I just got two strange emails in my personal email address, which is not the one I give out except to my family and close friends.
Each email contained links to sites that included my email name; of course, I did not follow the links, suspecting that they were to porno sites. I did not know/recognize the name in either “from” address, and the subjects were “giggles” and something else that I’ve already forgotten.
My ISP is -supposed- to have spam blocker on it, and these sorts of emails should not be making it through to my inbox, but they do from time to time. Should I forward them to my ISP, making a complaint? Is there anything else I could do to block them from getting to my inbox? Does anyone else get these strange emails that they suspect are links to porn sites? Argh… where do these porno spammers get your email from?! And why would they include a link that has my email name in it? How did they get that?! GAH! HELP!
I’d bet they were porn sites too, or at least some form of spam. They didn’t “get” your email address, probably (unless you’ve used that email address to register for something, or your ISP is giving it out). What’s more likely is that they made a lucky guess.
The reason that your email address is part of the URL is so that they’ll know they got it right when you go there. Their site probably ignore the address, but logs it so that they know that the email they sent you worked.
I get porn, breast and penis enlargement offers, and great deals on loans sent to me all them time from … ME! Yes, that’s right I send myself this crap constantly. It’s really too bad that I don’t remember doing it, or maybe I would figure I didn’t really need any more and stop.
I saw something recently that said that 58% of internet users didn’t assume anything they saw on the internet was automatically true. This was an increase of 52% sceptics from a few years ago. Be a sceptic! Drive that number up to 59%!
OK, someone help figure this spam out (assuming it’s spam).
I have no idea who this person is or who “Janice” is. The list of names didn’t seem to be a brute-force dictionary list or the like (several of the names seemed similar to the author’s and “Janice”'s). OTOH, my e-mail address isn’t something that you are likely to type accidentally (my name here is part of the address; not a likely mistyping of anything I can think of).
So, what is this? A genuine mistake of some kind? Or, is this some sort of weird e-mail harvesting thing where they get my e-mail when I reply asking what this is about? Any ideas?