Morris Minor Owners Club

les wrote:Now and then we get some idiots posting some weird stuff here in a foreign language, whats that all about? I don't understand all this spam etc business, why do these things happen and what are they trying to achieve. Yes, I daresay its obvious to most but not to me.

A foreign language post could be someone who registered and then posted in their own language but it is pretty unlikely.

What is more likely is that some wannabe hackers (known as script kiddies in the trade) have decided to try and automate the forum registration process using the their favourite scripting language. Once they have it working they could share their script with others who then might use it to post a message encouraging people to go to their site. To get this to work all you need is access to the inbox of the email address you specified on registration.

"encouraging people to go to their site" has changed a little over the years. Originally SPAM was almost exclusively designed to sell you stuff. ED drugs probably the highest percentage. You see very little of this anymore as people just didn't respond in big enough numbers to make it worthwhile. The new breed of SPAM is much more dangerous as it is either a direct phishing attack designed to elicit your banking (for instance) credentials from you or a link to a website that will install malware onto your computer.

Once malware is on your computer then, depending on the malware, the controller of the malware can tell your computer to do practically anything. An example being the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on VISA by the hacking group anonymous.

Groups of "controlled" PCs are typically referred to as botnets and a botnet and its capability has value to some so ultimately the reason for SPAM is money. It used to be sales of goods now it's sales of zombie PCs processing power.

What a nightmare. My brain is still functioning in 1970's mode. Think I might leave it there.

After the spam/malware epidemic described above, I registered a new email address with this forum and set the old ones to bounce any incoming mail. All went quiet until this week, when some more arrived, sent to the latest address. I've not used this address or disclosed it elsewhere - not even for a pm with another forum member.

I reckon that either the forum hosting account is seriously compromised, or that someone in the Club with suitable access is selling email addresses. In either event, there appears to be a breach of the Data Protection Act.

Any better ideas?

Kevin

^^ Nothing of that kind is happening I can assure you!. There are firms these days with computers running programmes just trawling email addresses to send spam to. Totally random. I have an email address set up only for close family use. Only used it twice. They've found it and now I'm getting emails from firms sending me demands for overdue invoices!

and it looks like they have spirited away Roy's train pictures.....

Ah, magic, I only had to mention it and they have come back again.....

ASL642 wrote:^^ Nothing of that kind is happening I can assure you!. There are firms these days with computers running programmes just trawling email addresses to send spam to. Totally random. I have an email address set up only for close family use. Only used it twice. They've found it and now I'm getting emails from firms sending me demands for overdue invoices!

The likely reason that you are getting spam to that email address is one of the recipients of your email had their email account hacked and you were in their address book. You are correct that trawling for email addresses is an activity that is done but email addresses generated are not random, they are based on trawled names with a different domain as people tend to reuse the first part of their email address if they have multiple providers.

I would love to hear how you can assure us that MMOC are not 'losing' our email addresses...

I go through my in box each morning and delete anything I have any doubts about. Sometimes these are from people I know but if they do not have a proper intrduction then they get binned.
Now I am getting those accident claim phone calls on a TPS line. The caller gets an earful of abuse before I hang up. The TPS does not seem to be working properly