junk email

[NutmegCT]

I notice that the dozens of junk emails I get are often addressed to long lists of users with the same email domain. The "to" field has several dozen addresses, all with the same info after the @ sign.

In my case, the addresses are all to the charter.net domain.

How does a junk mail sender get all those charter addresses?

They're not just randomly generated, as some are two initials and a surname, etc. And no random stuff like "abcdefg@charter.net" ever shows up in the address field.

Any ideas?

Thanks.
Tom

 

[JPSmit]

There is software that "harvests" email addresses from websites. For example, Basil has this website set up so the "@" shows up as a "picture" not a character. This is so that if one of these programs searches the forum, it will not recognize email addresses for what they are.

 

[Brooklands]

I used to get more junk mail to addresses that were on a website I run before I made the addresses links such as "Click Here". Now those emails get much less spam. I realized that the senders were just pulling all email addresses off of websites.

 

[NutmegCT]

Thanks for the info.

I knew about the harvesters, and the "addresses on web pages" problems. What puzzles me is that the incoming junk is to lists of addressees *all with the same domain name*.

The "to" field in one email shows almost 50 addresses - apparently valid names and nicknames - but they're all to the same domain.

If you harvest from the 'net, or scan pages for addresses, doesn't seem you'd only get addresses from one email domain.

And I sure don't think a "harvester" would decide to organize email by domain. Seems weird.

Edit: and on some of the emails, my address isn't even in the address list. Even weirder.

Tom

 

[DNK]

Junk e mail
They still do that?