I've had a gmail setup for awhile now (good 3+ months) and haven't listed the address anywhere. Haven't had ANY mail to the account. I updated the CSC alumni directory around noon and BAM, 8 hours later, I get a bank scam email.

Does anybody have some good links/articles/research into stuff of this nature?

9/15/2005 8:10:15 PM

I installed Windows 2000 on a machine a couple weeks back and plugged it into the network without any updates or virus protection. I was getting Windows messenger ads in 10 minutes.

9/15/2005 8:12:39 PM

THE MAN is very powerful. He knows all.

9/15/2005 8:41:01 PM

^^ the network = resnet?

9/15/2005 9:06:51 PM

^ Any network. Try it if you're not behind a firewall. Plugging straight into a cable modem will do the trick.

9/15/2005 9:10:04 PM

http://www.bbcworld.com/content/clickonline_archive_14_2005.asp?pageid=665&co_pageid=3

This article and video demonstrates it.

Windows XP PC without any protection put on a network is INFECTED IN 8 (EIGHT) SECONDS.

There is a video of it as it happens, it is interesting.

9/15/2005 9:29:16 PM

Now that's very interesting.

9/15/2005 11:49:52 PM

for(string uid = "aaaaaaaa" to "zzzzzzzz" ) {
sendspam(uid . "@gmail.com");
}

9/16/2005 12:15:53 AM

every reply in this thread has absolutely nothing to do with the topic.

Perlith its probably done with web crawlers like google that constantly parse and cache public pages, looking for email formatted strings

[Edited on September 16, 2005 at 2:39 AM. Reason : s]

9/16/2005 2:38:19 AM

BotNET!

9/17/2005 2:07:22 PM

i dont get popups and get nearly no junk mail at all. if i do its like once a week from musiciansfriend..and i say "junk" but its something i signed up for.

9/17/2005 11:57:41 PM

I remember when I discovered the fun of worms... I put my Win2K terminal server on a WAN address and it ran for a few months without a problem... then it started shitting itself, as well as all of the computers on my LAN... I was like WHAT THE FUCK until I googled the "blahblah service Windows will shut down in 60 seconds." message, then I was like MOTHER FUCK.

9/18/2005 12:23:56 AM

I've made sure to keep my gmail fairly secret and I've managed to have a grand total of like 4 spam emails over the course of almost a year

9/18/2005 3:36:02 AM