Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I think someone is targeting venomous snake dealers!
I have in the past 3 days recieved HUNDREDS of emails SUPPOSEDLY from various snake dealers. Some which I have done deals with, some I have not. Like J&SReptiles, some people off Venomousreptiles.org, and many many many others. The weird thing is they are able to USE these peoples email addys as thier own!? I dont know HOW they do this! They even sent me one from MYSELF!!!! The email subjects are usually "Email Conformation" or "Your Password" or Your email has been blocked" and a few others. They all have the same attatchment though, named "Our_Secret" DO NOT OPEN THIS! It is OBVIOUSLY a virus!
I am wondering how many other people here are having this same problem, and more so, WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS?!

I hope they get bored REALLY soon!
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Crazy ZooLady

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can we stop this terrible problem?!
all the messages are the same amount of kbs.
most of them seem to end in yahoo.com

thanks to all help!

Faking email addresses is pretty easy. It could you have some spyware on your machine gathering email addresses and faking them to trick you into replying. What ever you do, don't reply to any of them, don't email the people that appear to have sent them, and get yourself a virus/spyware check as soon as possible (or move to Linux) .

It's also quite possible that someone just sent a crawler through VR or KS to gather emails (yours and the dealers), but then I would probably be getting them too...

On second thought the email addr I use here and for VR is my yahoo account, and they do a pretty good job of catching spam, so maybe they ARE being sent to me...

I dont really know how to stop it. I have run my spyware. I use both Adaware and Mcafee. I am still getting it. For now, I've created another email addy. I just hope they get bored soon.
What makes it more difficult, is that they are sending it through the same name as people I am selling nad buying from and too.. So I cant just hit the junk mail button, or I wont get thier emails anymore!
Why are they doing this to us?!
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Crazy ZooLady

Yes, Me too but my earthlink spam filters are catching them all...
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Save a Rattlesnake...Skin a Sweetwater Resident!

Someone who exchanges emails with the same people you know got a virus. That virus used the email addresses found in their InBox to send out copies of itself.

There is really no way to deal with it aside from running Linux, getting a Mac, or setting up a proper spam filter with virus protection built in.