3 Sep
2003
3 Sep
'03
3:51 a.m.
Sometimes sysadmins like to keep old accounts that are getting a lot of
spam open so that they can train their anti-spam software's heuristics.
Alternately most mailserver configurations are set to blindly accept
anything to @theirdomain to keep spammers from guessing valid user
accounts.
----
---Wesley Widner
--
-
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Jerome H. Fine
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 8:51 AM
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: EBAY fraud alert
This is
"Zane H. Healy" wrote:
> This is a rather common scam that has been going
on for about a year
or
> so. It has spread to PayPal, and is one of the
rationalizations that
> ebay is using to force all users to change from email address IDs to
an
> alias. If Ebay is doing anything about these
scams, they are keeping
it
a secret.
eBay is forcing users to change from an email address to an alias? the first I've heard about it. I know they
won't let you get a new
account
and use your email address as they want to control
peoples ability to
reach
you. I've not seen anything that says that I have
to change mine to
an
alias. Personally I like that people are able to
easily find my email
address on eBay.
Jerome Fine replies:
I have a comment and a question!
I have an OLD e-mail address from an ISP that I cancelled 2 years ago.
It still seems to be active since I can send an e-mail to the address:
Jerome Fine <jhfine(a)idirect.com>
and it does not get rejected. I used that e-mail address with eBay when
I first signed up with eBay to request information and send in bids. Of
course, I can't pick up any e-mails that eBay sends, let alone the 30
spam
a day that I was receiving at the end, but my old e-mail address still
seems
to be acting as a bit bucket since I just sent a test message to it.
AND as far as eBay is concerned, my user id is still
<jhfine(a)idirect.com>
and I can still ask a question of a vendor by supplying:
user id: jhfine(a)idirect.com
password: xxxxxx
so, it must all still be working as far as eBay is concerned and eBay
still
accepts and allows an OLD user ID with an @ character.
Question: As far as the OLD ISP is concerned, is there any way that
a user can at least pick up e-mails that are still sent to that old
address
as long as the ISP is still accepting them?
Question: Is there anything as far as practice goes on the internet that
requires an ISP who accepts an e-mail (i.e. without rejecting it) to at
least forward that e-mail to the old original person even if that person
no longer has a paid for account?
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.