Keyserver spam example

David Shaw dshaw at jabberwocky.com
Thu Jun 10 16:56:28 CEST 2010


> On Thursday 10 June 2010 16:00:18 David Shaw wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>> 
>> Periodically there is a discussion on this list about whether having your
>> key on a keyserver will result in more spam.  My feeling on this is that
>> you might get more spam, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the
>> usual onslaught that streams in daily.
>> 
>> That being said, I just got my first piece of spam that was definitely
>> caused by presence on a keyserver:
>> 
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>> From: "Stephen Lee" <stephenhka at ymail.com>
>>> Date: May 26, 2010 2:17:27 AM EDT
>>> To: dshaw at jabberwocky.com
>>> Subject: enquiry : wwwkeys.ch.pgp.net:11371
>>> Reply-To: "Stephen Lee" <stephenhka at ymail.com>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> We found your contact Email address from wwwkeys.ch.pgp.net:11371
>>> My name is Stephen and I come from China, Hong Kong.
>> 
>> (spam contents snipped - it goes on to offer to sell me LCD screens for my
>> "retail store, shop, boutique or any public area")

On Jun 10, 2010, at 10:35 AM, Joke de Buhr wrote:

> I've never gotten any keyserver related spam so far and my public keys with a 
> valid mail address were published year ago.
> 
> I think it's more likely you will get spam because you are posting to a 
> mailing list which does have a html archive (liks this one).

Please read the spam I quoted above:  "We found your contact Email address from wwwkeys.ch.pgp.net:11371".

When the spammer takes the time to tell me he crawled my address from a keyserver, and is even kind enough to tell me which one, I'm inclined to believe him.

David




More information about the Gnupg-users mailing list