Is MURC distributing its members' email adresses?

[ElDonAntonio]

I own a domain name, and the adress I entered when I signed up at MURC is murc@mydomain.com (mydomain being of course replaced by my real domain which I won't write here). This adress has been given to no other site or person, and never published elsewhere.

I got today this spam mail at that particular adress. Here's a copy paste of it:

From: Paypal-Randomizer
Subject: PayPal Information
Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 12:40:18 -0500
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - hosting.letterwealth.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [0 0] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - hosting.letterwealth.com
X-Status:
X-Keywords:


Paypal Users Read This!

Do you own a Paypal account?

Want to receive 'random' payments of $10 on it?
I'm sure by now you are confused, just as i was
visit the following link and read about it

You wont be sorry.

Within first 3 days i made over $150 from $10!

And you can too..

Click here for more information

Still confused?
Right heres how it works:
When you sign up you pay $10 to a member selected at random
then you are added into the list of random members
so anyone who signs up after you will possibly be paying you the $10
you will easily make your money back and more
since randomizers are pretty new no one is yet using them
so get on the random list before everyone else does then you
can make a fortune!


-----------
This is not spam,
You are receiving this email because you are signed up
to an opt-in e-zine and/or registered with a company
associated with us.
-----------

[Tjalfe]

I got that same email yesterday.. the day after I used paypal for the very first time .. coincidence?

[thop]

I think they send to all [random_up_to_8_characters]@yourdomain.com addresses. I got one on my eBay-only mail as well.

[ElDonAntonio]

It's very probably a coincidence. That's not the address I gave paypal.

[ElDonAntonio]

@thop: I don't think that's possible, I would have received a ton of their emails then (I receive everything @mydomain), but I just got it to murc@domain.com

[Admiral]

another thread on this subject

[ElDonAntonio]

thanks Admiral. I don't think it's a coincidence we all got the same spam mail.

[GNEP]

Did you all donate via Paypal recently to MURC?

[ElDonAntonio]

I didn't donate.

[dbdg]

I donated but if ElDonAntonio didn't it can't be that.

I did get it on two of my accounts, one hasn't been used for years but it is the address I registered with at the murc four years ago. Obviously the other address is one of my current accounts and the email in my profile here.

Can't see how the Murc could have been compromised, not a huge target in the great scheme of things and no official Murc dude would ever sell the addresses.

[thop]

I MURC was comprimised how should they know my eBay only address?

[10000th]

Actually i think ElDonAntonio is right! I remembered that i registered another account (the 10000th MURC user), and since MURC doesn't allow for two accounts on the same mail, i just used another. I entered my eBay address in the Lost Password form and MURC sent my the password for this account.

[thop]

Just to confirm that the guy above me is me

[gt40]

I got one of these right after I used my paypal account (unrelated to this site).

[Sasq]

Only two people have access to the mail list, and there is no mail list dump. I to got an email to my matroxusers account. No, I have not given anyone access to the mail list - nor have I ever extracted it (its burried in the db) while the forum software has a mass mail button, it still doesnt produce a list as such.

It may be possible to extract you email address from the email link page, but I have never tried.

It appears to be only coincidence. Murc refuses to have banners let alone selling user lists. And with the amount of spam Ant gets daily to his email account, He wouldn't even consider it for a nano-second.

Dan