spammed by (way of) the FAA

[Kyler Laird]

I submitted a form for some information from the FAA awhile back.
As I recall, I received a response only by telephone.

Today I received some spam ("Cialis - No prescription needed!") to
the address I gave in that form. Tough to tell exactly what
happened but I'm curious if anyone else has noticed similar
activity.

--kyler

[Jon A]

Kyler;
If that was an address used specifically to communicate with the FAA
or a company they may have hired to collect survey data then probably
one of three things happened. 1. The company used to collect the
date sold your address, 2. the FAA sold your address, 3. someone's
database was hacked. In either case you should contact your
Congressman and Senator (of course in a separate correspondence from
your objection to the proposed ADIZ) and let them know what happened.
I think its deplorable to allow anyone to sell your data and these
things need to be stopped on a national level.


On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:17:02 GMT, Kyler Laird >
wrote:

>I submitted a form for some information from the FAA awhile back.
>As I recall, I received a response only by telephone.
>
>Today I received some spam ("Cialis - No prescription needed!") to
>the address I gave in that form. Tough to tell exactly what
>happened but I'm curious if anyone else has noticed similar
>activity.
>
>--kyler

[Chris Colohan]

Or 4: the address you chose was not that original, and a spammer using
the "combine all prefixes I can think of with all suffixes I can think
of" spamming technique managed to guess yours.

I just started a new job (at a large search company whose name starts
with "g" and ends in "oogle"), and got a new email account. I have
not gotten any spam yet, but I have gotten hundreds of bounce
messages, caused by spammers using my email address as a "from"
address in their spam. I presume spammers like to choose prefixes and
suffixes randomly from a list of harvested email addresses, and my
last name and my employer's name have both made it onto their lists.

Chris
===
Jon A > writes:

> Kyler;
> If that was an address used specifically to communicate with the FAA
> or a company they may have hired to collect survey data then probably
> one of three things happened. 1. The company used to collect the
> date sold your address, 2. the FAA sold your address, 3. someone's
> database was hacked. In either case you should contact your
> Congressman and Senator (of course in a separate correspondence from
> your objection to the proposed ADIZ) and let them know what happened.
> I think its deplorable to allow anyone to sell your data and these
> things need to be stopped on a national level.
>
>
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2005 04:17:02 GMT, Kyler Laird >
> wrote:
>
> >I submitted a form for some information from the FAA awhile back.
> >As I recall, I received a response only by telephone.
> >
> >Today I received some spam ("Cialis - No prescription needed!") to
> >the address I gave in that form. Tough to tell exactly what
> >happened but I'm curious if anyone else has noticed similar
> >activity.
> >
> >--kyler
>

--
Chris Colohan Email: PGP: finger
Web: www.colohan.com Phone: (412)268-4751

[Kyler Laird]

Chris Colohan > writes:

>Or 4: the address you chose was not that original, and a spammer using
>the "combine all prefixes I can think of with all suffixes I can think
>of" spamming technique managed to guess yours.

The chances of someone randomly picking my cryptographic signature for
"faa" on the first try is low enough that a person able to do it wouldn't
be messing around with spamming me.

--kyler