Guerri Stevens
July 25th, 2005, 04:51 PM
My Internet provider allows me a spam option that rejects all Email from sources not in my address list. It sends out a message to the senders saying "fill out this form to request addition to the list" and then passes along any requests actually received. Periodically my provider sends me a summary of messages that were rejected. Today's summary contained a message entitled "your service is about to be discontinued" or words to that effect, and the sender's address looked like it could have come from my provider. So I went to the area for reviewing this stuff and read the message, which said "we have been unable to verify some of your information ...". At that point I called the provider. Their automated system had a message saying that a lot of their customers have been receiving fraudulent Emails, and describing what to do (drawing and quartering were not on the list).
So - how do people get Email addresses? I don't give out that particular Email address to anyone. I don't send Email from it. I don't have anyone in my online address book there, hence (see above) ALL email to that address is rejected. I suppose this could have somehow been a guessing thing guessing what my Email address would be, but how would my provider have been known? Is it possible that the provider has a list of members? Maybe I should check on that (TAPCIS.COM has a member directory so it is not far fetched that a provider might do this).
There is one person/entity that repeatedly sends Email and I've made a note to myself to find out how to mark stuff as actual spam and/or forward it somehow so that my provider can clamp down on this person, at least.
I changed my password, just in case.
After shutting down and closing my connection I had several moments of panic because I had forgotten how to get to the place where I could change the password in my dial up connection, but I finally found it.
So - how do people get Email addresses? I don't give out that particular Email address to anyone. I don't send Email from it. I don't have anyone in my online address book there, hence (see above) ALL email to that address is rejected. I suppose this could have somehow been a guessing thing guessing what my Email address would be, but how would my provider have been known? Is it possible that the provider has a list of members? Maybe I should check on that (TAPCIS.COM has a member directory so it is not far fetched that a provider might do this).
There is one person/entity that repeatedly sends Email and I've made a note to myself to find out how to mark stuff as actual spam and/or forward it somehow so that my provider can clamp down on this person, at least.
I changed my password, just in case.
After shutting down and closing my connection I had several moments of panic because I had forgotten how to get to the place where I could change the password in my dial up connection, but I finally found it.