E-mail Problem Within the Forums

[Cleanup]

Recently started, many forum members have been receiving random emails from random people within the forums.

These emails have not been written by the original email address-holder.

It is somewhat like the Klez.E e-mail virus, only the emails seem to be being received and sent from and to only members of the Winamp Forums.

This is bugging the hell out of many people, and I advise you - if you are receiving many random emails - to get a new email account, but do not tell anyone in the forum about it.

I have received emails from a few people I know, some of them being:

Atmo The Freak
Nova3D
Dimichan

Request: I would like to crosspost this, as it's affecting everyone. If that is alright, please reply here, moderators/administrators.

Your thoughts are welcome. An 'Announcement' post or 'Sticky' would be appreciated as well, in all the forums.

[dam]

Wonder why I havent got any mails.

[Mr Jones]

I get 60 or so of these a day, to say they only come from forum members is wrong, I get maybe 2 or 3 like that, the rest are from unknowns.

As I have said previously in many threads of this nature it is coming from infected machines that have cached Winamp pages stored on their hard drives, the mail addresses are harvested from those pages and used to "fake" the mail headers.

If you want to stop it, simply change your email address on your skins/plugins account, it'll dry up eventually.

If you do that however your never gonna get any fan mail, and you'll be fucked if you forget your password for your skin account, as you won't be able to request it to be sent to your mail address as you will have changed it for something fake.

It should be noted that this effects any site that displays your mail box, as I am getting the same viruses sent to me at a mailbox that I only use over at 1001.

Failing that , adjust your mail filters in your software to filter out the crap.

[Cleanup]

I won't forget my password, but we won't be able to be notified if our skins/plugins have been published or not. I suppose we'll just have to check over and over.

Thanks, MJ. I'll change my email address to one of my old, deserted ones.

[Mr Jones]

That's the real pisser isn't it, and also the inherent problem with publishing your mail address on something that could get viewed 1000's of times each day.

My advice, never publish a mail box that you want to use on a regular basis for personal use, if you want a mailbox for shit like this, get something that you can filter well. Sadly don't have an answer for you on that one.

I'll just stress this again though, it's not a Winamp site problem. Example...

My skin site, has a mailbox address on the front page, that is used no where else except that one page, it's burried right at the bottom in small small print, now as my site gets about 8000 hits a week or so, I've yet to have one email from that contact point asking anything about my site or work on it, however I have had virus infected crap sent to it, simply because someone silly infected fucknut in poland, where most of these viruses originate, visited the site and cached the page.

If it makes you feel any better, Justin is getting similar crap sent to him, by virtue of his mailbox being published on winamp.com plug in's section...
http://www.winamp.com/team/finger.jhtml?who=Justin

Right I'm off for beer, food and women, who wants to come?

[dimichan]

Yeah, right after I said I wasn't getting anything from forum people, it started, though the vast majority are random people I've never heard of... and supposedly I tried to send out something on chlorophyll? Err, I can guarantee not... So to anyone who's gotten anything from "me", sorry!!! I didn't do it, I swear! I'll probably just put up with it for now since I really don't want to change my email addy, it's my alternate for when my mail server dies or I'm out of town as well -_-

Ok, count me in for the beer and food, but err... you can have my share of the women; just provide a few good men and I'll be happy...

[Nini]

i have already 3 mailboxes!



Can you tell me, btw, why I'm not getting any forum notifications anymore? I still have allowed that, just checked my profile. But since yesterday, when the forums worked again, i'm not getting them anymore?!

[Mr Jones]

Forums mailer is borked, along with the forum clock, a result of the system being locked out this week, being dealt with by admins as we speak.

[Forevever]

I've been trying to get the word out about this for several months now. At one point I was getting approximately 15 emails an hour, with about 2% of those emails being from people telling me I sent them a virus.

