Archive: Opinions

EditorialI use a number of real e-mail addresses for various purposes, but the way Web site hosting plans work is that just about This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. will be delivered to a catch-all account.  Mail to real e-maill addresses go into those in boxes, and everything else shows up in the catch-all.  You would expect an occasional missive to end up in the catch-all as people mistype a legitimate address from time to time.  This week I got over 7,000.  And none of them were for me.

The reason this happened is that some jerk spoofed my address.  E-mail spoofing is a technique used by fraudulent or otherwise criminal e-mailers to send spam or virus-laden e-mail while hiding their own real addresses.  They use names like This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  That makes it difficult, and sometimes impossible to trace the mail back to them, and they could actually be anywhere in the world.  They have automated programs to attach the false name prefixes to the real Web mail address.  And it makes a lot of people very angry at the Web site they are spoofing.

By the way, this is not the same as cracking a data base or mailing list -- if you are signed up for our Friday e-mail reminder the spoofers do not have your address.  All they do is steal the '@lansingstar.com' from our Web site address to do their evil deeds.

As you likely know 'Spam' is a slang term that means unsolicited e-mail, and it has become a serious problem for most e-mail users.  Jokes abound about the body-enhancing substances that many spam messages tout, but the mass mailings are often used for more malicious purposes.  The one thing you can be sure about it that the spammer is making a lot of money, and is doing so at the expense of you and a lot of other people.

Evidently we are on a list, because this is the fourth time this has happened to us recently.  Most of the 7,000 or so messages are what is called 'bounce' messages.  That means the mail has been sent to an address that can't receive it either because 1) its mailbox is full, or 2) it is a phony address that doesn't exist.  But these spammers don't care about that because they charge their clients by the address, and the clients have no way of knowing how many e-mails bounced.  So the spammer is getting rich while costing me time and money.

The jerks who do this are stealing from us, because they are sorely testing the limits of the mail system we are paying to use, costing me personally a lot of valuable time, and setting up the risk that several thousand people will complain to our Web host that we have been spamming them, which could result in our site being shut down.  Luckily our hosting service is very well aware that this goes on, and they understand this activity is not coming from us.

Typically the content of the e-mail makes no sense, because garbled words fool spam filters that are looking for phrases like "Buy now while prices are low!"  So they are charging their clients to send e-mail that does a poor job of selling anything.  But they do have a link the recipient can click.  And if you consider that the 7K bounces are a mere fraction of the number of spam messages sent in one session, even if only a very small percentage of people click on the link, that is a lot of people!

Buyer beware!  Clicking on the link could take you to a site that can load a virus or trojan onto your computer trashing your computer's hard drive, stealing your address book or other private information.  And clicking on an attachment to these e-mails is almost certain to.

The people (I use that word loosely in this case) who do this have made a wonderful, open resource that the Internet could be into an everyday Hell.  The daily spam you probably get is even more dangerous than it is annoying.  But for those of us whose Web addresses are spoofed, it makes it appear that we are the perpetrators.  That does untold damage to legitimate businesses and Web site owners.  And there is just not a whole lot we can do about it.

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