Re: spamming of ML addresses

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

On 06/10/2017 12:54 PM, pl...@pi... wrote:
> On 10/06/17 15:39, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
>> On 10 June 2017 at 16:01, Philipp K. Janert wrote:
>>> On Sat, 10 Jun 2017 09:02:12 +0100
>>> pl...@pi... wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> for the last three weeks I have been getting massive amounts of SPAM
>>>> from the address I use for this ML. I am going to have to shut down
>>>> the account.
>>>>
>>>> This is presumably because sourceforge mailman service archives this
>>>> as a public list exposing contact emails which have been trawled by
>>>> spammers.
>>>>
>>>> Is there  a way to prevent full addresses being exposed in that way?
>>>>
>>>> Are others having this problem?
>>>
>>> No, I haven't (fortunately!). Sorry to hear.
>>
>> I'm getting sufficient spam from all over the place (it ends in
>> spambox anyway), so generally I wouldn't be able to tell where exactly
>> the spam originates. (I would need a separate email address for each
>> mailing list for that.)

If it is actual spam, typically the original source isn't in the email. 
Somehow that info can be left out, even though there may be a short list 
of several places the email was routed.


> Which is exactly what I do ;)
>
> That is how I know the recent flurry is coming from the contact I put on
> this ML.
>
> BTW they come in volleys of three identical emails each from different
> bogus addresses.

These kind of things happen to me on occasion, but after a week or two 
they subside when the bot gets no activity.  I.e., if you follow links 
(never do so with a suspect email), it's a confirmation of a valid 
address and the site might get other information like cookies and such.

If I have a suspect email, I'll save it to a separate file (without 
viewing the email in an HTML device...which many email viewers are) then 
look at it with a generic ASCII editor.  If the file is mostly binary 
data at the end or I don't recognize the sender/text, I discard it.

For any email that requests logging into some type of account, I don't 
follow any direct links from the email.  Instead, I go to the site in my 
browser by typing the address I know for that site.  That avoids going 
to some kind of mimic page.

Dan