Forced eBay ID Change?

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Thu Feb 5 02:02:25 2004

At 15:14 04/02/2004 -0800, Patrick Rigney wrote:

>Curt... hmmmm.... I changed the email address on my eBay account about three
>months ago due to too much spam on the old address, and sure enough, spam
>started showing up in the new address almost immediately (a
>not-easily-guessed address, BTW). --Patrick

I think it depends on how popular your email provider is. I've created
accounts at free mail providers, and NEVER USED THEM, and still had spam
appear in their mailbox. Similarly for the major ISPs over here. If you
use a "normal" first part, e.g. a single word, a common first or last name,
or initial & the same, or an AOL style address of any of the preceding
followed by a number, then you'll get hit by the blanket "let's make up as
many addresses as we can and see which ones get through" spamming. I see
them being bounced in my maillog all the time! (Tip - don't ever let a
spam open and show you it's web-linked images - then they know one got
through!)

Conversely, we have a domain name we sell stuff on, (www russianglasss co
uk - waaaaaaay OT for this list,) and have use a sales_at_ address on ebay for
the last nine months - and have never had any of the normal sort of spam
arrive at any address on there.

Viruses, yep.. Easily traced idiot who added us to their mailing list,
yep. SPAM, nope.

My very first email address, which I still poll for emails, but never use
for outgoing any more, must get over 150 spams a day. At some point I'll
have to trawl through and see what legitimately still writes there, and
kill it completely, but I've still got a bit of sentiment about that
address. It's an ISP address, but they've been taken over in turns about
six times, and the original tiny ISP I contracted to (sixteen dial up line)
no longer exists...


[BTW, Above mentioned idiot address-harvested us from a unique contact
address on an ad on ebid.co.uk auction site. A UK Limited Company, very
easily traced! We requested they desist mailing us, advised future
transgressions would incur a processing charge, received two more emails,
and so invoiced them :-) They've not paid yet, so I will be issuing court
proceedings at the end of the month. Not only do I have record they opened
our emails, they actually replied to one of them asking what address they
were writing to. I'd have dropped the matter there, except I got more spam
a week later, to the same address! As I said ... Idiots! :-) ]


Rob.
Received on Thu Feb 05 2004 - 02:02:25 GMT