I've seen similar things now "from" other organizations, such as banks. (ones I don't even have accounts for, but the messages are just mass E-mailed, hoping they'll hit some targets). It's really too bad this has happened to E-mail. Almost every message now has to be treated as "guilty until proven innocent". Sometimes I think it's time to throw in the towel on E-mail as a form of communication. Oh well. - Bob -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy Sent: Friday, August 29, 2003 3:05 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: EBAY fraud alert The scum have been doing this for months. The eBay ones are the most common, I've lost track of how many I've gotten. The PayPal ones so far are far less common, I've only gotten one or two of them. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

eBay is forcing users to change from an email address to an alias? This is 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. Zane

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.

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 or an it This is account reach an 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.