My 0.00002534 cents worth ...

I'm sure most everyone's seen this before, but here's a report published
back in March by the CDT on a study they performed on where email
addresses were harvested from and ways to help prevent it:

  http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

I've used some of their suggestions on addresses that show up on public
websites, and have seen moderate results.  My results could be better, but
I made the decision not to use throw-away addresses for the NetBSD lists
or other lists that I deem important.  I do, however, have a laundry list
of expendables used for website registrations and other such ilk.

---
  /\---/\  Eric J Fox
 /  o o  \ Home & Small Business Computer Support
 \.\   /./ in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area
    \@/    http://fox.phoenix.az.us/support
.


On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Lubos Vrbka wrote:

> hi guys,
>
> > do you have any proofs that the worm really scans WWW pages, searching
> > for e-mail addresses?
> i think bruce is (at least partially) right.
>
> i used one e-mail address for the posting / receiving mails from netbsd
> maillists. then the virus infected mails started to come. i then moved
> to another organization and got new e-mail. i changed my subscription,
> because the old address would be probably cancelled. after posting 1-2
> messages i started to get (after a day or so) these e-mails in number
> ~100 per day, too.
>
> maybe it isn't a proof for you, but at least is VERY suspicious and
> weird... how would it be possible that the virus was delivered on my 1
> day old address? i think at that time there were ~5 people outside the
> netbsd-maillists-community who knew this address! and probably another
> indication... no one of my 10 colleagues (not subscribed to the list)
> get these virus infected e-mails...
>
> lubos
>
> --
> #####################################################
> Mgr. Lubos Vrbka
>
> Center for Complex Molecular Systems and Biomolecules
> J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry
> Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
> Prague, Czech Republic
>
> http://www.jh-inst.cas.cz/~vrbka
> #####################################################
>
>