Spam e-mail by mining forum addresses?

John_Cline wrote on 12/16/2008, 4:53 PM
I just got a spam e-mail from "B FunK [rocksolooptnyo@gmail.com]" that starts, "Season's Greetings, Vegas/ACID gurus!" It has invited me to enter a contest using tracks from some heavy metal bass player named Rudy Sarzo. The e-mail claims that I can "win some totally amazing sh*t."

I'm kind of offended by the e-mail, it was just some text links and a few cheesy graphics. I can't imagine that Sony has sponsored this contest or this e-mail. I just wonder how he got my e-mail address? Did he mine it from the forum or did Sony actually provide him with a user list? Nowhere in the e-mail is Sony mentioned, it's just the ""Season's Greetings, Vegas/ACID gurus!" that leads me to believe that they somehow got my e-mail address through the forum or Sony somehow.

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 12/16/2008, 5:34 PM
I got the same email and wondered the same thing John.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/16/2008, 5:44 PM
Peter and John (sounds kind of apostolic),

The one thing that both of your SMS forum profiles have in common are links to your personal websites. Once there, I easily found links to email addresses for you both.

It would take a scripter about 10 minutes to write the code to follow the links on this forum and mine your email addresses. An individual doing by hand is also possible, but would require a lot of free time.

If I receive an email similar to the one you quoted, I'll know that my theory is wrong, since I don't have a website link in my profile.
farss wrote on 12/16/2008, 5:51 PM
I think your theory is wrong, I just got a copy and no website in my profile.
Not that I give a .... about it but some of the colorful prose in there is bound to offend someone.

Bob.
jrazz wrote on 12/16/2008, 6:01 PM
I think Spot or someone else brought this up either here or at CreativeCow. If it is the one I saw, you add your music to the bass track and submit it and you have a shot at winning. It is legit if it is indeed the same one- you have a link?

j razz
rs170a wrote on 12/16/2008, 6:32 PM
I got the same email too.
My suspicion is that the email addresses were mined from the SoCal Vegas users group.
Here are the links mentioned in the email to the contest.
Link 1
Link 2

Mike
Coursedesign wrote on 12/16/2008, 7:51 PM
You're right. The Subject starts "ATTN Vegas User Group" and I don't have a site link on this forum but still got this e-mail.

So was the list hacked, or did a group administrator make some money?

Steve Mann wrote on 12/16/2008, 9:58 PM
That had to have been mined from Yahoo because I received similar emails "from" every video and photography Yahoo group I belong to.