PPRUNE MAIL SPAM
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PPRUNE MAIL SPAM
When Danny introduced the welcome PPRuNe mail system, it was intended to be spam-free. So I was rather annoyed to have received spam fron an organisation calling itself www.fl***************ing.com today. It also asked me to pass the e-mail on to ALL OTHER aviation interested people in my address book - which of course I didn't. Any else been bothered by these people?
(Edited to obscure the name of these haemorrhoids!!)
[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 18 June 2001).]
(Edited to obscure the name of these haemorrhoids!!)
[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 18 June 2001).]
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Yeah, looks like most people with visible emails got the same thing.
Have a look at:
http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/For...ML/001717.html
Have a good one, Dave.
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Flying is easy - just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Have a look at:
http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/For...ML/001717.html
Have a good one, Dave.
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Flying is easy - just throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Guest
Posts: n/a
I got one too - guess they check profiles as mine's a freeserve address!
Never mind, it was at least fairly relevant (though not perhaps for an Ex Sim Guy !
)
What really gets me is the plonkers that mail you offering you a "great mortgage deal" - only available in USA
with loads of bandwidth-hogging HTML. I usually send it straight back with their own address a couple of dozen times in the "copy to" box 
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What goes around . . .
. . often lands better!
Never mind, it was at least fairly relevant (though not perhaps for an Ex Sim Guy !
)What really gets me is the plonkers that mail you offering you a "great mortgage deal" - only available in USA
with loads of bandwidth-hogging HTML. I usually send it straight back with their own address a couple of dozen times in the "copy to" box ------------------
What goes around . . .
. . often lands better!
Guest
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On the advice of somebody else here, I put a dot after the .com on the visible page so it could not be detected as an e-mail address by a trawling programme or something of the like, so it says [email protected].com., and I have not received one of these e-mails...yet. If it came from e-mail on the visible pages, it probably will not be the fault of the mail people.
Guest
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Got this as well. Definitely pprune related as I make full use of demon's unlimited mailboxes. Guess if your fly enough with programming you could open profiles or the e mail icon and copy open e's to a file-comments anyone?
Like the bit that says "please also forward this e-mail to all the flight-related contacts in your address book (though please avoid spamming anyone)" One for the Oxymoron collection.
Airbanda
Proud to be an Anorak.
[This message has been edited by Airbanda (edited 18 June 2001).]
Like the bit that says "please also forward this e-mail to all the flight-related contacts in your address book (though please avoid spamming anyone)" One for the Oxymoron collection.
Airbanda
Proud to be an Anorak.
[This message has been edited by Airbanda (edited 18 June 2001).]
Guest
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Its just an ad but when you spend half an hour trying to get a new password because you've forgotten the old one to get into your post box, its a bloody irritating ad!
Not that I expect the net to be full of people with impeccable morals but its just irritating and now filed in my electronic rubbish bin!
Isn't technology wonderful?!
Not that I expect the net to be full of people with impeccable morals but its just irritating and now filed in my electronic rubbish bin!
Isn't technology wonderful?!
Guest
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An interesting little program available with Norton Systemworks checks your computers security measures. Mostly okay but it did mention that my browser was pretty free and easy with my browsing history. (Then there was an advert for their firewall program so maybe thats the reason). Also e-mails are not very private or secure.
Guest
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PPRuNe does not give out email addresses. Automatic spiders cannot get addresses from the Members list on this bulletin board. What someone has done is go individually from post to post and opened the profiles of those people who have their email address visible and copied and pasted it into their own mailing list.
Nothing I can do about that unfortunately. One of the down sides of the internet is the amount of spam you get. You should see mine!
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
Nothing I can do about that unfortunately. One of the down sides of the internet is the amount of spam you get. You should see mine!
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
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Danny, could you clarify your comment about spiders and members lists.
Although I haven't bothered to do it, it would be a fairly easy job to set up a script to got through looking at the profiles and harvesting e-mail addresses from them.
Although sites may not intentionally give out e-mail addresses, and page on the web that can be read can be scanned for an e-mail address, and thus harvested.
There is big money in harvesting and providing lists to advertisers. This site would be a safe bet for attracting members of above average income, etc, and so becomes a nice target for the harvesters.
