Can I tell if my address book has been compromised?

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  1. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
    Thread Starter
       #11

    UsernameIssues said:
    I'm going to jump in here with two stories:

    The first story is pretty much as you mentioned. A Verizon account that was not used (forced on the user by Verizon as an ISP). The person that I support wanted to move away from Yahoo. They asked about the wisdom of using their Verizon e-mail address/account. The inbox for that account was pretty much empty - just some junk mail from Verizon.

    Since I had read in Verizon's forums about waves of sudden spam, I told them about that and several other negatives about using their Verizon e-mail account. As a test, I sent them one single e-mail from a newly create Yahoo account. Within 24 hours that Verizon inbox was getting spam for all sorts of stuff (which we did not delete). Within a week, the inbox was full.

    Was this Yahoo's issue? Did the e-mail flow thru a compromised server?


    The second story is a bit different. It is my Verizon e-mail account. Just like the first story, the inbox was relatively empty - just some junk mail from Verizon. Then I used the account for the first time to sign up for a forum. I used the Verizon e-mail account mainly to see if I would start getting spam like the person in the first story. Yep, the spam started that same day as the first use. But it was not as bad as in the first story - it took months to fill the inbox.

    As a test, I informed the forum's admin about the spam and I asked if I could create a second forum account using a Hotmail e-mail address. The admin was fine with that. There was no spam sent to that Hotmail account.

    I created some other e-mail aliases for my Verizon account and just let them sit. They stayed empty... not even junk mail from Verizon. I'm at a loss as to how/why this stuff happens - and frankly, I don't care to dig into it. Verizon is not that great at helping their customers with such things.
    That is interesting. I suspect that it could have something to do with the ISP's spam filtering system, as well as the user's filters. I use Comcast for business email accounts and Comcast seems to be fairly aggressive in filtering spam. I do not recall if that was a setting I chose long ago, or it is automatic. But other than spam from known offenders - sites I have bought something from - I get nothing.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 6,292
    Windows 7 64 Bit Home Premium SP1
    Thread Starter
       #12
      My Computer


 
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