How would a spammer know what langauge I speak?

[QuinsKeystone]

Hi, all. I ask a thousand pardons if I'm in the wrong place for this question, but I hope some folks here might be able to help.

Last week, I sent a few emails to my Spanish teacher, in Spanish. I had never sent an email in Spanish before. All communication was solely America to America; I didn't trace the emails' routes, but I doubt they went through any non-American servers.

Every day this week, I have gotten two or three spam emails in Spanish. I had never gotten Spanish spam prior to this week (to the best of my knowledge).

Is a spammer somehow able to read what I have written, or is this just a remarkable coincidence?

Thanks for any help you might provide.

[Miss Betsy]

You may want to check your computer for spyware. Adaware and Spybot are two that are free and recommended. There was another one recommended recently, but I forget which one.

That happened to me once when my husband visited a site that used heavy machinery and we started getting spam for heavy machinery. That's the advice people gave me.

Or it could just be a coincidence. I get spam every so often in other languages.

Miss Betsy

[Farelf]

That doesn't sound like a coincidence to me. I deal with people in South America frequently, almost always in English. After 11 years I have yet to see a Spanish-language spam (that is no invitation). The point is, quite intensive trafic with "Spanish-speaking addresses", no Spanish-language spam. It does seem to be related to the use of the language. As Miss Betsy implies, the purpose of much spyware is to sniff out such clues and capitalize on them. Your teacher's PC would have to be a suspect for infestation as well, more so than your own in my opinion. A word of caution - it seems a difficult subject to broach with some (many) people without causing offence. Check your own PC first - and be aware that even if it is the source and you plug the leak it will take some time for you to fall off the lists, if you ever do.

[rooster]

Is a spammer somehow able to read what I have written, or is this just a remarkable coincidence?

Thanks for any help you might provide.

Farelf is probably right in saying you might well be stuck with the spam in the medium term.

I went through porn-spam h*ll for almost a year thanks to a friend who's computer had got trojanned. I had just got my first PC and knew zilch, zero, or as you might prefer, "nada", about anything.

Without rehearsing the torturous path of a beleagured newbie, what I eventually did was copy a couple of the offensive missives to him and asked him to poll some others in his mail list to see if they were getting the same stuff. Bingo!

We cleaned out his PC and helped him with some computer 'hygeine' issues, and that fixed that. However; the porn-spam continued unabated for months and months.

[QuinsKeystone]

Hmm. I thought I had replied last night, but the database seemed to be acting weird, so I guess my reply went down the rat hole.

Anyhow, thanks for the help. I'm pretty good at keeping up with spyware, and I ran Ad-Aware, Spybot, and HijackThis as soon as I noticed this problem, and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary (just the usual purveyors of crap). Although, now that I think of it, I failed to mention that I have also begun visiting Spanish websites lately, and I suppose this might be a more likely source than any emails I've sent.

In any case, I hadn't considered that my teacher's computer might be the source. I'll try to broach the subject with her that she might have an infection, although maybe I'll give it some time to see if the spam cools down on my end before I approach her. Thanks, farelf, for the reminder about the personal issues.

[Miss Betsy]

I didn't have any major stuff either when I ran Adaware for the first time. After you cleaned up, did you continue to get the spanish spam? Though as Farelk mentioned, once you are on a list, you tend to stay on it. It's been a long time, but I think that when I removed the spyware, the 'personalized' spam stopped.

I think one of my 'extended' correspondents (the ones a correspondent of mine forwards my emails to) has a virus or something because I got a spate of familiar names in the sender line after one exchange where I know she forwarded my email to several people. They soon stopped, however. Not that I think that this happened in your case, but just pointing out that there are dozens of ways the spammers can get addresses and 'personalize' the spam so that the unwary open it. The reason I think it is a virus is because my spam started after a run of viruses and there is no other way (than being harvested from someone else's computer) that this email address could get on a spammer list.

Miss Betsy

[QuinsKeystone]

After you cleaned up, did you continue to get the spanish spam?

No. I've laid low on both sending emails and visiting websites in Spanish since cleaning up, and I haven't received any Spanish spam (el espamo?) since then. I plan to try to re-introduce those activities in stages to see if one or the other invites the spam. Once I'm convinced the flow has stopped, I'll go back to some of the Spanish sites I had visited and see if that triggers another round of el espamo, and if not, I'll start emailing in Spanish again.

[Farelf]

... and I haven't received any Spanish spam (el espamo?) since then. ...

Now that is interesting. Seems a different experience for some reason.

[QuinsKeystone]

Now that is interesting. Seems a different experience for some reason.

I should be more clear: It's only been a few days since I cleaned this up. This may not be a very significant testing period yet. I'm gonna wait a few more days, maybe 4 or 5, to see if it really has stopped, and then do some of the same things I had done previously to see if any of that brings back the Spanish spam.

Since I don't know this community much -- Do you think it would be interesting for me to post my findings here, or am I just helping myself? I usually try to err in the direction of too much information, but I also don't want to clutter the tubes on this forum with stuff most users would find unimportant.

[turetzsr]

<snip>

Since I don't know this community much -- Do you think it would be interesting for me to post my findings here, or am I just helping myself? I usually try to err in the direction of too much information, but I also don't want to clutter the tubes on this forum with stuff most users would find unimportant.

...Thank you for your courtesy in asking this question! <g>

...Please post, if you are so inclined. I believe many will find your results useful. Pretty much anything related to spam is "on topic" here in the SpamCop Lounge Forum.