[Sussex] SPAM Warning

[Steve Dobson]

Hi All

I believe that we have been targetted by a spammer.

My SPAM filter trapped an e-mail that claimed to be from Frank James
(frank.james4 at btinternet.com) and that he was currently in Madrid, had
just been mugged, and was asking for help paying his hotel bill because
the local police and the embassy were not being helpful.

Has Frank gone to Spain?

I am suspicious because a friend in the Eastbourne Photographic Society
received a very similar e-mail from someone he knew claiming the exact
same thing a month or so back.  He investigated, found the e-mail to be
bogus and warned the rest of us.

When I looked at the e-mail headers it does appear to have passed though
the lug.org.uk mail server. I also noticed that the Reply-To header had
been set to "frank.jamse4 at yahoo.com", which is not the e-mail address
Frank uses when talking to this list.

Luckily being an admin of the list I was able to check the spam trap
there and a copy of the e-mail is waiting there for approval.  The
notice on the approval form has the following automatic messages:

	Blind carbon copies or other implicit destinations are not
	allowed. Try reposting your message by explicitly including the
	list address in the To: or Cc: fields.

Why would Frank BCC this e-mail to the list?  That doesn't make sense to
me.  This has all the hallmarks of a spammer, because using the BCC
field is one trick spammers use to hide the number of e-mail addresses
they are sending their spam to.

Frank, I hope your still hail and hearty.  I hope you aren't visiting
Spain at the moment and haven't been mugged at gun point.

I haven't done anything with the e-mail on the list waiting for approval
in case Fay wishes to look at it too.

Hoping you are all okay (esp. Frank)
Steve
-- 
Steve Dobson