Joe Wein
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Addressbook spam

I sometimes receive requests to update or register personal details for someone who has our email address in some kind of electronic address book. I never comply with such requests and sometimes I get outright annoyed because the spam is sent in the name of people I've never heard of.

People's personal address books hold a lot of information of value to spammers and telemarketeers. Be sure to read the small print before you sign away your privacy. Ask the person who supposedly sent you an invitation or update request whether they did that and why.

tenspot.com spam
I received the following spam from the tenspot.com mail server using a sender address of someone whose name I'm not familiar with. If you sign up with this service, you basically agree to indefinitely receive spam. You're giving away your email address and phone number for something of doubtful value. I object to the way the company makes it appear as the message was sent by that person, when really it was automatically generated by their own servers.

From: "Firstname Lastname" <emailaddress>
To: <joewein@pobox.com>
Sent: Saturday, 30 April, 2005 14:56
Subject: Firstname Lastname has sent you an invite!

Hey, go here and we can both win ten million dollars!

Firstname


Firstname Lastname

has invited you to :

Win $10,000,000.00!

Click
Here!

TenSpot
It pays to have friends.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This invitation was sent on member request by TenSpot, 110 Pacific Avenue Mall, Box 131, San Francisco, CA 94111-1900.
Manage your Mail Preferences: http://www.tenspot.com/mail_preferences.html

Articles about tenspot.com:

Ringo.com spam
A father reported to us that he received the following invitation that was supposedly sent by his son. The son had not sent or authorized this and was actually sitting next to father working on a school project at the time:

From: Sonfirstname Lastname <sonsemailaddress>
To: fatheremailaddress
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 9:23 AM
Subject: Please help me update my address book on Ringo


stay in touch
ringo



Add yourself to Sonsfirstname's address book!
Open your invitation

This invitation was sent to fatheremailaddress on behalf of Sonsfirstname Lastname (sonsemailaddress)

If you do not wish to receive invitations from this Ringo member, click here. To stop receiving invitations from all Ringo members, click here.
The father clicked the option to stop receiving invitations from all Ringo members. Despite this he then received a Ringo-invitation from his daughter.

bebo.com spam

Bebo.com shares the same postal address with Ringo.com and does something very similar. Read the following article:

plaxo.com spam
This is another address manager. I receive a lot of unwanted Plaxo notifications and never respond to them.

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