Do we have spammers among us?
I received a rather odd email in my inbox this morning. It came from someone’s Aweber account ... hmmm ... I already have an Aweber account so what the heck ....
Then I noticed that the email was sent to Trish @ useyourpassion.com I started thinking ... wha’? ... did I cap “Trish”? ... I shouldn’t have. So I signed into my website’s contact form and low-and-behold I did NOT ... my email address is clearly shown as “trish @ useyourpassion.com”.
Searching Whois.com for the IP address of the email sender proved that it came from a GoDaddy host server and not Wealth Affiliate. But, hang on a minute now ... how did this person figure out my email address enough to literally type it in to their list?
That’s when it hit me!
One of Kyle’s lessons showing how to set up our email addresses ... well, silly me ... I literally setup my email the way Kyle shows in his lesson. Huh! That’ll teach me.
Then I got to thinking ... okay ... so ... how’d this “[name went here]“ person know my website URL?
(I’m soooo glad I’m a genealogist ... it’s taught me to be a much better investigator!)
Ahuh!
Then I did a search here on Wealthy Affiliate, using the signature name in the email and found an idle account that was setup back in May 5, 2008. I can NOT know for certain that this email (spam) came from this idle user ... but you have to admit, it SURE looks like it.
Also ... I checked out my Privacy Policy web page ... and sure enough the “Trish” shown in my email address IS shown capped ... however, I have an email encoder installed so my email address was NOT scrapped off this web page either.
So ... now I have changed my email address and will NOT be disclosing it. Those who want to communicate with me from that website will have to use the form.
In the meantime, I’ve added the latest abuser’s IP address to my affiliate site’s blacklist.
Credit for Header: image by cattu spam mail email mailbox garbage on Pixabay
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Recent Comments
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This is interesting, Trish. This particular thing didn't happen to me, but quite often I get emails which LOOK like if they were contact form submissions, but they are not. I think they get my emails from somewhere, it is not difficult I guess, and then pretend to want to contact you and offer you all sorts of weird things, from SEO service to sexy girls. uhuuuuuu.
Great research you have done! so at least in your case it seems from a single person and not a total spam mass action.
Thank YOU Heidi!
I had to change web host providers awhile back now, simply because of the amount of spam that was being allowed to get through. Ended up having to create so many filters via my cPanel that the system slowed right down.
This is what taught me to be vigilant on spammers. My new we host provider for my business account is so on top of spammers that I get very few ... but when I do ... BANG! I stop 'em in their tracks. ;-))
Trish
The spam I'm getting has increased dramatically in the last few weeks. And a lot of it doesn't even have an unsubscribe button.
Making them REAL spam Marion. It's no longer legal to email anyone and not include an unsubscribe option.
Yeah, and the latest trick is when the unsubscribe button takes you to to a page where you're supposed to enter your email address to have it unsubscribed. Whoa! That page is scraping email addresses.
Got that right Marion ... we been there so we know some of those nasty con games.
Most of my Unsubcribes have been for real lately, and those I can appreciate. Spammers ... nope! The get filtered out via cPanel if they don't stop. Got NO time for spammers.
The last unsubscribe page that wanted my email address I gave them stopspam @ junkmail .com (without the spaces)
Terrific hunting down Trish! You are a great researcher and there are online web research positions that pay well for those talents!
Ha-ha-ha Michael!
Am far to busy to do other's researching, given that genealogy is never ending ... that and being webmaster for clients keeps me busy enough ... but thank YOU for the idea.
Hugs,
Trish
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Good detective work.
Thank YOU David!