[NTLK] That recent spam message marked "hello!" from "john wallace"

[Lord Groundhog]

In case anyone noticed, our list just received a message as I describe in
the Subject line, with a link in it.  DON¹T CLICK ON IT.  It just takes you
to a Fox News page that advertises some kind of pharma-hocus-pocus.  I know
this because a number of friends who have Yahoo mail accounts have sent it
to me in the last few hours.


Interesting points:
[1] the spammers don¹t always use the same subject line.
[2] the link that appears in the e-mail and eventually goes to that page
isn¹t the same although the destination page seems to be.
[3] the mail is sent only to 8 addresses, often including alternate
addresses of the account they¹ve seized.  In the case of the other people I
was able to verify that most of the addresses were genuinely stored in their
Y! address book.  One address is mispelled by one letter in 2 instances ‹
what?!  
[4] this e-mail sent to us likewise has a total of 8 addresses.  If this
John Wallace really is or was one of us, that would explain why the
Newtontalk address is one of them.


Anyway, I found it interesting to look at the pattern I think I see, and I
assume it means that once again, Yahoo¹s refusal to co-operate adequately
with customers in locking things down has resulted in a massive
seize-and-spam operation by some drongo who thinks annoying people is a good
way to make money. 




 
Shalom, 

Christian 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

³Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.²
            -- ref.:  Arthur C. Clarke

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl
http://www.diyplanner.com/node/3942


~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Get MUGged and love it: http://www.oxmug.org/
Where Newtonians meet: http://www.newtontalk.net/