Disturbing spam email

I checked my email today after a long lapse and found one of those spam emails that usually have nonsense headers to avoid spam filters, but this one had as the subject line, "Weston . . ."

This is my RL email and it should have no connection with Second Life other than I used it at first to sign up. Coincidence? I thought "Weston" was a made up, or at least a highly uncommon name. Now I see it everywhere. Creepy.

Has anyone else received an email unexpectedly referencing your SL name?

No, but what did the body of the email say? Was there anything about SL in it?

Have you ever given your email to a friend while in-world?

I had the same thing happen one time. That was the only thing I could think of.

Are they IMs being forwarded from inworld? If not, that really sucks.

"but this one had as the subject line, "Weston . . ."
The subject was Weston . . ." ??
The subject was Weston Graves" ??

Spam headers / purported senders and recipients can often come up with amusing or conspiracy_theory_creepy combinations of words.
It's like the old thing about a room full of monkeys and typrewriters - eventually (very 'eventually') they would produce a book.

"Now I see it everywhere"
- so the chances of that word appearing somewhere in spam are high.


Google for Weston Graves.
Google for Weston.

I keep reading headlines like "Strife in the Middle East" how do you think that makes me feel? Who do they think I am, Waldo of Where's Waldo? At least Waldo gets to visit those places, they don't even have the decency to send me a plane ticket.

Weird thing is, since signing up to SL I get way more spam in general, not just the personalized kind. And I'm talking way more as in at least five times the amount of spam I used to get. Also, the email addys I solely use for my alts suddenly get tons of spam, too... and yes, I had them a while before using them on SL... sans spam...

*ponders*

LOL Strife.. At least you can travel for free in Second Life Waldo might be in something like Second Life too, but cartoons, so he can visit so much places



Weston, I have no idea... I use my e-mail for SL and RL (RL first) so no idea... Anyway, you could have given it to somebody in-world or something... Put the address in "spam" and report it to your e-mail company... they might fix it like spam...

Good luck!

Laughing at myself now. The email was advertising stocks in a "rising" company. There is no mention of SL. I see now that it was addressed to someone else using the same email service and a lot of others including me were probably blind CC'd.

Sorry for the false alarm. Still I thought it an amazing coincidence. A trip to a baby naming web page tells me Weston is #380 on the list of popular names for boys. I did not know it was even that widespread.

I guess the lesson here is not to worry unless your Second Life name is Ugblatsticanossifat or something, and you get an email with THAT in the subject line.

Thanks.

LOL Weston!!

Then no prob and all ok

I once got some spam with my RL first name, but then I got the same mail about twenty times with changing first names in it, so I'm sure it must be monkeys with typewriters....
Then again, I find IM spam far worse because apart from muting, (and AR'ing,if they offer something illegal) I can't do anything-they'll just come back with different "blahblah64758" names.

My company is on the receiving end of 1000s of spams per day.
I have special email addresses for SL. They don't get any spam.

Once any address begins to be sent spam, the volume of spam will generally increase over time. The volume can increase in spurts, when an address gets added to spammer Cd lists, etc.

A 'completey secret' address can get spam. Spewing spam costs spammers nothing. Mostly they are using millions of compromised domestic PCs (bot-nets) to do the sending.
Millions of monkeys generating random email addresses, in addition to spewing at lists - sometimes they get lucky, and you get spam.
[email]weston@xys.com[/email], [email]weston1@xyz.com[/email], weston2.......
[email]sling@somewhere.com[/email], novis@...... , mysecretemail@

Alternatively, PC's get compromised and any email addresses found on those PCs are gold dust to spammers.




Don't ponder, just filter

Yep, it's strongly recommended not to say anything like: "please, don't send spam to this e-mail account, I'm not interested" (or something like that).
This just lets the spammer know that the account is being used and they can use it for spamming.

Filter and denounce it!!

All my spam is in Russian these days.

Dear Comrade Tempel,

My name is Aleaxandreavich Simonovich Petrofsky. I am a direct decendant of Czar Nicholas II. I am asking for your help in reclaiming my Famiy's rightful fortune. I was given your name as a trusting soul by a Nigerian Noblewoman who speaks highly of you.........

LOL! Damn her! She's giving out my name now! Unfortunately the Russian spam really is in Russian, cyrillic alphabet and everything.

LOL

I discovered when responding to SL IM's through email, I didnt realize my responses had my REAL name in them. Who knows how many I sent without reading all that gibberish behind the message. The entire body of the response was sent back along with my message.

Could signing up for Paypal be the culprit? Ebay spams the crap out of my accounts all the time.

OMG!!! That ALMOST had my RL first name in it! It's a communist conspiracy!!!! (Yeah well, i admit "Alexandra" isn't the rarest of names... )

I've been with Ebay since 2001 and with Paypal almost as long and never noticed any change in the amount of spam I get.

Sling, I know the spam generating processes. I just found it weird that from one day to the next my addys go from zero spam to at least 30 mails per day after using any of them for SL registration (and nothing else).



I doubt it, since those addys are not connected to my Paypal account.

Might all be a weird coincidence, just made me wonder, y'know.

It could be that the email addresses had been subject to spam before you set them up.
'We all know' that spammers spew spam at addresses they generate on the fly.


Pretend sig:
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Caesar adsum iam sed Brutus passus sum

Another option is that your PC or a mail server along the way has been compromised/sniffed and any email addresses detected are being spammed.

Try passing a tagged alias address to some website of impeccable credentials (no reflection on LL) and see if it gets spam.

That sounds more likely, since I had those adresses a while before I used them for SL. Still, a weird coincidence.