I've been forced to block all outgoing and incoming file attachments and my incoming email has dropped dramatically. Now I'm only getting about 25 emails a day that are garbage, and every other day or so I get one from someone saying I sent them garbage.

Its a shame it had to come down to me blocking. I expect it'll get better though, it always improves. Then something else will come along to irk us

[Nini]

now this is good news!

[Atmo]

It's actually getting worse for me...20 an hour and rising. Hotmail has a 2mb account size limit so after an hour away from the net my inbox is blocked.

Have a few different adresses i use for personal stuff but i occasionly get important emails to that account...

[Nini]

use yahoo

i have noticed that you still can get mails with it, despite the

big red warning "you are using 7.0 mb, blah, blah"

[J. Burnaway]

I just started a thread about this and right after I posted it, I see this one pop up near the top. I guess that answers my question about if other people are having the same problem. Thank goodness I use yahoo for my address for this stuff.

Beer - ok
Food - yup
Women - hmm, my wife might not like that...

[Reanimation]

Am i the lucky guy? I've only had 2 so far... hope it stays that way

[lisaanddaz]

I have between five and ten infected e-mails a day and it is getting tedious, norton anti virus kicks in all the time but it can take ages to get all of the mail while i am browsing, and before i got norton i was seriously infected with the w32.klez.e@mm which wiped out all of my important files. PSP.exe, photoshop, and even outlook express. This is a real problem and a real pain in the ass. I havn't recieved any of this crap from winamp users only anonomous poeple who are infected and unknowing. Hopefully it will stop soon.

[ripe]

lisaanddaz, change your skin profile e-mail to a web-based account (yahoo, hotmail, etc.). that way you don't have to wait while your new mail downloads to your machine. it will be waiting on-line for you instead

i get a lot of junk e-mail including many from addresses i recognise as skin authors. i'm just about managing to keep my hotmail skin account afloat. i got 33 attachments today
i've found it helps if you set it to automatically delete all junk mail, otherwise your junk mail will count towards your limit. but as far as i can tell with hotmail, it is not possible to block all messages that contain attachments.
i do have a yahoo account, but i really don't wanna switch my skin e-mail again (i've switched twice already). i have enough friggin accounts to keep track of as it is.

also, i'm receiving a few e-mails at an address that is only published at afterdawn.com.

[Cleanup]

I don't have junk mail. I just get the random messages.

Here's a little evil plot Hotmail had, has, and always will have:

When getting a new Hotmail/MSN e-mail account, don't set up the junk mail filter. Why? Because! This is how Hotmail tracks you. Hotmail keeps lists of whoever turns their junkmail filters on. Then they distribute these lists to induviduals and advertiseing companies. The higher your level of 'filtering' , the more junkmail you get.

I discovered this when I forgot to turn my junk mail filter on. I haven't gotten a single piece of junk mail ever - except for weird fwd's from my friends.

[ripe]

Originally posted by Cleanup
Here's a little evil plot Hotmail had, has, and always will have:

When getting a new Hotmail/MSN e-mail account, don't set up the junk mail filter. Why? Because! This is how Hotmail tracks you. Hotmail keeps lists of whoever turns their junkmail filters on. Then they distribute these lists to induviduals and advertiseing companies. The higher your level of 'filtering' , the more junkmail you get.

i don't get it, that doesn't make any sense what's the use in advertising to people who filter the adverts straight into the bin?

very few spam mails actually get thru on my hotmail account. i mostly just get infected viral e-mail.

[Ch33zels]

i never get email viruses...... i must be lucky

[Cleanup]

Originally posted by ripe

i don't get it, that doesn't make any sense what's the use in advertising to people who filter the adverts straight into the bin?

very few spam mails actually get thru on my hotmail account. i mostly just get infected viral e-mail.

Not everything is filtered to the Junk Mail Bin. A fair portion of your junk mail ends up in your Inbox. Even if it's in your Junk Mail it's annoying.

[Atmo]

My junk gets deleted instantly.

