[Technocrat]

@Mansi: I think the only solution you have is change your cell number as its already in circulation as for mails you can always delete the unsolicited mails. As others have said your id is not haced but instead its been floating in chain mail so all people have is the mail id.

[manaa45]

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

Once again you have made another error. By quoting your entire email address here, you have made sure that search bots will pick up your address and you will receive more spam.

When posting your email address always post it like this

sam(at)team-bhp.com for example and you will prevent the search bots from identifying it as an email address.

i will keep this in mind

but i have not received any spam or any email stating that something like this is in circulation.

for the time being i am just adopting a policy of wait and watch for next two days. Meanwhile i will buy a new no and keep my cell switched off for some days. it will be difficult but i will manage.

[manaa45]

i know this is an odd request but if anybody in this forum has received any email from my address mansi.udeshi(at)gmail.com kindly forward the same to me pleaseeeeeeee.

thks a lot

Mansi

[sids911]

I have seen quite a few incidences like these. Innocent people's email and phone nos. are spread like a wildfire in the pretext of something or the other.

The only solution is to keep a separate Email ID for newsgroups/site registrations and another one for personal use.

The phone nos. should ideally be not exposed to anyone in the public domain. Its just nuisance when u start getting mindless calls and texts.

For you, the only option with cell phone is to change the no. and follow a separate email ID for non-personal use rule.

Since u have already exposed an e-mail address, keep it for non-personal use and let your personal contacts know of your other new ID that u should create.

HTH

[vivekiny2k]

first of all, anybody making a call based on a mail that is "circulating" is a fool. you need to understand that these are people who do no have any other work and are real cyber lurkers.

since you do not want to miss your important calls, see if your provider has "bar anonymous calls" feature. it's quite a popular feature. the caller will get a message saying he can not connnect until he displays his own number. if somebody still calls up, tell them you can start legal proceedings against them.
in US there is another service which asks the caller to give out a passcode, before he can connect.

I won't worry about email since we get tonnes of spam anyway. if they have a common subject/content, set a rule to send an autoreply (if you want) saying don't waste your time etc, and trash it.

[manaa45]

Originally Posted by vivekiny2k

first of all, anybody making a call based on a mail that is "circulating" is a fool. you need to understand that these are people who do no have any other work and are real cyber lurkers.

since you do not want to miss your important calls, see if your provider has "bar anonymous calls" feature. it's quite a popular feature. the caller will get a message saying he can not connnect until he displays his own number. if somebody still calls up, tell them you can start legal proceedings against them.
in US there is another service which asks the caller to give out a passcode, before he can connect.

I won't worry about email since we get tonnes of spam anyway. if they have a common subject/content, set a rule to send an autoreply (if you want) saying don't waste your time etc, and trash it.

thanks a ton vivek, i think this is something i was looking for , i will try to spk to the cell phone company if they can help me do that.

even my gut feeling says that this is the same guy who might have messaged me in first place because he said that that email is circulating everywhere, how on earth did he know that it is circulating to other people too. i hope i am right here and this stops as fast as possible.

Mansi

[vivekiny2k]

here is an app that does it on handset (for symbian series 60 phones). i seem to have seen this feature on phones, but i can't find it on my own phone now.
Product Information
and
* MobiGenie: Free voice answering machine, SMS auto-reply, call locator utility for Nokia S60 v3*by*Tech[dot]Blog

[DriverR]

A a rule of thumb, always have a second mail id for all non-personal use. I have 2 mail ids in fact that I use for any registration purposes. My personal mail id is known only to friends. This way I get junk/spam mails on the other mail ID, but it makes no difference to me.

Secondly, as far as possible never give out your personal phone number. Very often when I have to register my personal details, I give my office details and contact number. This way I have an authentic valid details in cse of verfication and in case junk come in, it gets check by the office systems, whether networks or phone.

Yet, inspite of these I do have to give my personal details to my bank and such organizations. But at least I minimise the extent of junk communication I receive.

PS: I believe I read that in most cases of ID abuse, the culprit is known to the victim. In your case, keep checking with the cyber crime dept in case the origins can be traced out.

Sorry to hear of this happening to you and wishing you all the best in resolving this fast.

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by manaa45

i had, for a noble cause registered with a blood donation website and they put all my contact nos and everything on the website and it is clearly visible to all if anybody searches for my name in search engine.

Hi Mansi,

Can you please give us the link to this webpage?