Tricks like the extra dot after the dot com can sometimes save you lots of spam, but won't work with the Danny's e-mail verification system
[This message has been edited by stickyb (edited 18 June 2001).]
Although I haven't bothered to do it, it would be a fairly easy job to set up a script to got through looking at the profiles and harvesting e-mail addresses from them.
Although sites may not intentionally give out e-mail addresses, and page on the web that can be read can be scanned for an e-mail address, and thus harvested.
There is big money in harvesting and providing lists to advertisers. This site would be a safe bet for attracting members of above average income, etc, and so becomes a nice target for the harvesters.
Tricks like the extra dot after the dot com can sometimes save you lots of spam, but won't work with the Danny's e-mail verification system
[This message has been edited by stickyb (edited 18 June 2001).]
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stickyb, if it's so easy please be my guest and have a go. The actual email address isn't stored in an html file so most spiders can't access them. They are actually scripts. Bit technical but the way email addresses are stored on the server is designed to prevent spiders accessing them.
Not impossible, probably, to try and trawl the published addresses but certainly not something that is automated very well. I am fairly sure these people have manually gone through the profiles of Users who have their email address publicly available.
I'm not happy about it but I don't think there's much I can do about it... for now.
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
Not impossible, probably, to try and trawl the published addresses but certainly not something that is automated very well. I am fairly sure these people have manually gone through the profiles of Users who have their email address publicly available.
I'm not happy about it but I don't think there's much I can do about it... for now.
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Capt PPRuNe
aka Danny Fyne
The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
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Personally I LOVE the spam I am getting. I know EXACTLY where they got my e-mail address and as an anorak I just LOVE it when strange people send me mails asking me to sit in an airoplane and get paid!!!
They cannot be harvesting E-mail adresses manually because I am as professional as a 3 week old pork sausage.
Yet they want me to fly!!!!!!
Interesting note, My E-mail is not shown in my profile. I re-registered last December. Looks like the harvest was months ago. Maybe that is why some get the spam and the new registrees dont....
[This message has been edited by Kiteflyer (edited 19 June 2001).]
They cannot be harvesting E-mail adresses manually because I am as professional as a 3 week old pork sausage.
Yet they want me to fly!!!!!!
Interesting note, My E-mail is not shown in my profile. I re-registered last December. Looks like the harvest was months ago. Maybe that is why some get the spam and the new registrees dont....
[This message has been edited by Kiteflyer (edited 19 June 2001).]
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Ditto on what Danny said. The most logical way that a PPRuNee's email address could be obtained is via the 'show profile' option.
Somebody could indeed cut & paste the address from this screen into a list on another, or write / run a little program to sift out the single email address (this assumes that the address is visibile, i.e. that a contributor has allowed their email address to be seen by all and sundry) from the HTML source.
If you're not sure what I mean then, if you're using MS-Explorer, click on BEagle's profile at the top of this page and in the new page that then appears click on drop-down menu items View / Source (at the top of the window), and then search within the HTML code for the string 'Current Email:'.
All this aside, just think there's probably some poor bugger out there wildly pointing and clicking at PPRuNe profiles, hoping the email address is visible, so that thay can capture it into a list - it's really rather sad.
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CrashDive
Administrator to The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
May you live in interesting times !
Somebody could indeed cut & paste the address from this screen into a list on another, or write / run a little program to sift out the single email address (this assumes that the address is visibile, i.e. that a contributor has allowed their email address to be seen by all and sundry) from the HTML source.
If you're not sure what I mean then, if you're using MS-Explorer, click on BEagle's profile at the top of this page and in the new page that then appears click on drop-down menu items View / Source (at the top of the window), and then search within the HTML code for the string 'Current Email:'.
All this aside, just think there's probably some poor bugger out there wildly pointing and clicking at PPRuNe profiles, hoping the email address is visible, so that thay can capture it into a list - it's really rather sad.
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CrashDive
Administrator to The Professional Pilots RUmour NEtwork
May you live in interesting times !
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Yeah Right Capt PPRuNe, some pretty naive comments there!
