Spark Scam email.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark Scam email.

PaulZA

314 posts

Ultimate Geek

#160065 22-Dec-2014 13:33

Hi guys

I'm well aware of the fact that Spark's Yahoo servers are heavily targeted by scammers, and spammers.

However, despite thousands being hit my email address has always never been effected till now, as I rarely use it to email people in NZ. I have several hotmail addresses, and even my Trademe is through hotmail.

Suddenly this afternoon, I checked my emails and I noted two viagra emails in my email address, not sent just to me but several @xtra email addressees.

How do they actually harvest the email addresses, as I never rarely email anyone with an @xtra.co.nz email address.

I wish Spark would ditch Yahoo, and go back to MSN, or Windows Live now.

Yahoo has actually give more Spark more headaches, then helpfulness.

With MSN, their spam filters were iron tight and we only got a few spam emails over a few weeks, which is light considering my father's email address has been high on spam lists since the early 2000s, and he still gets so many people offering him viagra, and when XtraMSN introduced their effective spam filter, 98% of the emails were trapped and deleted before they made it to his inbox, ever since Yahoo took over, spam has come through left right and center and, not only that scammers have actually been able to take control of people's accounts.

Abo

78 posts

Master Geek

#1202279 22-Dec-2014 18:30

It's been obvious from the past year that Spark don't care about their email platform and have no interest in sorting the issue.

It almost seems like they are trying to kill it off completely by leaving it in such a poor state that people have no choice but to move off it, the difficulty for them is pretty much the only people who would have an xtra address are the tech illiterate who don't know how to change.

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l43a2

1779 posts

Uber Geek

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#1203504 25-Dec-2014 01:35

i dont see how spark can fix the issue when they dont control it?

Abo

78 posts

Master Geek

#1204068 26-Dec-2014 15:22

l43a2: i dont see how spark can fix the issue when they dont control it?

there's a couple of things with one of them being about 5 minutes work which will stop 99% of the spam..

1. Add an spf record

2. Change provider

l43a2

1779 posts

Uber Geek

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#1204069 26-Dec-2014 15:23

changing providers would take awhile, and spark is under contract.

richms

27960 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#1204074 26-Dec-2014 15:56

The lack of SPF is IMO insane.

Richard rich.ms

PaulZA

314 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1204648 27-Dec-2014 21:15

seems like the bastards have gotten a list of the valid email addresses, and this is a recent hack as I only set my Telecom email account up within the last 4 months or so, way after the last major reported hack.

This isn't just a random dictionary list. All Xtra email addresses are in the CC box, and mine is a mixture of letters and numbers, so there's no way it can be guessed, or not easily.

muppet

2538 posts

Uber Geek

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#1204666 27-Dec-2014 22:22

I got a spam once.

Boy I was so upset.

I certainly did NOT just click "this is spam" and get over it. Oh no.

Still wake up in cold sweats.

It's like the time a Jehovah's Witness came to my door. No way they had my address in their book (I live down a lane around a corner next to a teapot) but still, they found me. Wasn't random. I didn't just close the door. Oh no. I rang the military.

Lazarui

136 posts

Master Geek

#1206141 30-Dec-2014 16:30

PaulZA: seems like the bastards have gotten a list of the valid email addresses, and this is a recent hack as I only set my Telecom email account up within the last 4 months or so, way after the last major reported hack.

This isn't just a random dictionary list. All Xtra email addresses are in the CC box, and mine is a mixture of letters and numbers, so there's no way it can be guessed, or not easily.

Hi!

What spammers do is a little more complicated than that, Spammers can buy blocks of email addresses harvested from compromised databases (This is not just yahoo's Database, in recent memory Sony, last.fm and a slew of others have been compromised).

Also your email address can be taken from other people who have emailed you/have your email in their address book and have had malware or their own email address compromised (too many username1 passwords out there trust me).

So turning around and going it's Xtra's, it's Yahoo's fault is not true, a lot of people get themselves 'hacked' is not always from yahoo/xtra themselves the majority is silly choices/wrong websites etc.