Re: Address harvesting of EDUCAUSE?

[Stephen Bernard <sbernard () GMU EDU>]

Matthew Dalton wrote:
> I would be curious to know if anyone that has not posted to the list before has received spam.  Through a very simple script 
> in UNIX, I was able to get 84 addresses from the mailing list archive.  It seems that the spammer wouldn't necessarily 
> need to be a member of the list.  They only need a web browser.  By the way, I ran the script from my home machine, just to 
> be sure that it was accessible from outside of .edu sites.  Perhaps at the least these archives should be restricted to only 
> members.
>
> lynx -dump 'http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A1=ind0502&L=security' | grep 'From:' | awk '{print $NF}' | 
> sort -u
>
> --
> **************************************************************************
> |Matthew Dalton                     |Phone: (585)273-1721                |
> |ITS Security Group                 |Email: Matthew.Dalton () rochester edu |
> |University of Rochester            |                                    |
> |Rochester, NY 14620                |                                    |
> **************************************************************************

Good example. Email address harvesting from public listservs, forums,
and websites has been going on for a long time. It seems that this list
hasn't been targeted before. At least not noticeably. It's a good way to
find live email addresses for directed marketing and other less
honorable purposes. Given the audience I'm a bit surprised that so many
seem to be experiencing this phenomena for the first time.


Steve Bernard
George Mason University
Fairfax, Virginia

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