January 30, 2004

9:40 AM

36 hours ago, I posted a message in Ask Mefi regarding what it would take for the world to adopt a more secure method of email to prevent nefarious people from spoofing legitimate email accounts.

This morning, my inbox was flooded with hundreds of bounced spam emails from AOL, apparently unrelated to the MyDoom virus.

What I want to know is, who's the wiseguy?
posted by crunchland to MetaFilter-related at 9:40 AM (11 comments total)

Ask MetaFilter is publicly viewable to anyone, perhaps some crazy spammer found you talking about it and blasted you with mail?
posted by mathowie at 9:58 AM on January 30, 2004

Bastard. *shakes fist*
posted by ColdChef at 10:25 AM on January 30, 2004

apparently unrelated to the MyDoom virus.

This week I've had two domains I administer used as part of forged return addresses. I don't know if it's that's related to the virus either, but I'd speculate it's possible that (1) your experience is a coincidence and/or (2) it is related to the virus, just not obviously.

Speculation, of course. Maybe spammers do have some kind of revenge streak. Certainly that Ralsky guy seems to get a persecution complex every time someone impugnes his "business" or turns the tables.
posted by weston at 10:26 AM on January 30, 2004

well, for what it's worth, the flood has stopped. I don't know if it had to do with me posting that the spam wasn't going through, or if it was because I also disabled some cgi scripts on my domain. And here I thought I had a "secure" version of formmail.
posted by crunchland at 11:12 AM on January 30, 2004

crunch, I also had several thousand spoofed mails hit me in the past 3 days. something's up but i doubt it's connected to askme.
posted by dobbs at 11:54 AM on January 30, 2004

I know. I guess I'm being a little paranoid. Everyone knows that spammers are too cool to be reading metafilter.
posted by crunchland at 12:59 PM on January 30, 2004

And here I thought I had a "secure" version of formmail.

crunchland -- I have a PHP script I've been working on for form mail which I beleive is largely unhijackable... there's no opportunity for someone to pass recipient information through GET or POST paramaters, it's all in a config file on the server. Email me if you're interested.
posted by weston at 1:43 PM on January 30, 2004

Did you get into a fight with anyone in particular on here lately, or in that thread? A certain MeFi user, who I won't name, signed me up on a few dozen opt-in lists after a pungent disagreement last summer.

Now they told two friends, and they told two friends, and...long story short, I'm still dealing with it.

You think something like this might've happened to you?
posted by adamgreenfield at 4:08 PM on January 30, 2004

Why wouldn't you name him, adamgreenfield? Preferably in an email to mathowie, granted, but that certainly strikes me as a blatant abuse of membership and a bannable offense, if anything ever was.
posted by rushmc at 5:52 PM on January 30, 2004

I *did* name him, in a thread contemporary with the incident, and got slapped down from all sides.

This, as I understand it, was because I couldn't absolutely prove that he had done the signing-up (even though that address had never received spam previously, my MeFi profile page was one of the very few places where that address was visible, and the onslaught of opt-in mail began within minutes of an ugly exchange with this person).

All involved seemed to think I was out of line, and I've bowed to their feelings. But I haven't forgotten - how could I, with the mail still flooding in - and I certainly haven't forgiven.

The guy's a grade-A asshole, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd stooped to such juvenile tactics twice. Forget I mentioned it.
posted by adamgreenfield at 6:35 PM on January 30, 2004

This, as I understand it, was because I couldn't absolutely prove that he had done the signing-up

Ah, gotcha. Sorry to poke the scab.
posted by rushmc at 8:34 PM on January 30, 2004