And im gonna have to set up my account so that it only gets emails exclusively from a list.

Sux, but there doesnt seem to be any other way.

[StillWater]

In my case, it seems to have very little to do with the forums and everything to do with my skin being published on winamp.com. I've had skins on 1001 for a couple of months, and I've never had these sort of e-mails in my life. When my 1st skin got published on winamp.com, I started getting these e-mails - they began practically the same day as my first skin being published, and have been coming in a steady stream ever since. More and more, and just beginning to get a few from forum people.

So, what I'm saying is that your e-mail address on winamp.com is a large culprit in all of this (in my case, seemingly the sole culprit). So I strongly suggest that you take Mr. Jones' advice and change the e-mail in your winamp.com account. However, I'm not going to give a fake account, but actually create a new one, so I can check it occasionally if I want. Put your real e-mail in your readme.txt. If someone really wants to send you mail about your skin, then chances are they're going to check your readme.txt. If they haven't even bothered tp check to see what you had to say about the skin, then their comments are likely to be brief and not that important anyway. If they really have something to say to you, I'm sure they'll read the readme.txt.

[Atmo]

I'm yet to get any decent comments via email. And changing adresses would just mean that account would get the infected emails instead.

I think setting it to exclusive would be best for me anyways.

[dude883]

also don't receive any forum notifications anymore. never gotten any mails from the forum members, just the usual spam s*** that fills up my email account and makes me check my mailbox every 2 days

[Atmo]

Email notification seems to be working for me anyways....

Only had 264 new emails waiting for me this morning...

[skinme!]

I think Cleanup's right - I just got a new hotmail account a while ago (no address changes coz well I have a forwarding account you all know and love). I didn't turn on junk filter and haven't had any. But before when I had it on exclusive (only allow emails form those in my address book) I got billions sent into my junk mail box. Also, cheekily, junk mail box counts towards your size limit. And now I get emails every week asking me to pay for the shitty service!

Oh well.

[Forevever]

I don't think its evil. I think its a pretty good idea. Most Hotmail users are taking advantage of the 2 free megs of space. I would place bets on less than 10% of their customers are actually paying for a Hotmail account. They have to advertise. They have to make money somehow. The best and less likely to piss people off way is to sell the email addresses of people that use their service. They target the people who block junk mail because its easier to send them a lot of email and having the majority of it go into a specially set up folder in attempts to keep that person from getting suspicious. I'm not sure if that makes sense the way I explained it, but somewhere in my head its logical

[Cleanup]

I did what MJ said, but I'm still getting bits of random emails from random people. I'm not sure what other sites I signed up with, just my .NET sites. But those don't actually display my email addresses publicly. Wonder what's going on now?

[Nini]

better don't use hotmail

i read several times that they put your data automatically in this microsoft database - i'm not sure what it was about, something with the microsoft net strategy, you have surely read about it-

and i'm sure i don't want to be in there
2mb aren't much, too

[Spectrus_Wolfus]

don't know about that htmail junkbox thing i have a few hotmail accounts about12 at last count heheanbd mostly i use them to put at sites that need an email addy b4 you can go any further and you need the email so as to put in a password that they post to you.i know that starts the ball rolling for junk mail b8ut as soon as i open an account i import my address book and set it up and then set them to exclusive.
the junk mail doesn't start till i start using the addy for the above mentioned reason untill then i get none.
i got 2 hotmail accounts i been using for normal stuff both set to exclusive and have gotten about 10 junk emails in 2 months

[StillWater]

Originally posted by Atmo The Freak
And changing adresses would just mean that account would get the infected emails instead.

Atmo, that's the whole point! the idea is that your normal email account won't get them. You will still have the option of being contactable by people or by nullsoft, but you won't have to deal with this virus crap during your normal everyday emailing.

[_Blackdog_]

i changed my email and i still get shit at my old one. maybe not as much though.