Posted by Jonathan on September 24, 2003, at 2:05:22
In reply to Re: Virus Warning, posted by stjames on September 22, 2003, at 11:47:46
>> I therefore believe there's a high risk that others here who have ever used the "include e-mail address with posts" option (which turns the "Jonathan" at the top of this post into a mailto link), or given their address in the body of a post (e.g. name@address.com), may receive the same Trojan in their email.
> I woulld say we are past this being a "risk" as this board is archived via many search engines.
> Thi this SOP for a spammer.You're right, of course, when you say that we're way past there being merely a "risk" of receiving spam if you post your email address here — any address posted on this site *will* receive spam.
In my experience, however, it takes several months to rise to an intolerable level. Some people may choose, as I have, to display a temporary email address on their posts and replace it with a new one every time the spam level becomes unacceptable; this seems to me like the best option until we have Babblemail — http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faq.html#babblemail
The risk to which I referred, however, was not a risk of spam in general, but of a specific email with an attachment which will do very nasty things to the operating system of any Windows machine on which it is run (and insecure Microsoft software may run it when the email arrives without consulting the machine's owner).
This email was probably sent to me because the Swen worm infected a machine on which my address was stored. I cannot be certain that *all* the addresses that have ever been posted here were stored on the same machine, so I stand by my decision to warn of "a high risk" rather than a certainty that others would receive it.
I'm sorry that my post failed to make it clear that this, not the wider risk of spam from any source, was the risk to which I was referring.
Jonathan.
poster:Jonathan
thread:262325
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20030808/msgs/262860.html