On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 2:28 AM, Gregory Propf <gregorypropf@yahoo.com>wrote:

> I just discovered that some evil spammer has somehow gotten my contacts
> list and
> used it to send out a bunch of spam.  This is just to notify you that if
> you get
> an email from me on May 26, 2011 (other than this one or one like it - the
> problem was more extensive than I first thought) it wasn't from me.  Please
> don't add me to your spam filters.  I've changed my password and hopefully
> that's the end of it.  At this point I don't know how they did it though. -
> Greg


Are you sure that the email(s) concerned originated from your account? There
are three possibilities: a) your account was cracked as you suggest and the
perpetrator used your contacts list to send spam, b) a contact on your
contact list is usuing a machine with a virus and that is sending the spam
out, or c) someone scraped the archives of email lists and extracted your
address. Of the three a) is the most *unlikely* to be the cause.

For many years I have used a text-only emailer on Linux or Mac OS X
machines. And when I do use a mailer with "rich text capabilities" I make
sure not to allow images to load or scripts to run. Yet despite my
precautions loads of spam supposedly gets sent from me. It isn't from me.
That junk comes from contacts in category b) or, most likely given the
longeviety of my address, from c). I don't even bother to tell people that
it might happen; I'd spend my entire day every day sending out messages like
your's.

To make this more R related. Has anyone written an email header analysis
package? One such could be useful in tracking down where the spam was
injected into the system and from that adjust spam filters, update block
lists, and a whole raft of other preventatives.

But whether such an R package exists or not there are three things to be
done irrespective of categories a), b) or c).

   1. Make sure that your anti-virus software is up to date.
   2. Make sure that your anti-virus software is running (some viruses are
   sophisticated enough to stop even the most well known AV package from
   running).
   3. Make sure you have anti-virus software installed; sadly some people
   even today do not see the necessity for this on Windows machines, they are
   being naive, stupid, anti-social, and deserve all they receive.


Regards, Trevor.

<>< Re: deemed!

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