posted on August 30, 2000 03:12:21 AM new
I started buying on eBay and Yahoo! auction sites at the beginning of August, and I have been quite active (~35 transactions, more eBay than Yahoo!). For the auctions, I created a new username on Yahoo! mail. I have used Yahoo! for personal email for about 3 years, and I virtually never get SPAM. However, after about 3 weeks with the username for the auctions, I'm getting a steady stream of SPAM.
Is this caused because spammers can view email addresses through the auctions? Or maybe one or more sellers providing my email address to spammers? Anybody else notice this?
Also, the SPAM started when my eBay rating hit 10. Is this a coincidence? Or do the spammers ignore new users until they've proven themselves to be people who are active in buying and/or selling?
posted on August 30, 2000 04:23:04 AM new
It's because scum-sucking spammers scavenge email addresses and either spam to them themselves or sell them as "targeted list of on-line business owners" to other spammers.
A few scavenge from the chat areas: one ID I ONLY use on eBay chat (no sales, no buys) has been spammed.
One popular way to do it is suck through the FB of a high-FB seller ... a thousand or more email addys ripe for the picking.
posted on August 30, 2000 10:06:57 AM new
Regardless of what eBay states, I believe they sell addresses to spammers. When our business started using eBay, I created a seperate email address for handling transactions and contacts. I entered the information into ebay in the afternoon and went home without ever using the account. The very next morning when I signed on the new email account there were several spam messages waiting. I had not even used the account yet and the only other entity that knew of it was eBay.
[ edited by mark090 on Aug 30, 2000 10:07 AM ]
posted on August 30, 2000 10:41:12 AM new
If your email address contains a commonly-used word or name and you're using a large ISP such as AOL, you can receive spam for your email account even if you don't use it at all.
From what I've heard, spammers often send mail to all addresses containing a certain name at a certain ISP, for example, "[email protected]," "[email protected]," etc.
I use AOL and have two screen names which both contain my name. I don't use either of them for any purpose, but both receive large volumes of (often) identical spam messages. My other two screen names receive minimal spam even though I use them on eBay and many other places.
So eBay is probably not to blame for your spam. It's best not to use your full email address as your eBay user name, though, since that only makes it easier to harvest if someone wants to do that.
posted on August 30, 2000 10:56:35 AM new
It wasn't an AOL account but a roadrunner account which makes it next to impossible to guess cause every area has something different in it(this area is username@stny{southern tier new york}.rr{roadrunner}.com) . The email name isn't even close to the eBay screen name and only two of us knew what it was, me and eBay.
So the immediate appearance of spam points directly to eBay and the search for more money.
posted on August 30, 2000 06:53:58 PM new
Mark -
Interesting. If it's not something that could be easily guessed, maybe an eBay employee is supplementing their take-home pay by selling account info to spammers.
[ edited by mark090 on Aug 30, 2000 10:07 AM ]