I seem to remember a website sometime back (maybe it was even posted on TBHP and removed by the mods) that was something along the lines of either blood donation, or voting for president or something which made you put in your gmail account username AS WELL AS password!@ Then ofcourse, they can log into your gmail and forward marketing/spam mails to all your contacts from YOUR account.
I hope you didnt do something like this!

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

When posting your email address always post it like this

sam(at)team-bhp.com for example and you will prevent the search bots from identifying it as an email address.[/b]

Personally i dont even do the (at) business... IF i ever post my email address in public i give a secondary email address, or try to be a little more creative, because im pretty sure that there are bots out there that can figure out that sam[at]yeti.com == sam(at)yeti.com == sam@yeti.com.

But, the reason why i am quoting this post it to tell Manaa that in her TBHP profile, 2 email addresses are visible (to search engines, and bots).

However, spam filters these days are very good and even though i get 20 spam mails a day, they all end up in the junkmail folder, so i dont worry about it too much.

cya
R

ps - i would just get a new cell number.

[manaa45]

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Hi Mansi,

Can you please give us the link to this webpage?

I seem to remember a website sometime back (maybe it was even posted on TBHP and removed by the mods) that was something along the lines of either blood donation, or voting for president or something which made you put in your gmail account username AS WELL AS password!@ Then ofcourse, they can log into your gmail and forward marketing/spam mails to all your contacts from YOUR account.
I hope you didnt do something like this!.

i dont think i remember doing something like this. in fact they have already removed the content from their webpage but it still appears on google

Originally Posted by Rehaan

Personally i dont even do the (at) business... IF i ever post my email address in public i give a secondary email address, or try to be a little more creative, because im pretty sure that there are bots out there that can figure out that sam[at]yeti.com == sam(at)yeti.com == sam@yeti.com.

But, the reason why i am quoting this post it to tell Manaa that in her TBHP profile, 2 email addresses are visible (to search engines, and bots).

However, spam filters these days are very good and even though i get 20 spam mails a day, they all end up in the junkmail folder, so i dont worry about it too much.

even i am receiving spam only in the junk folder so this isnt a issue.

the only thig i am scared of is, there shouldnt be anymore obscene calls/messages. personally i feel that this s only done by one person and he is hell bent upon creating trouble for me. but i am sure if he does anything worse, i will surely approach the cyber crime cell of mumbai police. i had a word with them yesterday and they have already asked me to give a letter in writing.

i dont know why am i saying all this here but this is my way of venting out my frustration/anger etc.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

ps - i would just get a new cell number.

will try to work out something

Thanks a lot to all of u for the suggestions/help.

Mansi

[esteem_lover]

While registering yourself in a particular site, you are asked for a few personal details which also include an
username
etc etc
your email id
password.
This is purposely put to us in the above sequence. The password field should be the password that you want to give for this site & not the password for your email account. I am sure lots of people get conned into giving their email account passwords which result in a lot of spam.

[govigov]

Cant you contact the website owners (the blood donation group) and ask them to remove the information from that page?

How do I cancel my Gmail account?

You can delete your account using this, and open up a new email address

[carboy]

Originally Posted by govigov

You can delete your account using this, and open up a new email address

Why should she delete her google mail when it's not been compromised?

Originally Posted by esteem_lover

I am sure lots of people get conned into giving their email account passwords which result in a lot of spam.

Giving email acct passwds is really bad, but why would it result in
a lot of spam? Spammers don't really login to gmail/hotmail/yahoo
accounts to send spam.

Originally Posted by Sam Kapasi

When posting your email address always post it like this sam(at)team-bhp.com for example and you will prevent the search bots from identifying it as an email address.

when someone is writing a script to harvest email ids off webpages, how
difficult would it be to get the script to convert the (at) into @.
In perl this would be as simple as adding a line
s/\(at\)/@/g;
to the script.

Most harvesting scripts would surely convert the more common munging
techniques like using "(at)", "nospam" etc.

[dadu]

Its called open relay mail server, any spammer can use it for all kinds of false mails, it will jam up the bandwidth but can be blocked by registering that particular IP on the internet.

Usually most professional SMTP servers are configured not to relay mails like this and its mostly the personal SMTP servers which get caught unaware. But all this is for another thread.

Originally Posted by ajmat

Mails may be sent from another email account but will appear to be going from your account

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Guy, some spammer is using your email id in the "From" field.

When somebody calls claiming to have received mail from you , ask them the details of the mail, and patiently explain that you have not sent such mail, and the person who actually sent out the mail is trying to cheat the recipient (caller).