[OT] Customer database leaks

[Tim Watts]

In common with a few other posters here, I run my own email server, which I've configured to allow throwaway addresses:

eg

tw [e-mail]

will come to me for any variation of stuff between the _ and @

Just had a rash of SPAM to two different email addresses - each address has only been used with one company and not published.

One company is well know here but I'm going to do them the courtesy of looking into it before I publish their name.

Just wondered if anyone else has noticed anything?

I am of course concerned that if my data has leaked, then perhaps credit cards have too.

[Broadback]

I get an increasing amount of spam, even on 2 email addresses I have only ever used to banks. I have no idea whom they are from as I never open them, they all have attachments. Usually they are spurious bills, invoices and whatever.

[Tim Streater]

Well they're from spammers, aren't they. They send you what they claim is an invoice etc and ask you to take a look at it as "there's some anomaly with your payments to us" or somesuch. If these are Word docs, and I open them in Word, they are empty. Of course they have macros in them which probably do bad things which won't affect my setup. If they are PDFs then IME these are also empty (or blank, perhaps I should say), I'm not sure what payload these have. Sometimes they are alleged zips, but are actually .exe files.

I just delete the attachments to save space and clutter, and mark the mail as spam if it's not already in the Junk mailbox.

[Tim Streater]

Only if you are trying to filter by hand rather than using e.g. a Bayesian filter.

[JimK]

/Just wondered if anyone else has noticed anything?/q

Now you mention it, lots of correctly addressed spam to one other corporate email addy in last 24 hours....

Jim K

[Tim Watts]

I'm seeing a big jump in malware - sadly in the form of .doc and .xls (etc etc) attachments.

Occasionally I run one through strings and it wants to do nefarious things.

If I had a time machine, I would go back and find the spakker who thought it was a good idea to let document macros do stuff[1] outside of their immediate document and punch him in the face.

eg open URLs, files etc.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've just had some spam advertising Viagra. First one in years. Perhaps they know I'm getting older. Or has the ISP spam filter expired the name?

[bert]

Bill Gates?

[Mark]

Same here. And the account was closed years ago.

[Mark]

Same here. I use unique addresses for every organisation so it would be clear which organisation leaked.

Most of the spam is filtered before I see it but I haven't seen any munged email addresses so far FWIW.

[Mike Barnes]

Same here. I include the name of the organisation in the address. One organisation queried that (did I really mean it?). Another organisation actually *objected* to me using their name in my address, even after I explained why I did it. The organisation? Which Legal. :-)

[Huge]

I'll hold him while you hit him.

It's actually a really bad idea to allow software to do anything that the user running it can do. The two sets of authorisations should be distinct.

[spuorgelgoog]

"It's an anti-spam measure. Having the sending organisation name in the recipient name as well as the sending domain means the email doesn't get junked".

Although the spam I get tends to be to addresses I used on Usenet about 10 years ago.

Owain