouldn't have to be the same
> message ... it would be simple to send different messages purporting to
> come from different people.  That doesn't happen , though.  Why??  The
> simple answer is that that isn't how it is general done ... see item a.)
> above.   If it were, we'd be getting tons of phony emails supposedly
> from lots of subscribers of the various lists that we post to.  Instead,
> spammers tend to (see again item a.) above)  rely on hacking a computer
> and accessing the address book to get exposure to the broadest
> demographics possible.
>
> I'll bet that almost every spam message sent to TowerTalk was also sent
> to other addresses from the affected person, or at least similar
> messages sent at the same time.
>
> All that being said, I have a non-ham related web site with a unique
> email address included on one pf the pages.  About once every two years
> I'll see a flurry of bounced spam emails spoofed from that address, and
> it has nothing to do with my computer being hacked. Somebody simply
> mined that email address and spoofed it.
>
> Dave   AB7E
>
>
>
>
> On 3/31/2012 2:24 PM, Al Kozakiewicz wrote:
>> Actually, that's not true.  As a subscriber to tower talk, I now know David Gilbert's email address and that towertalk at contesting.com will accept a message purporting to be from him.  Armed with that knowledge and an ISP that doesn't care if I operate an SMTP server, I can send email to everyone who subscribes to this list without ever accessing your computer.  I don't need to have access to your address book, only copies emails you've sent or have been sent to you.  And I can get them legitimately.
>>
>> Al
>> AB2ZY
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: towertalk-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of David Gilbert
>> Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 4:17 PM
>> To: towertalk at contesting.com
>> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Fwd: Unwanted crap msgs
>>
>>
>> True.  It does not require that your computer be hacked, although it likely was if the spam messages get sent to addresses in your address book.
>>
>> 73,
>> Dave   AB7E
>>
>>
>>
>> On 3/31/2012 1:06 PM, HansLG at aol.com wrote:
>>> The sad thing is that "they" only have to know your e-mail address to
>>> make the spams. "They" can fake it all in their own server. You will
>>> only know you  were hit if some of the e-mails come in return.
>>>
>>> Hans - N2JFS
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ____________________________________
>>>     From: bmarx at bellsouth.net
>>> To: towertalk at contesting.com
>>> Sent: 3/29/2012  12:52:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
>>> Subj: Re: [TowerTalk] Unwanted crap  msgs
>>>
>>>
>>> Phishing attempts that are successful, such as this one, are  usually
>>> easily remedied, by changing the email password. That is if it  does
>>> happen to you.
>>> Bill Marx W2CQ
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/29/2012 10:16  AM, Al Kozakiewicz wrote:
>>>> I doubt it was you at all.  I looked at  the original message header
>>>> and
>>> it came from a yahoo server, not  sbcglobal.
>>>> Unless contesting.com takes some measure to  validate that messages
>>> actually originate from a server authorized to send on  behalf of a
>>> domain, anyone with a PC on the internet can install an SMTP  server
>>> and send email to tower talk appearing to be from Jim  McLaughlin.
>>>> Al
>>>> AB2ZY
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