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        New Message Board Archives >> 2004 Posts >> Address Farmng?  *IMPORTANT*
        
(Message started by: Donna_D. on Nov 18^th, 2004, 9:50pm)

Title: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Donna_D. on Nov 18^th, 2004, 9:50pm

I have received an email notification of a failed email attempt from my yahoo email address as listed on CH.com.

I have only send one or two emails from that account in the last few months. Has anyone received an email from me lately?

I suspect someone may be farming our email addresses...anyone else had this problem lately?

I also was contacted by someone on yahoo instant messenger who said they got my name off a list...but of course they wouldn't say WHAT list.

Suspicious....
Keep your eyes open...

DD

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by brain_cramps on Nov 18^th, 2004, 9:53pm

Yep --- me too!

I've had a few returned from people that I've never emailed before (or even SEEN their addresses) so they can't be being sent from my computer.

Didn't this also happen to a few people about a year ago?

grant >:(

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by john_d on Nov 18^th, 2004, 9:54pm

My yahoo address is a spam wasteland, it has gotten to the point where I do not even use it anymore because it is too hard to find the real emails. I don't know if it has anything to do with being on my profile here or not. I had not really thought about it, interesting.

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Donna_D. on Nov 18^th, 2004, 9:57pm

This email said I had sent a message to someone FROM my own email addy...Like Grant...I had never seen that address before, much less written a mesasage...

SPAM is another story LOL I have over 4 thousand in my spam box...

DD

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by john_d on Nov 18^th, 2004, 10:01pm

gotcha, hmmmm. Like I said I have not been using mine so don't know, but it sounds annoying. :(

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by alleyoop on Nov 18^th, 2004, 10:05pm

Chalk me up too. I believe I've had about three emails returned undeliverable for one reason or another. I never sent any of them and all of the addys were unfamiliar. I've got software that scans all of my emails- incoming and outgoing for viruses, etc. It has had me buffaloed. You just may be onto something Donna!

....................alley [smiley=huh.gif]

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Redd715 on Nov 18^th, 2004, 10:10pm

nothing so far but will keep my eyes open

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Donna_D. on Nov 19^th, 2004, 3:41am

Bump for the morning crowd...

DD

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by K-9 on Nov 19^th, 2004, 3:45am

Yes, me too.

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Bob P on Nov 19^th, 2004, 7:03am

It's just another e-mail virus. Someone who has your e-mail address in their addreess (contacts) folder has gotten infected. The virus on their computer grabs your address from the contacts list and puts it in the 'From' part of an e-mail and then sends itself out. When it can't be delivered, it's returned to you instead of the computer it came from.

I've been getting 60+ / day for the past week.

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by nancyc on Nov 19^th, 2004, 12:15pm

Thanks Bob P for clearing that up....I have gotten several returned that I did not send out either....did a virus scan and it said i was fine...thanks for letting us know what is going on.... :Dnancyc

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Svenn on Nov 19^th, 2004, 12:27pm

same here , just remember to keep your antivirus programs updates at all times

Svenn

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Bob P on Nov 19^th, 2004, 12:45pm

The one I've been seeing is the W32 Netsky virus. It only takes one person you know to get infected and these damn things keep showing up in your mailbox for weeks!

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by Kirk on Nov 19^th, 2004, 1:32pm

Nope no probs whatsoever.
For some reason known only to god and frogs [smiley=mellow.gif]

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by brain_cramps on Nov 19^th, 2004, 1:46pm

I have to disagree, Bob.

a) Norton, McAfee, and AVG all find nothing on my system. Also, both incoming and outgoing emails are scanned.

b) I have never emailed any of these people, have never had their email address ANYWHERE on my system, and have not ever seen their email address.

c) None of these people have ever emailed me. I am also willing to bet that they have never had my email address on their system or even know my address.

d) I've never heard of a virus that would infect the computer of person A, and after searching their computer for addresses, finds the email addresses of persons B and C, and sends an email from person B to person C. (I'm not saying that's impossible --- just not the usual method.)

e) If my system was infected, more than just this one email address would be affected.

f) It would be quite the coincidence that all of these returned emails relate to people on CH.com.

My guess is someone has a list of our addresses, probably gotten through the profiles on the message board.

Comments?

Grant

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by fubar on Nov 19^th, 2004, 1:52pm

There is more than one reason that this happens, and in no case can you actually 'protect' your address fro being used this way.

The first way is as described above. Someone who has your address in their address book got infected with a mass mailing virus. It harvested your address from their address book and used it as the 'From' address on an outgoing spam email. Now, you can't do anything to deal with that problem directly, other than to be very selective about who you share your address with.

Another way this happens is called a 'Joe Job'. This is where a spam provider simply just starts using your domain name as a 'sent from' domain. They can find mail servers to inject this mail into the network as if they were you, and if the mail is rejected at the destination, it comes back to your real mail server. This is the much more common way. They used to do this and use just a single account name on the forged mail server... the problem with that was if they got too many rejected emails as returns to the real server, those people would get wise to the activity and start tracking down the real source. In order to remain under the radar for a longer stretch, they will randomize the account name in the 'from' part while keeping the domain part intact... joe@foo.com, kevin@foo.com; bill@foo.com; chris@foo.com, etc. This is very effective because if the any email is rejected, it comes back to many different accounts at the real server (instead of all to one account) and most people will just ignore a few reject mails per day, not understanding that their email system may be getting thousands of these per day in total. One problem with this method is that if you don't guess mostly correct 'from' addresses, the victim's email server will start accumulating suspicious amounts of undeliverable mail, also tipping off administrators. So, they have started to do what they are doing to US.

Now what they do is crawl sites of large user populations like CH.com, see how many 'real' addresses they can find, and use their more sophisticated 'joe job' techniques. Only solution here is to hide your real email address in your profile. I don't bother hiding mine because I have really good spam control, but most people should think about hiding it.

-fu

Title: Re: Address Farmng? *IMPORTANT*
Post by brain_cramps on Nov 19^th, 2004, 1:56pm

Thanks Fu!