Spam example? (This might be basic!)

[Simes]

Having been reading of these forums for the last few months and tried to learn a few things across the board, I have some (very basic??) questions concerning spam mail. Bear with me, please.

I received an email from [Spammer Email Address] for DVD copying. The email, which was in html form, arrived in my Inbox even though it had the incorrect spelling of my surname.

(1) Is this just because the email also had my surname correctly spelt as a variation in the Bcc field?

(2) If I click on this in webmail to just open it, what are the chances that there is some javascript that will fire off a confirmation of an address?

[Spammer Email Unsuscribe Link] is the Unsubscribe line as found in View Source and from this one can obviously find that [Spammer Email Website] is the DVD Copying site with no method for any email or tel contact. No surprises there.

Going back to the original email, it appears that
[Spammer Email home] is a hosting and web development site, so,

(3) How did the email come from there? I am guessing that this DVD company(?) has hijacked their (i-55) servers and are utilising them for spamming.

I have alerted them to this situation via an online form so, does anyone think anything will happen?

(4) Could someone give me an overview of this sequence of events and if this is but a classic example of spamming?

(5) And will mailwasher work if i use a mail forwarding arrangement? ie, it bounces back which email address, the one on the email address line or the one that the email eventually comes to??

I also saw from another email that they had also gone through these guys [Spammers Open Relay]

Many thanks for bearing with me. Cheers.

 

[PseudoKiller]

Ok I changed all the links in your post... There is no need to post all those and I dont think anyone needs to click on them.

Spam is real easy to understand if know a few things.

They almost hardly target you directly. Unless you have signed up and gotten on a list. They use name generators or troll chat rooms and gather usernames ... ie @aol.com or @comcast.net ...

Also they troll the net looking for mail servers that arent locked down and have open relays. They then use them to send their email thru these mail servers so they cannot be tracked. Check ORDB They keep lists of all open relays on the net.

Unless otherwise configured email servers with use 6 characters in a username to best guess an email. If your email is 12345678@mydomain.com and a spammer sends an email to abcdefg12345678@mydomain.com the email server will try to make a best guess by how characters match the email name. The more unique your email and how well you protect that email address determines how much spam mail you will get.

Also word of advise, NEVER respond to a spam email. Once you do they know its a live email account and then you get put on many more lists. Also never open a spam email... just delete it. You run the risk of sending a confirmation and unless you like spam dont leave it in your deleted items folders... always empty that folder... Treat spam like its a cold and get rid of it fast and clean

 

[Simes]

Ok I changed all the links in you email.. There is no need to post all those and i dont think anyone needed to click on them.

You're probably right at that.

Cheers.