at one time. I had the same problem (unrelated to the hobby) where I was getting spammed at an e-mail address that couldn't possibly be given to anyone. I accused my ISP of snooping e-mail addresses and selling them to mailing lists. My ISP was SBC so I knew that was probably not the case.
Then I learned through an article in PC magazine that spammers have become increasingly sophisticated. Apparently they have programs which essentially take the English dictionary and list of proper names and combine them into infinite ways. They then test each e-mail address and for those that don't reject the message as "user not found" they add that address to their database. In other words, brute force the combination of names and words in order to come up with valid addresses. Hey, computing time is cheap.
So if your e-mail address contains proper names or English words, You may want to change it. So if your name was George Bush and you selected an e-mail address of [email protected], I can promise you they would find out your e-mail through random selection.
The one thing I found out that does work is to use a series of constants at the beginning or end of the e-mail. so [email protected] is a lot harder to spam because it does not conform to any dictionaries.
I received an email message from a local provider here in Las Vegas, with a TER profile. This email was in my InBox this morning of my personal email address, to which nobody but TER has. It included three suggetive photos and an invite to contact and her webpage link.
My ignorance fails me here, but how does this happen? What sources are out there that can get client lists off TER for such blast-mailing? I have never contacted this Provider either via phone or email. If I had it would have been PM through TER, but it was not. She is cute, with only 1 reveiw though.
I am wondering if anyone else got the mail also?
-- Modified on 7/27/2005 7:24:13 AM
It's on another computer. No can do. It's not who you might be thinking anyway Poker.
are you 100% positive you never gave the email address out in a board post? or emailed another provider from the same account? dare I say, perhaps a provider you've seen has shared your contact information with another provider friend of hers. by the way, if she only has 1 review, she's not yet established in the vegas market...IMHO. I personally wouldn't respond. Something just doesn't seem right.
NiceGuy
I was just wondering if anyone else got this kind of mail from the same chick. I have no intention of responding.
LOL, although I will keep follwoing her and see what happens with further reviews, etc. as we all do. LOL
one have seen in the past my have thought they were doing you a favor and passed your e mail address on ........ I can't see TER doing this .. their membership would drop like a rock ...
...respond, and ask, "hey, how did you get my email address?" It's not like she doesn't already have it, so you're not giving her anything new. I know this may sound like a unique and novel approach, but it might just work!! 
Smarty, let us know if you get a response to the question. My curiousity is killing me.
NiceGuy
at one time. I had the same problem (unrelated to the hobby) where I was getting spammed at an e-mail address that couldn't possibly be given to anyone. I accused my ISP of snooping e-mail addresses and selling them to mailing lists. My ISP was SBC so I knew that was probably not the case.
Then I learned through an article in PC magazine that spammers have become increasingly sophisticated. Apparently they have programs which essentially take the English dictionary and list of proper names and combine them into infinite ways. They then test each e-mail address and for those that don't reject the message as "user not found" they add that address to their database. In other words, brute force the combination of names and words in order to come up with valid addresses. Hey, computing time is cheap.
So if your e-mail address contains proper names or English words, You may want to change it. So if your name was George Bush and you selected an e-mail address of [email protected], I can promise you they would find out your e-mail through random selection.
The one thing I found out that does work is to use a series of constants at the beginning or end of the e-mail. so [email protected] is a lot harder to spam because it does not conform to any dictionaries.
is sometimes called email harvesting or fishing. This technique has been around for several years and is easy to identify (ISP standpoint) and block out the harvester. Another way is that they (the spammers) have programs that will scan through forums, message boards, and web pages looking for email addresses. Good news is that the forums on TER NEVER show your email address (unless you post it in the message).
One other way you email could have been compromised is that you gave a reference to another provider or agency and they in turn sold it off or it was stolen.
I doubt TER sold you email address. If that were the case, we would see a lot more complaints about this practice.
I have heard from 6 TER members who got this e-mail. But then all of us use e-mail to talk with other folks - so who knows -
I got it too, from the same girl