posted
I thought someone mentioned noticing an increased amount of sspam in their hotmail accounts on this board previously. I hope I'm not repeating something someone has already posted but Hotmail went into to many accounts and changed the privacy settings. If you go to Options, then Personal Profile, you should find three boxes at the bottom of that asking if you want to share your info with other companies. Even if you have left these unchecked, you may find that 'somehow' they've been checked, allowing Hotmail to give out your address to any Tom Dick and Harry who will spam you with porn. Just uncheck them, but keep checking to see if they go back. I guess the Data Protection Act means nothing to Microsoft...
-------------------- It's been a while but I'm back!! Posts: 884 | From: UK | Registered: Jul 2002
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Paul (the Mouse) Unwin
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
Yes, we did discuss this already, but overall it appeared to be no big deal. Personal online posting habits are much more likely to bring you spam.
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quote:Originally posted by Paul (the Mouse) Unwin: Yes, we did discuss this already, but overall it appeared to be no big deal. Personal online posting habits are much more likely to bring you spam.
No big deal? I would strongly disagree. While it may be true that in some instances, "personal online posting habits" are responsible for increased spam, something more sinister seems to be going on with Hotmail.
When I signed up for my account around 6 years ago (before Hotmail was owned by Microsoft), I requested (as I always do) that my email address be kept private -- not listed in any directory, and not given to anyone for marketing purposes. Up until about 4 months ago, I received -- on average -- about 10 to 20 pieces of spam a week. Then evidently, Hotmail decided to institute its new MSN Passport and in doing so, reset existing email accounts to allow user addresses to be listed in directories and sold to Hotmail "marketing partners." Now I receive about 50 to 70 pieces of spam a day. My account gets so clogged-up that if I don't access it a couple of times a day to remove all the junk, it reaches its storage capacity and rejects any new emails. Of course, I could eliminate the capacity problem by purchasing increased storage from Microsoft for twenty bucks a year.
As far as my "personal online posting habits" are concerned, I do not give my address to anyone except those persons whom I wish to communicate with. Whenever I need to give an email address to register with a website (such as Snopes.com), I use another account specifically for that purpose.
I'm almost inclined to believe that MSN reset users' privacy preferences in order to max-out user capacity as a means to sell their new increased storage option.
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quote:Originally posted by Alias Rex: No big deal? I would strongly disagree. While it may be true that in some instances, "personal online posting habits" are responsible for increased spam, something more sinister seems to be going on with Hotmail.When I signed up for my account around 6 years ago (before Hotmail was owned by Microsoft), I requested (as I always do) that my email address be kept private -- not listed in any directory, and not given to anyone for marketing purposes. Up until about 4 months ago, I received -- on average -- about 10 to 20 pieces of spam a week. Then evidently, Hotmail decided to institute its new MSN Passport and in doing so, reset existing email accounts to allow user addresses to be listed in directories and sold to Hotmail "marketing partners." Now I receive about 50 to 70 pieces of spam a day. My account gets so clogged-up that if I don't access it a couple of times a day to remove all the junk, it reaches its storage capacity and rejects any new emails. Of course, I could eliminate the capacity problem by purchasing increased storage from Microsoft for twenty bucks a year.
Before blaming hotmail for everything, you might wanna look into three things:
1. Do you use your hotmail acct for forums/ newsgroups, contact email addresses for correspondence with family/friends/your neighbors dog? Use it on a resume? Submitted it to HOtjobs.com / Monster.com / any resume site(guarantee spam)
2. Is your hotmail email address susceptible to Dictionary attacks. This is how spammers FIRST usually attack a domain. If your email addy can be found in a dictionary attack, and they dont get a bounce back, they've just confirmed your email to be "live and well" and that it gets on to a MILLIONS cd for sale to other spammers around the world. Once its on a cd, it will never get off. So unless you have an alphanumerica name (ie g8sid82kd2@hotmail.com) then you will be attacked.
And I've personally teste this theory. I have my "dictionary" attack hotmail acct and I have a alphanumeric acct. The dictionary attack was hit the second day I had it (and it was apparent that it was hit by a dictionary attack because the spammer screwed up by including all his Addresses in the CC field instead of the bcc field, and all the names were in alpha order and vairations of my name - ex me1 me2 me88 me123 me9927 etc). The alphanumeric name has yet to receive spam. Both opened 1 year ago.
3. Spamming has become MUCH MUCH easier these days than days of past. With software that scrape websites, search engines, webpage, newsgroups and EVEN email headers, your address can be picked up by any spam bot and put into a list for testing. And setting up a website..yeah, put down $2 for the domain and a free site at geo/tripod/angelfire/ or a spam friendly hoster (known as black hat providers or pink contract providers) and you can bet that spammer will attack you.
Sorry to say, I've been with hotmail since hte beginngin and I've never changed a setting in my account for it and till this day, its still set to no directory and keep my email private. Yet I still get 8-10 pieces of spam a day. HOTMAIL, like AOL is just a target for spammers. AOL and HOTMAIL users are subjected to spammers at least by 10 times the normal user; say on Earthlink or Road Runner.
