FlightInfo Hijacked?

[Resume Writer]

Hi Everyone,

Has anyone else been getting tons of spam in their personal email inbox lately? I have been getting a great deal of it and they are all with attached .pif files (which you should not open), and they are all coming from aviation name type email addresses.

I am going to change my information in my profile to another email address that catches spam, so if you need to contact me for anything, you can contact me at [email protected]

I am also going to let the webmaster know on here. Not sure if they can do anything about it. It looks like someone may be mining their database.

Kathy

 

[Wankel7]

It might not be this forum. There are bots that troll websites and gather email address. Infact, it could come across this website and see your posted email and pick it up. So, that might be the problem also.

Wankel

 

[jarhead]

I don't get any spam at all.

 

[chperplt]

I'll second that... No spam at all. You might want to hide your e-mail address from view and just let the system send you PM notices.

 

[LJDRVR]

No aviation SPAM at all.

 

[Resume Writer]

O.k., I went back in and hid my email address from public view. It is weird though, I am not on any other forum with that email address - only flightinfo.com The emails that are coming to me are titles like "your document" or "your request" and they are all with attached .pif files, which of course get blocked. It is like when that one worm was getting sent out, it is copying email addresses. Every one of them are aviation addresses, so that is why I figure it must come from here. (ie, [email protected])

I did write a note to the webmaster, so maybe he/she can shed some light on this.

Thanks for letting me know what to do!

Kathy

 

[corp_da20_guy]

No aviation spam here!

 

[Timebuilder]

Nada, Kathy.

I did have a problem recently on a voice actor's website, where we use our email addresses in the header for ever post. The forum is not nearly as sophistcated as this design that we use here.

To make a long story short, someone launched a bot and gathered the email addresses from the site. We had quite a time, to say the least.

One fix we came up with is a bot's inability to to think in any way, so we began to put the word REMOVE into the email address. You can do that, too. The bot is only looking for [email protected] or some variant of that, and the word REMOVE is only relevant to a human. Just explain near your email address that site visitors need to remove the REMOVE and your address works just as it should.

 

[jarhead]

Gawd, Timebuilder, I LIKE that one! Nice to know that machines have their failings too

 

[Timebuilder]

Thanks.

I don't want to introduce some thread drift, but the bots are only as smart as they are desinged to be by humans. Humans tend to make mistakes, meaning to miss the mark or....well, you have probably heard that discusssion already.

My recent mail troubles apparently came from a .edu address, meaning that these short term problems are more likely students than pro level hackers looking to create full-tilt spam lists.