E-Mail Spam via this forum

Mortuis · Post by **Mortuis** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:23 am

I'm paranoid, I happen to have a paid yahoo account for the disposable addresses, so whenever anyone asks me for my e-mail address when I sign up for something I create a disposable e-mail address for them. It's not that I don't trust whoever I give my e-mail to, it's that things happen. On this forum, things have happened. While flagging my spam I saw this message:

Thanks! Every message you report trains your SpamGuard Plus filters to work better for you.

The messages you selected were deleted and reported as spam.

We noticed that you were deleting a number of messages sent to the following disposable address(es):

* <jmfirewall-linuxlinktechshow@yahoo.com> [Edit - Delete]

To discontinue receiving mail sent to a disposable address, delete the address. This can be done through the AddressGuard section of Mail Options

Edit Spam Protection Settings - How does this work? - View AddressGuard

I don't for a minute believe that tllts sold my address, but it was apparently harvested from this forum. People might want to know that this forum or forums that run the same software are being targeted for spam lists.

This isn't intended as a condemnation of the forum or tllts, I don't know much about phpbb but I'm assuming there really isn't much the maintainers can do to prevent this. I just think that the less paranoid ought to be aware of what is obvious to some.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:46 am

You have a link to your email addy shown publicly - I imagine it's not at all hard to harvest that info.

Post by **dann** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 9:23 am

In your profile settings there is an option to not display your email.

We would never sell any information to any vendor.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 11:09 am

Huh - that option seems to be disobeyed at this point. I alwazys make it a point to remove my meail addy, and look - there it is! I looked at my profile, and have "Always display my email addy" set to no. IIRC, in the past my email addy has not been shown here.

Post by **dann** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:25 pm

Well the option is to always show email, but if you say no, then it only shows your email if a person is logged in. Non-logged in people do not see your email.

I'll have too look in the other templates, perhaps this is something unique to this template in that it shows email address when you are logged in whether you want it too or not.

Maybe there is a plug-in to handle this, to never show email address.

greggh · Post by **greggh** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:50 pm

Snarkout wrote:Huh - that option seems to be disobeyed at this point. I alwazys make it a point to remove my meail addy, and look - there it is! I looked at my profile, and have "Always display my email addy" set to no. IIRC, in the past my email addy has not been shown here.

I can't see your email address, either in you posts or on your profile page.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:11 pm

Ah - so there's no option to hide your email addy all together.

Greg - below your post, there are a number ol buttons, one of which is email - this is what I was talking about.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:13 pm

OK - I logged out to check, and yes, my addy is gone, but Dann's and Mortius' emails are still available.

Post by **dann** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 2:42 pm

My email is visible because I have made it so in my profile. Now I do believe that no matter what a person sets in their profile email is visible to all Admins. Since I am an Admin I cannot test this out without creating a new account. But it sounds like greggh verifies this.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 5:58 pm

Spam has been getting pretty bad, whenever I log into Gmail I have over 200 spams (all caught by Gmail so they never make it to Kmail luckily) and some are even getting through Gmail and spamassassin. I had to stop giving away my Google Talk/Jabber address because it was the same as my email and it was being mined.

Luckily 10minutemail.com and the gmail dot trick seems to be slowing it down.