[Gllug] spam

[Alain Williams]

On Thu, Aug 06, 2009 at 08:58:09PM +0100, Diana Scott wrote:
> I have been receiving 10 - 15 spam email every day since early June
> this year. I was shocked to find out some of the regular spam have my
> email address as the sending address but in a different sender name
> sending it back to my email account. When it arrives, the sender
> appeared as "Me".

It is quite common.

> Do you know how the spammers find my email address

Harvesting email addresses is not hard. Your email address is all over the
place -- eg: every gluug user knows it. They have programs to collect
them and they then share them, some sell them.

> and how do they fake the sender id as ME sending it back to the
> original address  ?

That is very easy. Your MUA (email reader/writer program) inserts yours,
their inserts from addresses that they have.

> What do they gain by sending these spam email ?

Someone somewhere will buy: viagra, etc. Some contain a noxious payload
that takes over MS machines
 
 What do I need to do
> to get my email address off from the spammers mailing lists or stop
> receiving from them ?

If you knew how to do that: you would be very popular, nay: rich!

> Can "Report to phishing" stop them spamming?

Won't work

> Are there any government agencies that help to control email spamming
> in the UK ? Are they breaking any law by sending fake id spamming ?

Occasionally a spammer gets caught, but there does not seem much interest
in doing this.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
Past chairman of UKUUG: http://www.ukuug.org/
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
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