Has your MSE forum email address been spammed.

bonzer

I was also spammed on 14th July. I got two copies of the email on the same day sent to two different addresses I have used only at MSE:

a) An address I currently use on the forum system only (not the weekly mailing list). This is a one-time address given out only to the the forum and nowhere else. I've googled it and it is not on the web.
b) A one-time unique address I previously used (a couple of years ago) at MSE but do not currently use. I can't remember if I used this on the forum, mailing list or both. I googled it and confirmed it is not on the web.

EDIT: Address B is still in the MSE forum database. I forgot I switched user name years ago and that e-mail address is still present in the forum database under the old user account. So that explains why I got a copy to that address as well as my current address.

The spam was:

from: [EMAIL="tgard@ymail.com"]tgard@ymail.com[/EMAIL]
reply-to: [EMAIL="tgard@ymail.com"]tgard@ymail.com[/EMAIL]
to: <my address>
date: Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:30 AM
subject: RE: your subscription on bestjobsuk

The e-mail addresses I used are quite unique to MSE. I don't think someone could have randomly guessed them. Additionally I read all e-mail sent to my domain. No other addresses at my domain were guessed or tried, just the MSE ones.

I'll forward specific details to the spamreport address.

Bonzer

MSE_Martin

moonrakerz wrote: »

As I said previously, this has happened to me once before, and eventually the company did admit that it's system had been compromised.

I give you my word, if we knew the system had been compromised we would say so.

Yet to say it without knowing is just as misleading and doesn't help anyone. We are investigating at the moment, we havent found anything, we haven't seen any holes, we havent got widescale reports.

Unfortunately it does look like people have got hold of these MSE only emails in someway. However whether thats due to a vbulletin hole, a database hack, the fact these are all on a registry elesewhere or something else entirely we just don't know.

The number of reports we've had is miniscule compared to the people on the email list - so how widespread it is - we don't know. As i've never wanted MSE to data mine we ONLY hold people's email addresses so hopefully even the doomsday scenario is small.

Yet we can't admit anything till we know something - or we're just misleading.

I'm very sorry this has happened... but at the moment we're still trying to figure out what has happened exactly

Martin

tomterm8

moonrakerz wrote: »

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I find it rather difficult to believe that a spammer, who needs huge numbers of addresses, to make his "business" pay, is going to trawl through sites like MSE in the hope of finding a few e-mail addresses that users of the forum have accidentally left "open".

Um, the process is automated, and people have been doing it for a looong time. You run it on a computer, and then go away. People of the wrong sort scrape sites like MSE continuously.

moonrakerz

tomterm8 wrote: »

Um, the process is automated, and people have been doing it for a looong time. You run it on a computer, and then go away. People of the wrong sort scrape sites like MSE continuously.

I know, but why muck about getting a few hundred addresses off each site (if you're lucky), when you can get tens or hundreds of thousands by getting into the sites data base or e-mail lists.

Martin says: "The number of reports we've had is miniscule compared to the people on the email list - so how widespread it is - we don't know"
I totally agree with that, but only a miniscule number use the unique addressing system so only a miniscule number would be aware IF someone had "stolen" the e-mail list from MSE.
In fact, myself and most of the others reporting this problem, would appear to be extremely cautious about giving out our e-mail addresses are not even on the MSE mailing list.

tomterm8

moonrakerz wrote: »

I know, but why muck about getting a few hundred addresses off each site (if you're lucky), when you can get tens or hundreds of thousands by getting into the sites data base or e-mail lists.

Martin says: "The number of reports we've had is miniscule compared to the people on the email list - so how widespread it is - we don't know"
I totally agree with that, but only a miniscule number use the unique addressing system so only a miniscule number would be aware IF someone had "stolen" the e-mail list from MSE.
In fact, myself and most of the others reporting this problem, would appear to be extremely cautious about giving out our e-mail addresses are not even on the MSE mailing list.

Well, it depends what your business model is. Lots of people scrape sites like MSE mainly for content. If you are creating a network of long-tail sites, the more sites you scrape, the more money you make. If you're going down that route, it's worthwhile also collecting addresses since it is only a little bit of extra processing power.

I'm not saying that someone haven't compromised MSE, btw, I am saying that this is one technique they use.

Pound

A similar thing happened to me on a police forum I registered on which also runs vBulletin. Lots of people reported the same thing and I don't think there was ever a conclusion as to how it happened.

bubieyehyeh

alanwsg wrote: »

me too!
I use a unique address for all forums I subscribe to.
Just started getting spam from this one.
from sigma..blah..blah like tthe others.
source email [EMAIL="michaeltaylor84&#64;ymail.com"]michaeltaylor84@ymail.com[/EMAIL]

Same here, got the same email from an email address only used to sign up for newsletter and the mse forum. I've had no other email on the same domain, so they couldn't have guessed the email address at random. So looks like someone cracked the forum and harvested the addresses.

MSE_Martin

FYI

I've changed the title of the thread and inserted info in the top post - to try and see if we can get any more reports of this happening

delain

yes lots of spam about jobs. 'Ebay workers wanted in your area' 'how i earn 2x as much as my husband'.

sjaypink

hi, just checked my inbox (the one registered to mse), and found this email from bestjobsuk community, mentioning 'sigma realty group', from [EMAIL="michaeltaylor84&#64;ymail.com"]michaeltaylor84@ymail.com[/EMAIL]

obviously spam, as it read 'dear jobseeker', rather than my name, so i googled and found this thread

my email addy is not unique to mse, and i do get some spam, however, this is the only spam email in 4/5 years that has made it through to my inbox, rather than just getting chucked into the junk folder, which i found strange, hence my googling to find out where its come from.....

i did notice the request earlier to send info to the techies, but i have no idea what all that esp/ domain stuff means