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SPAM on Geocaching E-mail Account


Khoda

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I have setup a separate e-mail account for geocaching. I never use this account for surfing the internet or logon to any site besides Geocaching_Com. I receive an excessive amount of SPAM on this account compared to my other accounts. The SPAM is mostly of a sexual nature. Just this morning in the past 2 hours I received 30 unwanted e-mails.

 

My question: Is anyone else experiencing this problem and have they found a way to deal with it.

I am also directing this issue to Groundspeak_com for suggestions.

Edited by Khoda
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It's hard to tell the source of the SPAM. I am not suggesting that Groundspeak is selling the list. I only question why this is the only account that experiences the high volume of SPAM, since I only us it for geocaching.

This post was intended to determine if others experience the same issue and how they might have dealt with it.

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10 minutes ago, Khoda said:

This post was intended to determine if others experience the same issue and how they might have dealt with it.

 

I've received spam from Groundspeak, most sexual in nature, but all were from no finds/hides players who contacted me, and apparently joined for that purpose.

Contacted HQ and they closed/locked those accounts.   

I have an old email address that's never been used for anything, yet it gets similar to what you describe regularly.

I block multiples with the same account (but different subjects...), and delete the rest.  Odd, because the emails I use see few.  :)

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You'd be surprised at how savvy spammers can be. There are programs that can send spam to email addresses simply by intelligently guessing at the account name. "name@something.com" is SUCH an easy one, you'll get spam all day and all night. But even ones like Initial1Initial2Surname or any email with recognizable words are easy pickings. Or they can simply brute force email addresses - getting a lot of "no such account" errors, but plenty of successful ones.

 

Think how far AI and computer algorithms have come, and apply that to ferreting out email addresses.

 

My advice? Get a good spam filter.

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No, I've never noticed anything like that in the account I use for geocaching, although who knows how many spam filters my mail goes through these days without me knowing about it. I'd be more inclined to suspect your address leaked from your mail provider before I'd think it came from geocaching.com. Well, except that you have told geocaching.com to reveal your email address, so it could have been harvested by someone scanning geocaching.com looking for mailto: links.

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7 minutes ago, dprovan said:

... you have told geocaching.com to reveal your email address, so it could have been harvested by someone scanning geocaching.com looking for mailto: links.

 

To mitigate this risk, go to your Account Settings, select "Email Preferences," and un-check the box that says "Show my email address on my public profile."

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2 hours ago, Keystone said:

 

To mitigate this risk, go to your Account Settings, select "Email Preferences," and un-check the box that says "Show my email address on my public profile."

I edited my original post to less pointed.

 

I want to thank you for the suggestion to hide my e-mail. It might help but will take a bit for the SPAM level to drop off. I'll wait and see.

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I have multiple accounts on five different sites but my YAHOOOOOOOO acct. accumulates a horrendous amount of spam  >>>> 50% sexual, 30% bogus award administrators who ONLY NEED my social security # and a bank acct. # so they can process my winnings,  15% pharmacy stuff, the balance is a smattering of oddball stuff

Edited by humboldt flier
typos
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On 11/14/2018 at 11:16 AM, TriciaG said:

You'd be surprised at how savvy spammers can be. There are programs that can send spam to email addresses simply by intelligently guessing at the account name. "name@something.com" is SUCH an easy one, you'll get spam all day and all night. But even ones like Initial1Initial2Surname or any email with recognizable words are easy pickings. Or they can simply brute force email addresses - getting a lot of "no such account" errors, but plenty of successful ones.

 

Think how far AI and computer algorithms have come, and apply that to ferreting out email addresses.

 

My advice? Get a good spam filter.

 

THIS RIGHT HERE.

 

I run an email server and on any given day, if you peruse the server logs, you'd be shocked at how many dictionary attacks take place. It's easily over 75% of the load on my mail server.

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