Forum Moderators: phranque
Someone had taken the time to craft a well written letter and then included a link for a response. The link was no good at all. No such resource, nothing to find on any search engine, nada, zip, zilch, zero. What a shame.
and no, I didn't bother to respond to the return address... it clearly stated I should respond to the link
This is why the operative word is 'never' either view or open or respond to anything in any spam email, it's always lies and tricks. Many people make the mistake of believing that if they don't actually click on the email to open it, but just use the preview pane, that's ok, but, sad news again, it's not ok, in that email is probably an image with src="update_spam_email_valid_sender.php?id=lskjdflsdjfsdlfjk
which will happily verify that you exist, you are looking at that email address, and that the spammers can now sell that email address in the high value confirmed email list.
why the internet seems to attract the very worst and vile elements of humanity is another topic of course.
by clicking on the link you confirmed that your email address is a current and valid email address, that makes it much more valuable to spammers.
My address is already a pretty valuable asset to spammers :)
No, I think this was legit (but I've been wrong before). Since the URL was invalid it seems like it would be hard to determine anything about me reading the message, which by all appearances was nothing more than a text message.
Just hope no harm's done here. Don't forget too, spammers are also stupid - broken links are not so unusual - but you really didn't want to buy what they were offering.
AAAACCCCCKKKKKKKK! I shouldn't have been BOUNCING spam emails? That's a "response", right?
Oy. I have a really bad feeling about this....
spammers almost never use real return email addresses, I'd say never but I'm sure one or two do it by accident once in a while, since as encyclo says, they, being the true sewer of the computer world, don't tend to be very bright, just download some software, take over a server somewhere, buy a cdrom of email addresses, and you're ready to go.
But for anyone else reading this thread, remember, don't view, don't open, don't respond to any spam or spam like email, just delete immediately. If you are using an email client set to preview emails, stop it, turn off that feature, which can also trigger certain viruses if I remember right. In Outlook express, that's 'view->layout->show preview pane', checked by default.
And following on from isitreal, you should also always use an email client program which doesn't load external graphics - the old trick of a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF loaded of a remote server with a unique ID to verify your email address is still very popular.
Don't forget the Rules of spam [groups.google.ca]!
