Asetek leaking email addresses?

[Paul Adams]

Just received an email (allegedly) from tumppi8687@hotmail.com (never an address I've had contact with) and it was addressed to a unique email address I set up with Asetek's website for this very reason (to trap spam/worms and be able to trace them).

The body of the message was simply "Your document is attached." and there was an attachment Zone Alarm Pro had quarantined called "mp3music.PIF".

There is absolutely no way in the world anyone got this address other than from Asetek, so if you've signed up for any competitions or mailing lists from these guys, be on the lookout for any untoward emails.

Just a heads-up.

[DR]

It could be anything; it is a hotmail account - spam is free over there.....

[Paul Adams]

No, that's the point David - the email address I subscribed to Asetek with was unique, so anything addressed to it must have originated from them, by whatever nefarious route.

I always use unqiue addresses in my domain for tracking potential spam havens, all mailing lists, competition sites, even forums - every one is different.

Maybe they sent out a mass mail with their mailing list in the "To" or "CC" fields by mistake (I've seen 2 companies do that before *slap forehead*), I have no idea.

[da_ging]

m8 you have to realise that there is no such thing as a spam free email address you could create a unique 1 every hour and still get spam! ,i dont know the ins and outs of how email is sent etc but i can safely its not secure and is easy to get addresses

[Paul Adams]

That's all well and good, but if that were the case I would expect to get spam for spurious email addresses I had never created, not exactly the one used for a specific purpose.

I would not, for example, have thought twice about an email addressed to iajsdfaoifjiogjsdf@[my-domain.co.uk], as it's not an address I have used.

I do know the ins & outs of email systems, or at least the fundamentals of the (E)SMTP standard, and all the possible ways that address which has never been disclosed to anyone but Asetek could have been harvested.

I set up the email addresses I do so that I can determine if an email comes from some double glazing firm addressed to "this-is-my-barclays-account@[my-domain.co.uk]" then I know exactly who leaked/lost/sold it on.

[SilentDeath]

Someone at asetek probaly has the netsky.C@MM (as yahoo calls it) worm.
Someone has your address in there address book, the worm gets addresses form that, and then, spoofing the senders address (also taken from address book? reall addresses though) sends virus spam to you.
Dunno if this is the same thing but ive been getting this netsky.c@mm spammed to me about 4 times a week. Tell asetek to do a virus scan as your address probably hasnt left there computer...

[Steve]

Any clues in the message source?

I do the same as you and use unique addresses, but don't seem to have had anything fishy...

[Paul Adams]

Any clues in the message source?

I do the same as you and use unique addresses, but don't seem to have had anything fishy...

Unfortunately not - first place I looked.
Either Thunderbird's message headers are a bit poor, or my mail hosting company are very odd - the trail only went back as far as an entry point at 123-reg.co.uk.

Can't remember if NetSky is one of the ones that has its own SMTP routine though, so maybe it spoofed the header?


|SD| - I am used to mailing lists being handled by majordomos or mailer daemons, they should never go anywhere near a standard mail client really (though the evidence would indicate this could well not be the case).
Ironically it's been 2 or 3 weeks since I unsubscribed from their list too.

[Moonshade]

I wish I could have a spam free e-mail adress. But I've discovered if you don't use you're hotmail that much (I have an old one) they don't spam it And I've signed up for a e-mail adress at home.se, and so far no one has started to spam it. My b/f has that and a friend of him signed my b/f up on a list..(bad friend) and now he gets like a 100 spams a day :/

Well, my hotmail, the one I use..it's incredibly spammed, I got 100 yesterday. And I hadn't checked it for a week.

Good luck mate, with the spam free mail. I hope you'll succeed, if you do..then tell us how you did it !

[daniel_owen_uk]

Set the spam filter to be stronger in msn, I get about 30 a day to my hotmail account, but I can't remember the last one that go to my inbox.

[Michael]

I do this all the time, whatever mailinglist/website i need to put my e-mail address in, will be, for example, hexus@domain.com. That was you know which cheeky f**kers are giving your address out, and it's much easier to stop any incoming mail to that specific address.

[Flash]

Weird thing happened to me lately, my hotmail address got spammed to death so I decided to leave it for 30days and not check it knowing they would wipe it.

After the 30day wipe I logged back in and noticed I was getting no spam at all.

Anyone know why?

[Moonshade]

Weird thing happened to me lately, my hotmail address got spammed to death so I decided to leave it for 30days and not check it knowing they would wipe it.

After the 30day wipe I logged back in and noticed I was getting no spam at all.

Anyone know why?

Yeah easy..(strange you didn't got a message about it though)
Hotmail has a "rule", if you don't sign in for more than 30 days..you're account is going to close. But you can re-active it (and that was the message, that I think it was strange you didn't get)..
Cos you should, when you sign in again get a message where it says something similar: You wanna re-activate your account?

If you do, then you can sign in normaly again..but then all your mail will be gone. Including your spam mail!

[Steve]

If you do, then you can sign in normaly again..but then all your mail will be gone. Including your spam mail!

I think what he means is once reactivated, the spamming doesn't resume.

[Paul Adams]

Maybe the address was removed from the lists that tried mailing it as soon as they picked up the "delivery failure notification" auto-response?
*shrug*

A handy trick if you get spam is to not open it - often they use references to online images to track when a specific mail has been read by a human, and hence indicates a valid and active address.

[Moonshade]

Ah I'm so sorry!

Well that might be because..I think the one that has you're email attached on some list sees/checks if you're active. I mean there's no use to send out spam to someone who doesn't check the mail daily or weekly.

I had a mail before that got so spammed that I stared up another, so now I don't check that daily just twice a month or something like that..and now I get like 3 spam mail/month. And before I had like 50 a day or something .

So hotmail isn't the best mail if you don't wanna have much spam, and apperently someone has add your email adress to some site or something, or you clicked on a pop-up. So now you're getting a lot of spam.

To minimize the risk of getting pop-ups (so that you might click in the window instead of the x up in the corner) you could always install Firefox instead of IE.

Good Luck!