Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam livejournal and spam

[greatbear]

I have been getting a huge amount of spam via my LJ email address lately. What might have been a trickle of a couple per week that started two or three years ago has in the past months blossomed into several a day. It's no surprise though, despite LJ's feeble attempts to mask the LJ-based email address shown in profile pages, it's no big deal for a spammer to harvest usernames and append "@livejournal.com" to them. Poof, instant honeypot of victims.

What a more perfect way to gather LJ user names (and more) than to set up a site offering quizzes and memes?

Also, I have been targeted for a bunch of 'gay' spam pointing to various jock and leather sites. Those I often get in groups of two or three identical emails, the only difference being the gibberish used to foil spam filtering.

Spammers are useless people. If I had my way, I'd have them drawn and quartered.

Anyone else being similarly hit by this crap?

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

Bastiges! How dare they invade the republic!

[sparkygearhead.livejournal.com]

I don't have an LJ address, but I do get my share of spam at my hotmail account. I agree with you - spammers are cockroaches. One day what they do will be illegal, but until that day I filter aggressively.

And now, let's talk about the amount of junk mail that's delivered to you through snail mail...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

What gets to be about snail mail spam is the sheer number of credit card and other financial offers I get. Capital One alone sends me about an offer each week. I have to keep emptying my shredder because of this crap.

So much wasted paper and resources.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Spam is already illegal - the problem is catching, prosecuting and convicting the scumbags who do it. And of course, the USA can only pursue spammers who work from within the country - some jackass in (say) Hong Kong is out of our reach.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if I have any spam email in my LJ account since I never use it. However, I do in my Yahoo and MSN emails that I do use often, although it seems they aren't as bad as they had been a year or so ago and if I didn't empty my more used email junk box, it'd get pretty long, now it's rarely more than a dozen or so at most, if that much.

I have a 3rd email it's also an MSN account but I hardly use it and it almost never gets any in there.

Now talk about spam that occasionally makes it into your inbox...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

My LJ mail (which I never used for anything) is forwarded to a Yahoo address that I also use on here. A lot of the spam is addressed to my username at LJ, and it seems to hit my inbox with ease. This is to be expected I guess with mail forwarding. I have oodles of various email addresses at home, work, and through the web. I have even done experiments with free accounts just to see how they fare against spam. Anything I create through Hotmail, no matter how I name the account to something not even machine discoverable (say '3243bullshit688s') and dont use it for anything, eventually it starts being a spam trough. The ONLY way this can happen is if hotmail/MS lets the information out. Yahoo seems to be better for this, especially if I make sure not to have that username be associated with any groups or directories.

Stuff that makes it into my inboxes gets there by using various techniques to evade certain spam filters. The graphic text spam that was all the rage has recently all but stopped. New tricks are to have my address in a limited list of others in order to make the email look more like a small group mailing rather than true bulk. Still, the random, sometimes poetic strings of text will accompany the spam, as well as the typical obfuscation (\/1@gr/\, p3n1s, etc) meant to make the usual trigger words disappear to the filters.

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

I should clarify that one MSN is a paid account for my DSL which I don't use too often except for about a half dozen people and a yahoo group through church and that's about it, my older MSN reverted to free when I closed out my old DSL account several years back when I went down to LA in search of work. That one I use all the time along with my Yahoo which is where all my LJ responses come from directly. both of those get spam, but like I said, the amount has dropped off and I keep my filters pretty rigid

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of hotmail and yahoo addies that are used specifically to use on websites and such in order to keep my 'good' addresses as protected as possible. Hell, even my work address gets penetrated by some spam despite the filtering that is so strict that false positives happen regularly.

[wrascalism.livejournal.com]

I have a LJ email account? Really?? I thought was only thru Jibberish.

Hmmm...I guess I should look into it.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

If you have a paid or perm account, you get a @livejournal address. I guess it's a bonus that some use, I never do.

