At 17:06 2002-09-13 +0000, MindFuq did say:
The email address I'm using is specifically for this mailing list,
Gosh, that's pleasant.
and I just got my first spam from GT Toner Supplies.
Your first spam is special and should be cherished - the hundreds of
thousands which will follow it only cheapen the experience, so hold onto
that one with all you've got.
This isn't a Kodak moment, it's a Hormel moment. Dine on a can of SPAM
tonight in honour of your first spam. Savor the greasy porky flavour.
I called them, and they said they were sold my address from a promotional
company.
I've always found spammers to be forthcoming with the truth. I've never
known a spammer to say "yea, we're running a nifty script which harvests
the addresses from the web." Instead, the story goes something like
"gosh, we bought the list from an upstanding organization which assured us
that everyone had opted in. Please give me all your email addresses so
that we can remove them from that list..."
It seems the procmail list has been harvested.
The procmail list is archived to multiple locations on the web, so that's
no surprise. It isn't as if the email addresses are obfuscated in the
online archives, so any spambot crawling the web will find the addresses
there and readily extract them into a database.
Did anyone else get spammed from GT Toner Supplies?
Hard to tell - on my servers, lots of that stuff gets thrashed via DNSBLs
right at the SMTP stage (before ANY of the message is transferred), and
what survives that needs to survive some harsh spam filtering via procmail.
I just checked my spam archive, and there are no messages with the word
"toner" present there, so if a copy was addressed to me, it was rejected
during the SMTP stage. Wo-hoo, strike another blow for the effectiveness
of DNSBLs.
It seems like we can really take advantage of this, because they were
stupid enough to include their toll-free number. I was also able to get their
[snip]
How's about we don't turn the procmail list into a spam action group? This
list is about procmail and how to use it - which, if you focused on that,
you might not have received the spam in your inbox in the first
place. Please check the archives for a variety of useful techniques.
I trust that nobody here is stupid enough to actually call their TF number
from their home or business, since they'll get YOUR number as a
result. Most of those TF numbers are voicemail boxes anyway, so even if
this spam resulted in a human, the next TF number you get may not.
You score marks for at least not copying the spam here.
---
Sean B. Straw / Professional Software Engineering
Procmail disclaimer: <http://www.professional.org/procmail/disclaimer.html>
Please DO NOT carbon me on list replies. I'll get my copy from the list.
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