About a year and a half ago I was really into Blogger/Blogspot. I sent out some invitations to some of my real world friends so they could get in on the fun. About 3-4 months ago, I was invited to Linked In. I thought it was a great resource and again invited some people I thought might be interested.
One of the people that received both of these invitations, we will call her Meredeth, started getting spammed on her work email about 2 weeks ago. Of course I used the only email i knew for her, her work email, when I sent the invites. Now somehow it is my fault that she is getting the spam. It started as a "hey man, did you do anything,' and is now at "how could you do this to me."
It sucks getting spam and is embarrassing given the nature of the spam, but I don't really think it is my fault. Heck, I know it isn't. Blogger is owned by google. I don't see them selling emails off. Linked In is trying to promote a positive profesional image so I really doubt they would do this either. Meredeth is adamant that these two places are the only places on the internet that have ever been exposed to her email address and that I am satan himself trying to ruin her life.
It really pisses me off. I don't know anyone that recieved and invitation to either site that was later spammed, not to mention months later. She didn't even sign up. I did, and I didn't get spam. The ignorance of the whole situation is infuriating. Meredeth will sometimes read my blog, so feel free to let her know of any ways you think her email leaked into the hands of spammers. Also list your own email. I am compiling a list to sell.
10 comments:
That was one of the reasons I took my blog off of Blogger.com. For every one comment I received, I also got about 3 spam messages about random BS. If she's that freaked out, maybe she needs a private blog.
Yikes. You are the scapegoat in this situation. I have no clue about how they get your damn e-mail but my yahoo account is spammed up the ass daily, consistently, and relentlessly. Ugh. I hate spam. Who ever spams should die a horrible and painful death at the hands of the ones they love most on eath.
Bleck.
Sorry, Mer.
Depending on how obvious her email address is, it could be subject to a dictionary attack. I have a gmail address that I have never used on any web URL whatsoever and was only ever given to 1 person (who emailed me twice before she gave up on the computer), and it gets spam from the spam-machines that try every variant of every word and/or name combination. It could be that one of them just finally got around to trying the right domain for her work email.Also, just because *she* never put her email address out there doesn't mean it couldn't get out there some other way. All she needs is one person who has her email address in their address book to have their computer get compromised by a virus/spyware, and *bam*, the entire set of valid email addresses is appended to the end of a growing list of valid email addresses farmed by spam bots and sold to spammers. Not much you can do to protect against this except not use your email address, which obviously is not a relevant solution.Finally, her work's spam filter could also be the culprit - as spammers get smarter, it gets harder and harder to keep up with their practices. It could very well be the case that she used to get spam but never saw it because it was all being blocked, and now some of it is making its way around the spam filter. My previous employer had over 200,000 employees and they published a statistic saying that about 80% of the email coming into their servers was spam. Even with the filtering, I typically saw about 3-4 pieces of spam a day, even though I didn't use my business address for anything on the web. Spam's with us to stay, and it's only a matter of time until you get hit with it.
i have a gmail account that i've NEVER EVER used and i get spam there. i don't know how that's related to your post. i guess i'm just saying that it's obviously not your fault and she is ignorant. heh.
I don't think it was a dictionary attack. We work in the same place. She is ultra paranoid anyways and ultra religious. She thinks that there is some underlying conspiracy against her and that I am at the root of it.
You're evil, Budd. How could you? ;)My only question top Meredeth would be: Is Budd the only one who has ever mailed you something generated from an external source?Then, once I got the only possible answer of "no", I'd then point out that her deduction was remarkably unscientific and send her links her to the following Wiki pages: 1 and 2.But that's me. I'm snarky like that.
By the way, the name "Meredeth" looks a lot like "Megadeth" at a glance.
So you're the reason why I keep getting bootleg Viagra offers! B@$tard!
sorry, I told them to only push the real stuff on you.
She said I was the only one to send her an evite to an internet site ever. using occum's razor, it would seem unlikely that I am the culprit.
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