[meddler-inc.livejournal.com]

Not I, but then, I don't have a paid account. :D

"Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!!" >.>

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

The way many spambots operate is if they have a successful victim at one address, the boots will then take that username and apply it to as many common (and not so common) domains in an effort to find a match. Say it is known that user123@livejournal.com is a 'good' address. Mail will be sent to user123@yahoo.com, hotmail.com, comcast.net, cox.net, pobox.com, etc. Quite often a user will create addresses with the same name at different domains, and there is an easy potential for matches.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

Best thing I ever did spam-wise was get my own domain 6 years ago. Knock on wood the spammers haven't found my domain name, bearmanga.com, to start spreading shit to. Mind you I no longer identify with "bear", nor do I live in "ga" anymore, but what the hell.

Snail mail? Have a six figure income and a credit score over 800 and see what you get in terms of financial junk mail. The credit cards I already have are what scare me. One more increase and Washington Mutual is going to have me right at a 100k credit limit. Forget my wallet, I feel like the card should be in a safe deposit box. And those "pay off your bills" checks that come six different ways with different offers. I can have a six inch stack of bills, that when opened is only about 15 sheets of paper, the rest throwaways. Double that because I handle my mother's business affairs. Ugh...

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

And all this time your domain meant 'bear manga' instead of 'bearman ga'.

Once winter hits and I feel more like dealing with it, I will set up my own hosting as well as email. I will have complete control of it via addresses and be able to track who are the ones spilling the beans to the spammers.

I have a post office box. This makes me feel a bit less antsy about someone rifling through my mail looking for credit card applications and those cash advance checks. Last thing I need is an identity theft crisis. It's happened to several people I know.

[sfmini.livejournal.com]

bearmanga was actually my aol screen name back in the days of... "AOL for DOS". After the first couple of years I just started using whatever email came with my ISP. In 2001 my ISP got bought and sold three times. I got tired of changing my email address with everyone so I came up with my own. Best thing I ever did. Who knew I'd leave GA and then figure out that the same name is used in Japanese anime? While I have no interest in that, I don't enlighten folk that make that assumption.

When I moved to SF four years ago I didn't know where I'd be living permanently, and with me receiving mail for me, my mother and my corporation I figured it'd be easier to get a PO Box. There weren't any, so I got a box at the UPS store. Another "best thing I ever did" thing. Secure mail, I have a key to get into the building, they can receive packages for me and they can even receive and sign for certain legal documents. Most importantly it gives me a street address that I can use for car registration, drivers license and the much coveted "S" zone parking permit. It's a little more expensive, but the parking permit alone is worth it. I work in the "S" zone, opens up a whole new world of convenience!!!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

You will receive a wet spanking for that one, boy.

[billbearoh.livejournal.com]

I don't seem to get a hug amount of spam from thru Live Journal account...
With the Snail Mail Junk Mail... Over a Year ago... I startd calling the credit card companies that were sending me offers. asked to be removed from there mailing lists. it's worked great. also called my credit card companies and reqeusted they stop sending the blank checks in the Mail... that also stopped...I've also refused credit limit increases on my accounts in th past.
Sometimes it takes a little searching for the phone number to call but it's worth the few minutes of time. and the phone call works better than an email.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I will have to sign up for a 'do not spam with credit card offers' list. Anything to reduce the crap in my mailbox and more importantly to ease any 'churn' in my credit history.

[wooferstl.livejournal.com]

Ever since i started monitoring photomans, a great Russian photographer, i'm getting a ton of russian spam, in cyrillic!

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

For a short period I was getting nailed with a pile of Asian character spam, that dried up at Yahoo, but my gmail address has been receiving more. At the outset, very little, if any, spam hit that account. Soon enough, though, it got out of control. Luckily, Google gets almost all of it in the spam folder.

[djmadadam.livejournal.com]

I don't think my LJ email address is activated (for paid subscribers only?) ... but I'm getting a lot of spam emails from BearTrapping.net, or something like that (BearDroppings.net?).

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I got lots of those a while back. Definitely a targeted thing I think.

[teddyb.livejournal.com]

I realize you probably just flush the stuff without doing any kind of analysis, but do you have a sense any significant portion of the spam might be linked to BearTrapping.com, Ironclad Media, GayRoughNecks.com and this loathsome creature:

Gary Niederhelman
President
IronClad Media
PO Box 268
Belmar, NJ 07719