[SC-Help] Re: Daughters email account being attacked: Best action?

[Mike Easter]

Mike Easter wrote:

> If she suddenly started getting a lot more spam of a wide and diverse
> nature so that she is now getting 500 spams in a much shorter time
> than she did prior to becoming a spamcop reporter, it is more likely
> that she has begun to report spam in an insecure manner, discussed
> below, and as a consequence of the insecure spam handling she has
> gotten herself onto many more spam lists.

The topic of spamcop reporters getting more spam after becoming
reporters has been discussed before, where the sense of the reporter's
increase is that it isn't just due to the progressively increasing
nature of a given address which is getting spam to get more and more
spam as time goes on.

A new spamcop reporter might handle their spam insecurely -- just like a
non-reporter might handle their spam insecurely, but some people begin
to handle more spam insecurely as a consequence of becoming a reporter.
Whereas a non-reporter might handle very little spam insecurely because
they delete all or almost all of it unopened, some reporters open all
the spam they are receiving and now reporting insecurely and online.

This insecure reporting 'telegraphs' the information to spam generators
via web bugs that a particular address is both receiving and opening its
spam -- and such an address is more valuable.  That address may go onto
more spam lists than before and consequently get more spam than before.

A spam reporter should not be handling spam insecurely in the course of
reporting it.



-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin