I Got Harvested - RATS

[indyattic]

I have my own domain, plus Google Yahoo and email.com accounts. I kept my

domain address totally spamfree for years, until Spamcop had their customer

list phished or stolen or something . How is that for irony, eh? Then I

started getting spam at my spamcop[at]mydomain.dum address, so I filtered it

out. That worked for a couple of years.

Then, a friend who knows I have a catch-all email made up a funny name to

send me mail to - something like "crankyoldlady[at]mydomain.dum" and

suddenly I started getting spam at that address. Apparently somewhere along

the Yahoo! pipe somebody is now skimming addresses off the outgoing mail.

Looks like I'm finally going to have to break down and buy some flipping software to skim my mail.

[Jeff G.]

The following is a JOKE, nothing personal.

One would think a cranky old lady in the attic would want more interaction, not less.

[jev]

Then, a friend who knows I have a catch-all email made up a funny name to

send me mail to  - something like "crankyoldlady[at]mydomain.dum"  and

suddenly I started getting spam at that address. Apparently somewhere along

the Yahoo! pipe somebody is now skimming addresses off the outgoing mail.

28259[/snapback]

One thing you might want to consider is dropping the catch-all account delivery. Yes, it does make life a little more difficult by having to add forwarding every time you create a new address (I like to try to use unique addresses for companies, so I can tell when my address gets harvested/sold), but it should cut down dramatically on domain blasts by spammers. I used to have a catch-all, but ended up dropping it because the volume was getting to be just too much -- and I still get a few hundred mail messaegs a day, mostly spam. :/ (Thank goodness for that Spamcop filtered mail account. )

One other thing you might consider is to send what proof you have to Yahoo! to see if they can check into what is going on. Most likely nothing will happen, even if they're interested (who knows where the skimming might be taking place?), but it mgiht at least make you feel better.

-JEV

[shmengie]

That's just plain hateful. I hate the thought, but suspiction lies in your friend's computer being infested with some form of virus/trojan that reads browser input looking for stuff like credit card numbers and email addresses.

I know it's a possibility, but would rather believe it isn't.

The most likely other place for sniffing network traffic (IMO) is cable modem networks. I used to have a cable modem and could see all traffic in the node I was attached to. I never bothered to look for anything, but found it interesting to peek at what was going on.

It wouldn't supprise me to learn that a virus strain has become sophisticated enough to do this sort of network sniffing.

Another potential breech is wireless networking, but this has a much more limited potential audience of listeners, given the range of wireless. Wireless networks should not be un-encrypted. Encryption is no guarentee, but can make it difficult enough to deter the casual voyer.