[at-l] OT - German Spam

[steve at millers-house.org (Steve Miller)]

I've also received a boatload of Deutsche Schpam lately - especially 
for  addresses I monitor with the Buckeye Trail Association (I suspect 
the website was harvested). It's bad enough getting spam, but not 
knowing what it is saying...!!!!

I would not necessarily worry about the undeliverable mail.  Often, when 
a spammer sends an email that is not rejected (ie to a good address), 
they will use that address as a forged 'From' address in their 
subsequent mailings.  This helps get around systems that reject mail 
from bogus addresses, since your address is real.  Of course, since you 
are listed as the sender, you get the rejection messages from the next 
poor sucker on the spammer's list.

Has anyone on this list ever responded to (as in bought something from) 
an unsolicited e-mail?  Someone must somewhere or the quantity of spam 
would dwindle (someone is making money from it).

Steve "No Chance"

Jan Leitschuh wrote:

>
> Hey you intelligent hiking techies,
>
> I've sure been getting alot of German spam lately.
>
> I opened one or two emails, but clicked on nothing, just deleted them. 
> All subsequent ones deleted.
> Now, I'm getting "undeliverable mail" notices from servers, with the 
> German URL in the copies they forward.
>
> My questions:
> 1) Is it now possible to get virii just from opening an email? I 
> thought I needed to open an attachment or click on a link, or download 
> something.
>
> 2) My Norton scan showed nothing, but could in fact a very new virus 
> be out there and the "fix' not yet available?
>
> 3) Why am I getting all these returned mail notices in regards the 
> German spam.
>
> Thank you for your technical wisdom,
> Shoester of the Rhine