email and username used for spam??

[Gabi1]

caution: strongs words

i have just received a spam message, that includes my username from this forum, and sent to the registered email account i use with this forum.

that mean there is a security breach, which i think should be dealt with severely and promptly.

just to note:

- there is no connection between my name and email address (for obvious reasons)

- i am active and registered on extremely few internet sites.

- i never connect same username and address.

So problem comes from here. needs immediate solution. being a human being and a French, i despise spam and will not stand any attack to my privacy.

and here is the mail (which by the way was not even filtered by email server):

dateJan 10, 2008 5:08 AM
subjectNew Private Message at Aximsite
mailed-bydrysdale.simplecom.net

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL!
***************************

Dear Gabi1,

You have received a new private message at Aximsite from turing2, entitled "Re: Gabi1".

To read the original version, respond to, or delete this message, you must log in here:
http://www.aximsite.com/boards/private.php

This is the message that was sent:
***************
Hi,
I'm new here, how's it going?

"Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things as a meaningful unity" - Albert Einstein

---
turing2
http://www.freewebtown.com/turing
***************

Again, please do not reply to this email. You must go to the following page to reply to this private message:
http://www.aximsite.com/boards/private.php

All the best,
Aximsite

[tst]

That sounds like alfa.

I'm not sure that there a security breach.

First, you did publish an email address once or twice (although not your current one and not with a @), so it might have been parsed manually.

Second, do you use this same address and login name in other forums (e.g. LAVA)? Is it possible you published the address there?

[Gabi1]

At LAVA i have same username but different adress.

The adress i published was different for obvious reasons. i am always trying to be very carefull with this stuff. i never mix for example professional and personal emails. all servers are kept appart, and i have a 'dump' email for transfering all information. up to now this seems to have worked perfectly. The thing is that every time there is a breach from somewhere, it is the start of a new wave of spam and unsolicited messages, that i have to find ways to kill.

In this case, i  changed a while ago the forum related email , because server has crashed (yes due to spam - btw this is the email you have of me - not reliable anymore, so pm me for another one). so i changed it to my 'dump' email, as a temporary solution. this one up to now never ever had spam. until today. and that means i have to rethink my whole policy.

and yes - this is the only forum (or entity for that matter), that uses this email directly.

[tst]

By the way, after having a quick look at aximsite, it looks like a legitimate site and there seems to be a Gabi1 user (here's an example post).

It looks to me like someone used the PM system of that site to send you spam.

[Laura F.]

Hi Gabi1,

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  I have not seen anything else that leads me to believe there has been a security breach.  Can you please take a look at the link tst posted - was this a post you made at one time?  It looks like the website used to have a different name, MobilitySite forums. 

Regards,
Laura

[Gabi1]

Interresting!!

I did not bother look at the site, since it required registration, and was definitely spam.
Thanks tst and Laura, for pointing to this other site. it seems the mistake was mine after all

Laura you can remove the whole thread.

thanks again

[Ben]

Gabi1,

You and I share a common dislike of spam and have gone as far as reporting the address of the store where I was purchasing something as my home address. But when forced, I use a diferent approach to determining who it was that shared my info. When you fill in your name, include a reference to the entity in your name.

There are only two entities that I have had to share my contact info with, those being NI and the History Channel. So when I call NI the people I talk to to have to take a second look because my name comes up as "BenNI". NI has been well behaved and they have not shared my contact info. But judging from the junk-mail addressed to "BenHist", I can not say the same about the History Channel.

Ben

[altenbach]

One advantage of a forum (if managed properly like here at NI) over a mailing list such as infoLabview is the fact that it cannot easily be harvested for e-mail addresses. This is one of the reasons I prefer an online forum.

Of course nothing is completely hackproof, but I think NI is doing a great job so far.

[Gabi1]

General note: I was too fast accusing this forum (lithium), and apologies.

Spam just makes me jump to my toes, and i tend to react angrily.

Ben: what an interresting solution! yet, if all emails comes back to same server, then the spammers still can track it to the end, and spam you. in my case i try to use different servers for different emails. As long as i do not have too many, it is manageable, with the help of a very good client what happened here seems to have been the result of a glitch in control from my side.

[Graziano]

---

@Gabi1 wrote:

I did not bother look at the site, since it required registration, and was definitely spam.

---

Maybe you know, but a solution can be www.bugmenot.com, it works also with axim site you mentioned....

Since this post is spam-related, I'd like to point to some useful tools....

If you like fantastic animals like fire-fox-es, you'll also find a bugmenot plugin integrating in it (I don't know if it is possible for IE ).  Another good tool can be adblock (but not really for spam .... ).

Hope this can help.....

graziano

PS.: I forgive to mention that bugmenot is a LEGAL site, it gives fakes for usernames and pwd for compulsory registrations, not when you should pay for a site's content etc....

Message Edited by Graziano on 01-22-2008 01:35 AM

Message Edited by Graziano on 01-22-2008 01:36 AM