If your email address is publicly available
on this or any other forum then it is a piece of
p1ss to write a spidering program which will extract
it along with every other email address. No doubt
this is what has been done in the above spamming
incident.
Btw, I decided to take up the offer extended to stickyb
The program below is written in Visual Basic
and will return EVERY single email address
publicly available on the PPRuNe forum
Code deleted to prevent users from trying it out as it would only clog the server up and does not prove anything except that users who choose to leave their email address accessible can have them read by a bit of code and then have them used in spam. If you do not want your email address to be accessible by some code then select the option to keep it hidden in your profile.
[ 09 December 2001: Message edited by: Capt PPRuNe ]
If your email address is publicly available
on this or any other forum then it is a piece of
p1ss to write a spidering program which will extract
it along with every other email address. No doubt
this is what has been done in the above spamming
incident.
Btw, I decided to take up the offer extended to stickyb
The program below is written in Visual Basic
and will return EVERY single email address
publicly available on the PPRuNe forum
Code deleted to prevent users from trying it out as it would only clog the server up and does not prove anything except that users who choose to leave their email address accessible can have them read by a bit of code and then have them used in spam. If you do not want your email address to be accessible by some code then select the option to keep it hidden in your profile.
[ 09 December 2001: Message edited by: Capt PPRuNe ]
Chief PPRuNe Pilot
Well, there must be some very sad people out there to have trawled up this old thread. If you had taken just a few minutes to read carefully what I said you wouldn't have had to spend six months figuring all this out and then wasting my and everyone elses time posting this in a thread that is going to be moved to the Computer & Internet forum! 
For your delectation I will repeat myself here and highlight the relevant bits:
OK, so someone with your training can write a script that will trawl through every post, thread by thread and make a note of any email addresses that have been left available for public viewing. All users have the option in their profile to keep their email addresses private and there is no way you can write anything that will trawl for those private addresses.
A bit like someone trawling through a phone directory and noting all the addresses and numbers. No one on any website can guarantee that if someone leaves their email address visible no one will note it down and add it to a list.
As for your condescending, childish tone... there's a good boy, now go and play with your script somewhere else!
For your delectation I will repeat myself here and highlight the relevant bits:
Not impossible, probably, to try and trawl the published addresses but certainly not something that is automated very well. I am fairly sure these people have manually gone through the profiles of Users who have their email address publicly available.
A bit like someone trawling through a phone directory and noting all the addresses and numbers. No one on any website can guarantee that if someone leaves their email address visible no one will note it down and add it to a list.
As for your condescending, childish tone... there's a good boy, now go and play with your script somewhere else!
Join Date: Dec 2001
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Now wait just one minute!
Why don't you get down off your bloody high horse!
The point of the post was to let people know that their email addresses are susceptible to AUTOMATED harvesting and as a consequence SPAM.
Regarding your quote, which apparently I didn't bother to read, I DID read this!
...and this
This is patently untrue and misleading, as I've shown. If your BB is susceptible to automated harvesting (Like most others!) why don't you just come out and say so?
It is obvious that many people are under the impression that they won't be spammed because, as you infer, it is too time-consuming/sad to manually cut and paste the addresses.
Now regarding the six Month old post comment, is it not yourself who constantly harps on about utilising old topics, rather than constantly starting new ones?
And as for condescending comments – The phrase about the pot calling the kettle black somehow springs to mind.
hmmm....
Why don't you get down off your bloody high horse!
The point of the post was to let people know that their email addresses are susceptible to AUTOMATED harvesting and as a consequence SPAM.
Regarding your quote, which apparently I didn't bother to read, I DID read this!
Automatic spiders cannot get addresses from the Members list on this bulletin board.
What someone has done is go individually from post to post and opened the profiles of those people who have their email address visible and copied and pasted it into their own mailing list.
It is obvious that many people are under the impression that they won't be spammed because, as you infer, it is too time-consuming/sad to manually cut and paste the addresses.
Now regarding the six Month old post comment, is it not yourself who constantly harps on about utilising old topics, rather than constantly starting new ones?
And as for condescending comments – The phrase about the pot calling the kettle black somehow springs to mind.
stickyb, if it's so easy please be my guest and have a go