I am receiving emails from webmaster@straightdope@com. I know this board is not emailing me, but I am receiving emails with that return address, and even worse these emails have attachments. This is the most recent email received:
"hey its me, my old address dont work at time. i
dont know why?!
in the last days ive got some mails. i’ think
thaz your mails but im not sure!
plz read and check …
cyaaaaaaa"
This is probably the wrong forum to post this, but I wanted to spread the word about this. Who has the straightdope mailing list, and why are they sending out messages like this with attachments ?
They are not from the SDMB staff. I’m pretty sure the staff can spell and use English grammar much better than that, for one.
Just remember, the FROM address on an email is probably not where it really came from, especially if someone is trying to fool you (fake banks, fake credit cards, etc.). If anyone asks for your password or SSN, you KNOW it is fake.
Be suspicious. The Internet is a wild and wooly place. It’s good that you asked – it shows you’re thinking!
What is more troubling to me it that someone has my email address, plus knows that I am a member of this forum. Plus, the emails have attachments that I am assuming are viruses and not safe to open. Has the starightdope member list been compromised and someone with bad intentions now has member information ?
To answer more of your questions, probably no one (no bad person, that is) has the SDMB mailing list, unless they have constructed it from multiple probes or unofficial sources. Here’s how many worms and other baddies work: In an infected computer, the program searches the entire computer including deleted files and old cached web pages for email addresses and compiles a list. Then it randomly picks one addr and puts that in the FROM field, and another random one in the TO field, and mails it out.
Sometimes these prgs generate addrs, concatenating choices from a list of names like “Bob,” “Alice,” “Mary,” “admin,” “webmaster” with domains from another list.
It’s a pretty good bet that the attachments are viruses or worse. Don’t open them.
Not necessarily; see above.
I get dozens of emails from “admin@doorbell.net” daily. Since I am the only person of admin persuasion at doorbell.net, I know these are fake, since I didn’t send them. And I don’t use that email address myself, so it was generated, not culled.
I get the same thing from several domains I own. I keep getting e-mails from “billing@” or “info@” or some other address, all of which don’t even exist as e-mail accounts on those domains.
As an interesting sidelight to the obviously computer-generated fake names, I have found incoming names that were probably generated with some human involvement. Example: with a domain like doorbell.net, I think it unlikely (but not impossible) that a computer program is smart enough to generate user names like “ringy_dingy” or “dingdong,” but I have received messages with such return addrs. Of course, once a human generates it – and perhaps if it doesn’t get bounced – then that addr is entered into the spammer’s master lists, and passed around to everyone else. Still, I suspect some human was at the root of it.