Look at it this way. 5 spammers decided to dictionary attack yourdoman.com . That means at least 50 spammers are attacking AOL and Hotmail members; each sending at least 1 million pieces of email to their servers.
Now realistically; about 1000 spammers are hitting a domain per day. That would mean nearly 10,000 spammers are hitting AOL and Hotmail alone.
See the potential for getting more spam?
If you dont want spam, and still want the ease of a free email addy, I suggest looking into other free email providers. I personally use myrealbox.com since they use SPEWS as well as other Spam filtering software. I've had my acct for three months; my name is subjectable to Dictionary attacks, and I"veyet to receive spam.
quote:As far as my "personal online posting habits" are concerned, I do not give my address to anyone except those persons whom I wish to communicate with. Whenever I need to give an email address to register with a website (such as Snopes.com), I use another account specifically for that purpose.
And are you sure that the 'anyone' you communicate with aren't using your email addresses on these "send a friend a postcard" site or using your email as a referrer?
Or have been recenlty hit with a virus, that has been known to attack Outlook Express address books. There was a spamemr that was scraping email addresses out of hte bounces he was getting due to virus infected email.
quote:I'm almost inclined to believe that MSN reset users' privacy preferences in order to max-out user capacity as a means to sell their new increased storage option.
Can't make a blanket statement unless it applies to everyone who uses the system and since I haven't been affected by the 5 accts I have, and neither has any of my family members or friends, All we can see is that you forgot to check something off somewhere. It happens.
Posts: 160 | From: Hawaii | Registered: Jul 2002
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Alias Rex
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
WizyWyg,
You make some valid points. I suppose my email address could have been obtained because someone sent me a "greeting card", or because persons I communicate with have fowarded my address to others. And yes, I have used my email address on a paper resume, though I've used a seperate address for the online variety.
However, something apparently DID happen a few months back that compromised the privacy of some Hotmail users. Though Hotmail claims that its customers agreed to share this information when they accepted the company's privacy policy, the process used to implement changes in policy were obviously not clear to many Hotmail subscribers.
From MSNBC.COM:
quote:May 17 — MSN Hotmail users may be surprised to learn that Microsoft Corp. currently has permission to share their e-mail address, birthday, zip code, and occupation with virtually any of its business partners. Hotmail users exploring their e-mail setting have discovered two new options, both now checked “yes” by default for most: “Share My e-mail address” and “Share My other registration information.” Microsoft says Hotmail customers had agreed to share such information when they accepted the company’s privacy policy, and the check boxes are actually a privacy enhancement that offers new options to limit the sharing of the data.
I'm not real familiar with the site that the following excerpt was taken from (Eastside Journal.Com), so I can't vouch for its journalistic integrity. However, it seems to describe the problem I experienced, and the date of the article seems to roughly correspond to the period when the spam flowing into my Hotmail account went from about 2 a day to over 50.
quote:MSN and Hotmail keep giving Microsoft Corp. headaches and embarrassment.
The latest is a doozy. Yesterday an irate reader tipped me off to the fact that Microsoft has changed the privacy settings for Hotmail.
What that means for subscribers to Microsoft's Internet service and millions more who use its free Hotmail e-mail service is that the company can share a Hotmail address with its partner Web sites.
In short, if you are already signed up for and use Hotmail, Microsoft has given itself the right to share your e-mail address and other data with outside companies -- even if you explicitly told Microsoft not to do so when you signed up.
It was done, says my reader -- who works at a Microsoft-dependent organization and asked not to be named -- without anyone's knowledge or consent, allowing Microsoft to share information with other Web sites that accept its .NET Passport, Microsoft's brand name for a universal, all-in-one password.
quote:Originally posted by Alias Rex: Up until about 4 months ago, I received -- on average -- about 10 to 20 pieces of spam a week. ... Now I receive about 50 to 70 pieces of spam a day.
Did you post this message to the comp.sys.mac.comm newsgroup in April? If you did, that would explain why your spam increased a few months ago.
Posts: 165 | From: Somewhere in NY | Registered: Mar 2001
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Alias Rex
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
quote:Did you post this message to the comp.sys.mac.comm newsgroup in April? If you did, that would explain why your spam increased a few months ago.
Yes, that's me, but the address is my "other" email account -- the one I use to register at websites, etc. The problem I was describing above has to do with my "private" Hotmail account.
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Hairyfairy, in the cold
The Red and the Green Stamps
posted
I have 2 hotmail accounts, one that i keep more "private" and one that i use to sign up to websites, etc, etc. I get virtually no junk mail in the private one but about 20 a day to the other account. One way i've found to deal with the junk mail is to activate the custom filters. I have every filter available set to filter mail to my junk mail folder if it contains key words in the email address or subject line, such as "debt consolidation" "doctor approved pill" and various NFBSK terms. This automatically filters most of my junk mail to my junk folder, which is automatically emptied periodically. You can include a "safe" list of email addresses to make sure that you don't get rid of emails from friends that inadvertently contain these terms.
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