Another EBay spoof -- watch out for this one.

[OkeeDon]

I just received an Email from "EBay@reply.ebay.com" (don't send anything there), all dressed up to look like an anniversary card, saying, "Congratulations! It's your Ebay anniverary, OkeeDon!" They wanted me to click through to see what EBay was going to do for me for my anniversary. They even had a link at the bottom, supposedly to explain Ebay's spoof policy!

The problem is, they had a different Email address than the one I use at Ebay, and they used OkeeDon as a salutation, and that's not my Ebay user name -- it's my user name here at TBN, and nowhere else! The Email they used was the one I use here (and several other places, but nowhere else do I use OkeeDon). Obviously, they've done some data mining here at TBN (which is not TBN's fault or problem -- they data mine pretty much anywhere they want), and I would expect many of you to receive the same fake. Watch out!

I forwarded it to "spoof@ebay.com" per the instructions at EBay's securty center.

 

[Junkman]

Just did a Google search for "OkeeDon" and you have 10 pages. I don't dare see what they have on me!!! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[DaveNay]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Just did a Google search for "OkeeDon" and you have 10 pages)</font>

Odd......I did the same search "okeedon" on Google, and I got 100 pages, but 97 of them were "omitted" by Google. The other three were for TBN and CBN.

Dave

 

[OkeeDon]

Wow. I did check Junkman. Because your name is used for so many references, it took going to page 6 to find your TBN profile. Then, a couple of pages later, a reference from a TBN post. That one offered "more results from TBN", so I clicked that, and there were 14 pages with typical results. I clicked on "no pages omitted" (paraphrase), and there were 342 pages of references from TBN that mention Junkman! At 10 per page, that's 3,420! Scary. Of course, you don't have your email in your profile...

 

[rozett]

Don, they may have mined it from the LA Classic Chevy website's guestbook. AltaVista shows that you've signed in there on 6/17/02.

 

[OkeeDon]

Gotta be another OkeeDon, then -- I've never been there, never sign a guestbook anywhere (except my own on my home site), and hate Chevy's.

Just checked, found it! Another guy from Okeechobee named Don (different last name) uses OkeeDon@(a popular microsoft webmail site).com as his email.

Besides, that guestbook plays music in the background, and that would have been reason enough to chase me away... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[TerryinMD]

Ack!!! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

I did a Google search on TerryinMD and the first thing that popped up was my profile on TractorByNet. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

Hmmmm..... Is there anyway of preventing profiles from being mined? Okay, braintrust and gurus.... what to do?

Kinda scary... but then again, I put the stuff out there and the Web is a source of information easily accessed by anyone with a 'puter.

Terry

 

[Junkman]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Gotta be another OkeeDon, then -- I've never been there, never sign a guestbook anywhere (except my own on my home site), and hate Chevy's.....................
... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif )</font>

I used to think that you were an OK kinda guy, being from MA and such, but this comment just can't be ignored! /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Muhammad]

<font color="blue">Hmmmm..... Is there anyway of preventing profiles from being mined? Okay, braintrust and gurus.... what to do?</font>

Yes. We can restrict profiles to registered users only---this will take a little time, but it's the only fail-safe method since spiders won't be able to login to the forum and gain access to profiles.

That said, the current method we use should prevent most profiles from being spidered by bots searching for addresses. However, when it comes to harvesting e-mail addresses, they are pretty clever.

In response to OkeeDon, I just did a search on Google for your e-mail address, and got these results.

While your e-mail address may have been spidered from TBN, it is more likely that it was picked up from the www.hornerfamily.com site, where it's listed twice. The reason it's more likely that it was harvested from there is that those two pages are static HTML, whereas ours are dynamic php pages, which are generally ignored by most search engines (with obvious exceptions).

In the end, the only way to completely prevent e-mail address harvesting is to never give your address out. All it takes is getting on one list and after that it's a chain reaction.

 

[Hambone]

WOW.