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How spammers get your e-mail address

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By Suzanne Gaspar
Network World, 05/13/02

Spammers harvest e-mail addresses from:

  • Chat rooms, discussion forums, Web sites, portals.

  • AOL user profile lists.

  • Corporate Web site e-mail directories.

  • Internet white/yellow pages.

  • CD-ROM list purchases.

  • Trading and selling.

  • Pinging mail list servers to request mailing lists.

  • Extracting addresses from Web browsers via anonymous FTP or Java script.

  • Using an Ident daemon or Internet Relay Chat client.

  • Chain letters hoaxes that require a reply to get a free gift.

  • Headers that browsers send to the Web server visited.

  • Finger daemons that query for logon names of specific users on that host.

  • Guessing addresses, then monitoring for returned mail and errors.

  • Using software that auto-generates e-mail addresses (john@xyz.com, johna@xyz.com, johnb@xyz.com).

  • Modifying mail headers to request a delivery confirmation from the mail system or client.

  • Removing protective phrases added to e-mail addresses to avert harvesting.

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