I receive e-mail offers for Viagra & weight loss prescriptions, mortgage refinancing, and girls who want to please me, at least a half-dozen or twice that every day. We all do, I know.
Normally, I just delete them without opening them. But I opened a few to see where they were coming from -- and was surprised to see where they were going to.
Every single one was addressed to (someone)@aol.com! Every "CC," every "To" was to an AOL member! And that was the case in every single spam letter I opened, not just one! Some were sent to a whole bunch of "LRoth***" with different numbers, so it was clear that they literally went down the list alphabetically.
After getting over the shock of how many "me's" there are on aol -- and after opening several more spam mails -- it is apparent that spammers are simply capturing the directory list of all aol members. I am sure they are doing the same for other ISP's.
I sent a message to AOL about this, asking why they couldn't make the AOL member list unpublished. Not only can you open to any name, but you can see who is on line at the moment. They could stop all of the spamming if they would un-publish the member directory.
Needless to say, "no response" from AOL. They must make tons of money by keeping the member directory public.
[ 04-24-2003, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: LR827 ]
