Morris Minor Owners Club

This morning I got a phishing email to my MMOC email address, the forum admins should probably have a look for evidence of the site being hacked!

My HSBC account has been terminated again, does not bother me as I do not have an HSBC account.
If you are using the MMOC email address does it leave room for an extra layer of security? I know nothing about how these things work

It's nothing at all to do with any site being hacked.
The spammers just send mass mails to addresses at random.

PSL184 wrote:It's nothing at all to do with any site being hacked.
The spammers just send mass mails to addresses at random.

Fantastically unlikely to get mmoc@...

So -you don't actually have an 'mmoc' email address -you have simply created your own by sticking 'mmoc' in front of your supplier address?? Can't see it's anything to do with the MMOC then !

I had an email address which I've only ever used for this forum, and have recently received a few spam/phishing emails - the most recent this morning also claiming to be from HSBC. Sorry, Roy, but it almost certainly is likely to be something to do with the forum - these people don't just send emails to random selections of characters at random domains. Either the club, or the forum hosts (if different) have leaked at least some of my details.

I've set up a new address for this forum, and will set the old one to automatically bounce next time I'm logged in to my domain control panel.

Kevin

bmcecosse wrote:So -you don't actually have an 'mmoc' email address -you have simply created your own by sticking 'mmoc' in front of your supplier address?? Can't see it's anything to do with the MMOC then !

As the email address mmoc@... is only ever used on this forum and as part of my registration and contact details, yes, it has everything to do with MMOC!

This whole internet thing...useful but a bit scary.

Spam fritters with brown sauce - very nice!

ANY forum is wide open to abuse - still don't see it as an MMOC problem. But why worry - just block the sender !

bmcecosse wrote:ANY forum is wide open to abuse - still don't see it as an MMOC problem. But why worry - just block the sender !

Any forum is wide open to abuse, agreed, but you seem to be missing the point.

This forum and MMOC hold our email addresses and contact details in a database. The fact that at least two members, with uniuqe email addresses, have received the same HSBC phishing email means that someone has manged to gain access to the database. That means all of our email adrdresses have join the SPAM email lists that get bought and sold to Ne'er-do-well's who will clog up our inbox, SPAM filters, Google servers, whatever! You cannot block the sender when it could be anyone!

So, even if you don't have a unique address used soley for MMOC, you will get more SPAM and the Internet's servers will have to work harder because of it. That is not good...

All I asked for was for the admins to look for evidence and take action. The problem could be with the version of phpbb that the forum uses, it could be forum host had lax security and allowed access directly to the MySQL DB that likely underpins the phpbb (assuming a LAMP model) or few other things. They should go look, talk to their host/ISP and make every effort to not have it happen again.

What you say is interesting. It may be a complete co-incidence but I always get a few spam emails each day. During the last few days this has increased greatly and each day this week I have received at least one from "HSBC" so your theory is a possibility at least.... It IS annoying because although such emails are caught by my spam filter they still have to be cleared at some stage which all takes time

Well - I feel left out... Just close the account if you don't like it ..simples !

Bots trawl the whole web (inc forums) looking for email addresses and phone numbers.
It's a fact of modern life.

Well now that it has been mentioned at least once every few months I get an email on the email address that I use for this forum from HSBC telling me my account is closing. Does seem more than a coincidence to me.

PSL184 wrote:Bots trawl the whole web (inc forums) looking for email addresses and phone numbers.
It's a fact of modern life.

This is the most likely answer rather than the forum being hacked, how many email addresses do you have? The email address you use for this forum, is it used purely for this forum? Have you used it anyware else?
I have had the HSBC phishing mail and from other banks too sent to the address I use for this forum, but I do use that address for other purposes.

Me too
Sometimes if you are looking at a post you will see bots mentioned where it says who is browsing the post. I've been told that this can be a good thing as it up's the visibility of the site on search engines, double edged sword I guess

Trickydicky wrote:I've been told that this can be a good thing as it up's the visibility of the site on search engines, double edged sword I guess

An evil necessity if you want the forum to appear in search engine results etc.

Trickydicky wrote:

PSL184 wrote:Bots trawl the whole web (inc forums) looking for email addresses and phone numbers.
It's a fact of modern life.

This is the most likely answer rather than the forum being hacked, how many email addresses do you have? The email address you use for this forum, is it used purely for this forum? Have you used it anyware else?
I have had the HSBC phishing mail and from other banks too sent to the address I use for this forum, but I do use that address for other purposes.

I have dozens of email addresses, on both my personal and business domain names. One of them has only ever been used for this forum, and the only emails sent to me using this address have been a couple of "official" ones.

Yes, of course bots crawl around the web, but there's a big difference between scraping the content of posts (a Good Thing) and finding email addresses (a Bad Thing). The Club presumably has a "Data Controller" as required by the Data Protection Act - is that person aware of this apparent breach of the DPA?

Kevin

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.