Re: [BitPim-user] (no subject)

[N4AOF <n4...@ar...>]

Oh yes, it is always “someone else’s” computer that “got hacked” --  BS on both counts – the vast majority of these spam infestations come from the person either getting malware on their computer or from the person having given away their account information in response to phishing, fake sites, social engineering, or harvesting programs that offer to ‘consolidate’ all your mail accounts.

The “someone else’s computer” story CAN occasionally be true because some botnet malware does change the “from” address on the email (usually detectable in the headers) but that is rare overall and the odds are nearly astronomical in any closed mail list (like this one and Yahoo or Google Groups) because the changed “from” address would need to match someone on the subscriber list.  

Bottom line: When we see spam here, it almost certainly came from the account shown in the From address and usually the individual is far from blameless.

In any case, regardless of who might be at fault, there is only one reasonable response for the manager of any mail list – once an address is used to send spam to the group, the manager needs to remove and ban that account from the list to prevent its use for continued spamming of the list members.


From: Joe 
Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2012 03:37 AM
To: bit...@li... 
Subject: Re: [BitPim-user] (no subject)

Most of the time, somebody else got their computer hacked and all the email addresses harvested and used without ever touching any of their computers.  Teach people to use BCC instead of CC or TO for mailings so fewer addresses get unnecessarily propagated to vulnerable machines.

On 11/17/2012 10:28 PM, Toby Fredrickson wrote:

  That happened to my Daughter on my Comcast account. She apparently switched over to "dookieprotect" (based on a fellow "stoodent" claiming it was the best) or something like it as malware protection and her box got zombied into a spam machine. We got it fixed. Any reputable virus system should fix that.


  On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 7:01 PM, N4AOF <n4...@ar...> wrote:

    Another idiot who wants to claim his Yahoo account was “hacked” because he can’t explain why his computer is sending out spam.