User ID tracking

[Neo]

Hi folks...

I am preparing for CCNA exam. And.. parallely.. i am working as Techie with a voluntary body whose job is to monitor the crackers, abusers etc.

We have a problem. Here it goes...

A person (named X) is being bombareded with abuses.. spam mails... n registered X's email id with pornographic sites. Mr. X approached us for a solution. He has is yahoo user id. Thats the only source with X.

Any suggestions.

[Info Tech Geek]

So, you have an individual who's e-mail address was used to sign up to adult websites and now he is getting all this porn spam? Has he tried to (unlist) and is there a filter to block all adult related topics on the server?

[moxnix]

The easiest solution to Mr.X's problem is to dump his present account, start a new account, and notifie the people he wants to know of the new account only.

Actually he should probably start 2 new accounts. One for his private and personal mail, and one to use to subscribe to web sites and give out to those he doesn't know enough to trust yet.

[Dhej]

I find it darn close to mandatory to have multiple accounts, one for actually person to person contact and another to catch all mailing-list/suscription/spam. My hotmail account is ONLY used for registering products, sites, demos, shareware..., then I have the account that I actually talk to people with. (Then I have one for webmaster, and one for business...).

I suppose it's possible to set up filters and such, but I like the physical seperation, particularly since my "dummy" account gets blasted with 40 to 50 junk emails a day (down from 100 to 200, I dunno what hotmail has done, but it has made a significant reduction).

I wouldn't bother trying to "unsubscribe" from spam/porn mailing etc..., that unsubscribe button has a tendancy to only make matter worse, those shady bastards have a tendency to make the "unsubscribe" link more of a confirmation of the existance of the account.

As moxnix said, give him a new account, but as you are in a business situation, it should only be used for business communications. Inform him that for personal email there exists many free email providers like yahoo, hotmail, etc and suggest to him that he might want to create the 2 accounts like moxnix suggested.

Unfortunately there isn't much way to track down the jerk that spam-bombed his account. Unless it was done behind your router and you still had the logs from when they did that and you felt like sifting throught the mounds of URLs to find the naughty bastard's IP so you could track it back to their work station (assuming that you don't have DHCP, but then I suppose that you could check the DHCP lease logs for the date of the URL access and track by MAC or something...)

Ok, I've started rambling, time to finish.

peace,
Dhej

[Tiger Shark]

Mox: Brilliant..... Utterly brilliant.....

I never understood why people get so "tied" to a throwaway account that is causing them problems.... It's the internet for god's sake.... It's the wild west in digital form..... Don't even close the account.... get a new one, the old one will fill up with trash, refuse any other mail and Yahoo will delete it for you...... Problem solved......