I got my first spam message at my beautiful new Gmail account tonight. It was horrible. It picked it out as spam and all but it’s got me worried, so here’s my question:
Now that I’ve had one spam message break through, has that cleared the way for an ever-increasing flow of spam or will I most likely continue to get just one every few weeks/months?
I really hate spam.
Thanks,
Andrew
That’s hard to say. Depends on how aggressive that particular spammer is.
You may have been the victim of a dictionary attack. The spammers will take a list of common words and names and try to construct email addresses at random. Some of the combinations will be valid email address and most others will not be. Your gmail address is susceptible to a dictionary attack because it’s just a first name and last name. Putting in some random numbers or other randomness in the email address will make the address less vulnerable to dictionary attacks. For example, “carter.andrew.843” would be less vulnerable to a dictionary attack than “carter.andrew”.
Someone in another newsgroup that I follow just mentioned that they just got a spam on their gmail account. They had kept that address private so it wasn’t known beyond a few friends. Yet they still got a spam. It probably was a dictionary attack.
I’ve got a hotmail account that has received zero spam. The address is a short word and then a five digit number. I’ve used that address to register for forums and other miscellaneous things.
I’ve got another hotmail address that is also a short word and a five digit number and it gets spam. I’ve used that address more in the open. It’s been used as the reply address for newsgroup posts, the registration address for various web sites, the registration address for promotions, etc.
You could try a service like Sneakemail.com that hides your real email address. If you’re signing up for something like a contest or web site you can give out your sneakemail address. If you start getting spam on your sneakemail address you can change the address or put in a filter.
No one will ever guess tim.braun muhahahaha and its my name, more with the muhahahaha.
well it shouldn’t be because of our site hopefully, i just put on that hide email thing. Plus I don’t have any spam, i guess it is the dictionary attack, sorry to hear that, i know how much you love that account .
