[vox-tech] Alarming spam

[Richard Harke]

On Sat April 14 2007 11:50, Shwaine wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Richard Harke wrote:
> >      I find this rather alarming as I doubt if the sender is a friend.
> > I also don't know where they got the info as I never post such info
> > in public forums. I'm wondering if my ISP could have suffered a
> > breakin as that seems the most likely to tie together all the elements.
>
> Do you have a listed phone number? Own a home? You already said you've got
> a wife, so that means you have a marriage certificate. There's all sorts
> of info like your address and wife's name available in the good old public
> records. Doesn't cost the spammers much to do a public records query
> (phone records are freely available online and public record searches
> usually have only nominal fees). The dividends they reap by getting your
> attention far outweighs the costs in most cases.
>

> As for tracking where the email actually came from, the body is worthless.
> Look at the envelope/headers (different terms for the same thing depending
> on which email program you use). That will show you the path the email
> took (which email servers it went through) to get to you. Won't nail down
> the sender, but will at least give you a better starting point that the
> body. Unless the originator is an open relay, then it's rather pointless
> too.

I looked at the headers and didn't learn much. They all came from
different domains, presumably as part of a botnet.

Richard