Hi All Being a security minded person I would like to bring to the attention of although that come here a problem that I feel is contributing to the proliferation of Spam viruses Trojans and other malware on the web to day in the hope that I can do something about it maybe educate a few of the less well informed Now I’m sure that you are wondering what I’m talking about what I’m talking about is CARBON COPY !!! Otherwise known as forwarding This I feel is a security problem because it allows unauthorized persons such as spamers virus writers Trojan writes etc to get a hold of your email address How you ask ?? Well have you ever received Spam email that has been forwarded to sevral people have you ever noticed how all the email addresses that have had that email forwarded them are listed on the email well that's how these people get your email coz each time the email is forwarded all thoughts email addresses are attached to the email to Scary though isn't it that some malware writer could have your email address that person or persons could be accessing your email stealing your sensitive information out your inbox or using it to spread Spam viruses Trojans and other forms of malware Now this may sound like fantasy but its happening right now as you are reading this Infact I have a list of some 3000 + email addresses from spam that has been forwarded to me and this is from just one or 2 spam emails imagin if i colected these adresses also imagin what I could do if I was able to brake in to all of thoughts account and start stealing sensitive information such as credit card numbers and passwords I could wreak all kinds of havoc Just think about it for a min and consider the consequences of your lazeyness before using carbon copy and forwarding things to all your friends because not only will all the recipients get your email address but they will also get the email addresses of everyone else that you forwarded to plus the addresses of everyone else that that mail has passed through and some people like me may not want everyone eles to have there email so just think If you must use carbon copy to forward email to people use blind carbon copy that way the recipient will only see your email addey and not the emails of everyone you forwarded to
Here is a bit more re spam to add to your post... To your advice you might want to add - when sending blind copies, mail a copy to yourself as "undisclosed recipent". You need to add your email addy in your address book and for name type "undisclosed recipent". You will get a copy of that email but when sent over the internet does not contain any email address to harvest. 1. If you have more than one email account, consider using one each for online shopping, Website and software registration, and newsgroup posting [discussion forums such as this one]. Spammers have automated software robots that scour every public internet message and web page, automatically locating and recording email addresses they find. These are the primary sources of spam, so at least your're now restricting the junk mail to one secondary mail account. Reserve a separate email account for person to person email. 2. Whenever you receive a piece of junk mail, choose Message/Block Sender from the Outlook Express toolbar. OE will no longer accept email from that sender. 3. When filling out forms or registering products online, always look for checkboxes requesting permission for the company to send you email or share your email addy with its "partners" - just say NO. 4. When posting messages in a newsgroup, insert the letters NOSPAM somewhere into the email addy you've specified in the dialog box. Anyone replying to you via email must manually remove the NOSPAM from your email address, which is a slight hassle; meanwhile, the spammers software robots [which are not very bright] will lift a bogus email addy from your posts. 5. Create message rules to filter out messages containing typical advertising words such as casino, guaranteed loan, viagra and so forth. 6. If you really have a spam problem, get a new email addy. Give it to people you trust, use the old addy only for junk mail, and check it for messages only infrequently. It works for me along with SpamAssassin which is provided by my ISP in their software. End result, I do not use Mailwasher or any other software to control spam ... touch wood!! Only time I ever get it is right after an ecard that is sent to me and the sender did not uncheck the little checked boxes which states that advertising is to be sent also thus subscribing me to junk mail. An area easily overlooked by senders of ecards. Cheers.
