…oh so clever little ruse.
Like a number of folk round this here interweb I got a bunch of spam yesterday from info@worldswidedomainname.com about “Notice Regarding Your DOMAIN NAME” where they claim to have partnered up with the hosting company LunarPages, when in reality the partnership is no more than someone who has signed up to the LunarPages affiliate scheme and is trying to get the reader to click on an affiliate link – much like the LunarPages links I’ve just put up 
.
OK just another bit of standard spam, like everyone gets every day in abundance but then today I’ve got a ton of replies/redirects/bounces to this mail in my inbox. Why? I never sent it, it’s got nowt to do with me why the bloody hell am I getting stick for it.
It’s because one of my email addresses is in the mail as the reply to address – the bastard. Looks like the sender has scraped the whois database for some nice addresses, so I’m getting angry mails telling me not to spam them or asking why I am.
Thankfully the spammers hosting company have shut down the site and LunarPages – there’s that link again – have terminated his affiliate account.
Skillet and Dynamoo’s Blog (part I, part II) have some more details, including the full original spam mail.
One thing is I was going to change the email I used for my domains this will get my arse finally into gear.
UEFA Cup Final 2007 - Espanyol v Sevilla
Thanks for the link, this certainly seems a time to educate people to use different email addresses for different things! That way you can shut it off if you need to for a period of time
1Yes it is handy to have different emails so you know where it’s coming from and can shut it down, only problem is you then end up with half a ton of them.
2Quite right…
I just have lots of forwarders into two accounts – then I can “burn” one if it’s gets spammed too badly or sold…
My wife just looks at me when filling in forms – “Which address shall I put?” I’m sure people think I’ve got several houses!!!
3I’m glad you blogged about it! I have been getting all kinds of RE’s about it and I can’t see my own address anywhere. They are all sent to info@worldswidedomainname.com. I was beginning to think my email had been hacked into somehow. A funny post would be a collection of all the comments people make in their replies. I have read more foul language over the last 2 days to last me a lifetime.
4They are still sending these out: Here’s a copy of the newest one I just received (feel free to edit out the links) admin@thirdearth.net,
Thank you for contacting us. This is an automated response sent to you in order to confirm the receipt of your message. We will attend to your ticket as soon as possible. We’ve listed the details of the ticket you created below for your records. When replying, please keep the ticket’s ID in the subject to ensure that your replies are tracked correctly.
Ticket ID: MFD-609259
Subject: ??:Thank You For Your Reply
Department: Support | Trans-IX B.V.
Priority: High
Status: Open
You can check the status of or reply to this ticket online at: http://support.trans-ix.nl/
Kind Regards,
Trans-IX B.V.
5the only problem is that mine is a business email account. It has been hell getting tons of pissed off emails every day. Sightly amusing but this guy needs to rot in hell.
6I am also receiving these spam messages. What a pain. It’s interesting though, to google the email address of the distribution list and see the variety of people that are being affected.
7Yeah it’s a bit of a pisser if your main important email address gets caught up in this, easy if it’s one you can bin – of course I binned my whois address and the got a phishing expedition saying my whois details were wrong.
I wonder how many people are now on spam blacklists now.
8