Page 1 of how did they get my e-mail address

i use outlook express for my blueyonder account and have never got an e-mail which i never asked for but recently i have had 2 loose weight e-mail and a porno e-mail this is the family e-mail program and have never typed my e-mail address into any doggy website i have an hotmail account for that. Can i find out how they got my e-mail address and cut them off from the source

Download mailwasher from www.mailwasher.net .This excellent utility allows you to bounce / delete any suspicious mail and also has the ability to blacklist whole domains.You can create a friends list as well. I`m not sure but I think you can set it to auto delete any suspicious mail.The program also checks the senders address against a spammers list and labels the offending mail accordingly if it fits the bill.
Download Zone alarm (www.zonelabs.com) while your at it as well as Ad-aware from www.lavasoft.nu.
Zone Alarm is a firewall and ad-aware is a spyware detector/delting utility
Give them a try.
HTH :-)
PS , no idea how they got your address but I would guess that whoever sends them has some utility/program that simply sends a mail to any address that contains the name John or Jim etc.If your address contains any of the names/titles then you will probably get mail.As I said it`s just a guess.

This item was edited on Saturday, 9th November 2002, 12:18

Have you ever posted your email address on a forum on a website? Or in a newsgroup? Spam crawlers will spider websites and usenet just looking for email addresses.

Maybe you`ve signed up for a forum somewhere which posts your email address to a webpage (ours don`t btw) which was spidered.

When you download things like Kazaa, it can add things in your registry so people can then see your e-mail address, and so forth send you piles of s***e.

...Is there anything like Mailwasher that integrates with Outlook, so you can`t collect your mail without using the spam filter? Need something idiot proof for the rest of the family :)

`ve recently started getting lots of spam sent to my NTL account - looking at the header it wasn`t even addressed to me - looks like Spammers (lots from China for some reason) have been using open proxies for mass mailing all possible email addresses at particular domains.

Might be worth getting an email account on www.spamcop.net

This item was edited on Sunday, 10th November 2002, 10:37

If you read the headers you`ll see it was sent to you, otherwise it can`t possibly be delivered to you. :)

They would have got your email address from somewhere, might be worth a google for it on both the web and newsgroups to see where it was listed.

China does seem to be home of the open proxy and a haven for spammers to abuse systems. :/

Chris - Spamcop looks interesting - are you using it? How do you find it?

RJS - Well one of the last junk emails I got had a header of:
-------
Return-Path: <822ll_slaiceps[at]ten.epacsten>
Received: from QRJATYDI ([162.39.255.50]) by mta01-svc.ntlworld.com
(InterMail vM.4.01.03.27 201-229-121-127-20010626) with SMTP
id <moc.dlrowltn.cvs-10atm.6389IDAL.70521270112002[at]IDYTAJRQ>;
Thu, 7 Nov 2002 21:25:07 +0000
From: "822ll_slaiceps[at]ten.epacsten" <822ll_slaiceps[at]ten.epacsten>
To: xxxxxxxxxxxd[at]moc.dlrowltn
Subject: Find Out Anything About Anyone... Online.
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: The Bat!
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 13:10:8 +-0800
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-2"
Message-Id: <moc.dlrowltn.cvs-10atm.6389IDAL.70521270112002[at]IDYTAJRQ>
X-PMFLAGS: 34079360 0 1 P49A80.CNM
-------

(Which should tell you I use Pegasus as a mailer :-))

I`ve removed the actual name of the to: recipient (as I don`t think they`d be too happy having their email address put on a public board :-) Needless to say the To: field wasn`t to me (though my address does begin with `D`)

Some of the others have had hundreds of alphabetically listed addresses in the CC field. I`ve checked google etc.. and its not there and I NEVER give that email address out except to friends (I`ve got another account for all the shopping/board ones that is individually tailored to whichever place I`ve used it).

RichardH - I only use the free part of Spamcop to report spammers. It does seem to offer a reasonable service from what I`ve read. It was just the first one I tried.

This item was edited on Sunday, 10th November 2002, 18:37

It was probably BCC`d to you, which is why you don`t appear anywhere in the headers.

Even my email address (which I have never posted publically anywhere that could be harvested by spammers) appears on usenet in the odd place because I`ve posted to a few mailing lists which are then published on usenet groups.

I`m very thankful for blacklists like Spamcop though, as our mail server uses them to bounce mail. :)