Re: NIGERIAN EMAIL SCAM

[Rogan Dawes <discard () dawes za net>]

Servie Platon wrote:
> Hello firewall wizards and security experts,
>
> May I ask for some kind of spam 101 tutorial from
> anyone. Please kindly enlighten me on how these
> spammers or people who send scam emails
> indescriminately all over the internet which is kind
> of annoying. 

The standard way to collect email addresses is to run a spider over the 
Internet and extract anything that looks like it might be an email 
address (i.e. recipient () example com), filter it through some sanity 
checks (optional) and then send emails to each and every address that 
they have.

Alternatively, many spammers simply buy lists from people who have 
already done this exercise.

Another way of collecting email addresses is to monitor NNTP (Usenet) 
feeds, and harvest email addresses of the posters.

To illustrate, do a google search for your own email address, and see 
what comes up.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22servie_tech%40yahoo.com%22&hl=en&lr=&filter=0

> I received an email from this sender"maryam56"
> <widowwoman () tiscali it>

This is generally a forged address, but it may also simply be a free 
webmail account. Often the email is sent from a supposedly reputable 
organisation such as netscape.com, or other domain, with a request to 
respond to a different disposable webmail address in the body of the 
message.

> and have sent an email to this address,
> selcom01 () amnetsal com

It is generally not worth responding to the senders of such emails. For 
one, it confirms that your email address is real, and is being read by a 
real person. Secondly, your email will most likely be deleted without 
being read.

It MAY be worthwhile forwarding the email to your local authorities, but 
I suspect that they are already overwhelmed with similar reports.

> Now, my question here is this. I have no idea how
> these people tend to get email addresses of people
> whom they intend to victimize.

See above. If 0.0001% respond, they are probably still making a profit . 
. .

> I am just concerned if ever, my home network might be
> compromised though, I have followed all the tips, and
> safeguards as suggested by the security gurus and
> experts here.

I'd say that it is unlikely that your home network has been compromised. 
Anyone can send a spam email . . .

I suggest you investigate a spam filtering solution, and ignore these 
emails in future. It is not an ideal situation, but there are no more 
effective solutions at the moment.

Regards,

Rogan
--
Rogan Dawes

*ALL* messages to discard () dawes za net will be dropped, and added
to my blacklist. Please respond to "lists AT dawes DOT za DOT net"
_______________________________________________
firewall-wizards mailing list
firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
http://honor.icsalabs.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards