[H-GEN] Spammers using Humbug list archives

Greg Black gjb at gbch.net
Sat Oct 11 16:44:57 EDT 2003


I've just received some spam from a Vietnamese web site that
refers directly to an article of mine that covered some of my
experiences during the Vietnam war, including the URL of the
article in the humbug-chat archive[1].

In the archive message, as displayed by my browser, my email
address is obfuscated[2], as is the mailto link[3].

Unfortunately, because I had left my customary .sig at the end
of the message (as seen at the bottom of this message), my real
email address was provided to the spammer.

So this is a warning to Humbug members, including our president,
that including your contact details in your messages leaves you
open to further spam harvesting efforts.  I'd really like to see
the Humbug list archives obfuscate all email addresses -- but if
that's not possible, then I guess I'll have to abandon my habit
of appending those details to my messages.

Cheers, Greg

[1] http://archive.humbug.org.au/humbug-chat/2003-08/msg00049.html

[2] From: Greg Black <gjb at xxxxxxxx>

[3] mailto: gjb at DOMAIN.HIDDEN

-- 
Greg Black <gjb at gbch.net> <http://www.gbch.net/gjb.html>
GPG signed mail preferred; further information in headers.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.humbug.org.au/pipermail/general/attachments/20031012/74d2d062/attachment.sig>


More information about the General mailing list