| Author |
Message |
    
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2798
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:26 pm: |     |
THIS IS NOT A JOKE - I just had news from another MOL poster that he had received a nude photo of me (there is no such thing so it was engineered) FROM MY PRIVATELINE ADDRESS, and I am contacting both the police and my lawyer. Our first move is to inquire here if anyone else has received one and if so please forward the file to me, again via privateline. Please no joke responses as we are involving the police and we don't want to waste their time. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help and sorry if anyone else has received this garbage. I don't think I'll be posting anymore on MOL after this. |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2801
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:38 pm: | |
I have just involved the police so please - If anyone has received a file like this help us find out who it is and stop them... |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4812
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:44 pm: | |
Mem: Unless you have done other postings between 12:26 and 12:38 someone is using your screen name. The counter moved from 2798 to 2801 during that time period.
I don't know if privatelines add to the posting count or not. |
themp
Citizen
Username: Themp
Post Number: 568
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:49 pm: | |
That's a bummer.
How'd they get a picture of your face to photoshop with?
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4813
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:51 pm: | |
I take my post back. Mem has been posting in another thread as well. |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2803
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:57 pm: | |
I have no photo of me in a networked computer. Someone that has seen me used a photo that looked somewhat like me. Therefore it is not a virus.
Bobk - you're right it is me - no one has ever posted on MOL without my knowledge.. |
marian
Citizen
Username: Marian
Post Number: 127
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 12:58 pm: | |
mem,
I'm so sorry that this has happened to you. How awful and frightening.
When this is all (hopefully) resolved, I hope you'll consider changing your MOL screen name and continue posting here.
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marian
Citizen
Username: Marian
Post Number: 128
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 1:02 pm: | |
Mem,
You posted in another thread that you once lent out your screen name and password. Could that have been how someone e-mailed that photo of you from your privateline address?
Sounds like a good bet to me... |
mem
Citizen
Username: Mem
Post Number: 2804
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 1:19 pm: | |
Marian,
Thanks, but it's not a possibility. I lent my name and password to my boyfriend once, and as he is a wonderful person and going to become a cop here in town I highly doubt it.
 |
musicme
Citizen
Username: Musicme
Post Number: 467
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 2:02 pm: | |
Mem, this from CNN Netscape's home page today...
"With a simple adjustment in your e-mail software, you can pretend to be anyone. You can send messages marked as coming from BillGates(at)microsoft.com.
The trick, known as spoofing, is a popular method for spammers to hide their tracks - you'd blame Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates and not the actual perpetrator of junk mail.
To close that loophole, Microsoft and Yahoo! Inc. are each developing systems aimed at authenticating senders of e-mail. America Online Inc. is testing a third. ``Having e-mail come in, and not really being able to identify where it comes from, this is a huge security hole,'' Gates said this week in announcing specifications for his proposal.
Many software engineers are concerned, however, that these systems could end up causing more problems than they solve.
Microsoft's proposal, known as Caller ID for E-mail, calls for Internet service providers to submit lists of unique numeric addresses for their mail servers. On the receiving end, software would check a database to verify that a message said to come from an e-mail provider actually originated at one of its registered machines.
In January, AOL began testing a similar system called Sender Policy Framework, or SPF, which checks a different part of the message.
Yahoo's proposed solution is a different animal. It would use encryption to digitally sign messages. If the sender or message content is altered, the signature gets rejected. Yahoo announced its proposal, DomainKeys, in December but has yet to make details public.
The big three e-mail providers are not alone in trying to tackle address spoofing. Leading e-mail software vendor Sendmail Inc., spam-filtering company Brightmail Inc. and frequent e-mailer Amazon.com are also at it, each planning to test one or more systems.
All these competing proposals are enough to get the Internet's standards-setting bodies in a lather.
One of them, the Internet Engineering Task Force, has scheduled a session on authentication next Thursday in South Korea. Experts predict some combination of the techniques will be ready for use later this year, though formal standards will take longer.
There's much work to be done in the meantime, including proving the systems can actually work beyond controlled, laboratory environments.
Caller ID and SPF, at least, are likely to disrupt mail-forwarding services that colleges and companies offer to let alumni and subscribers route e-mail through a domain name other than their own service provider's.
They also could break ``send to a friend'' features in which someone clicks on a Web link to pass an interesting item to someone else.
Issues to be worked out for all three systems include how to properly send e-mail from cybercafes, hotels and public Wi-Fi hotspots and how to preserve privacy when using anonymous re-mailers, which are used by whistleblowers and others to intentionally mask the origin of messages.
``A lot of people have said that e-mail today is broken, and now we're going to break it a little more,'' Meng Weng Wong, lead developer of SPF, acknowledged. ``Some of the things people are used to doing, they won't be able to do it in quite the same way.''
But the gain in fighting spam outweighs any pain from change, Wong argues.
Authentication also can help limit the spread of e-mail viruses and, with Caller ID and DomainKeys, help flag fraudulent ``phishing'' messages that try to trick people into revealing passwords and credit card information.
The proposals require no changes to existing protocols for e-mail or the domain name system, and developers of all three pledge to eventually seek standards status (Wong has already submitted SPF for review).
For now, the three can coexist, although adoption could be limited until a consensus emerges around one or a combination.
But these solutions alone will not stop spammers.
Systems will have to be established to evaluate the reputation of domains that relay e-mail, and that raises questions about who would develop such lists and who would arbitrate disputes.
In the short term, authentication will be useful mostly for verifying newsletters and other bulk mailings that are often misidentified as spam today, said Margaret Olson, co-chairman of the Email Service Provider Coalition's technology committee.
Once enough service and software providers adopt the technology, ``getting unauthenticated mail delivered will be extremely difficult,'' she said.
And that could hurt e-mailers in other countries where adoption of English-language specifications tend to lag, and smaller service providers may be forced to accept whatever the giants decide, critics warn.
At EarthLink Inc., which is experimenting with authentication, chief architect Robert Sanders said no service provider wants to suddenly stop e-mail from non-participants.
But he likened the technology to telephone's caller ID: ``You may still get a phone call with caller ID, but you may not choose to answer it.''
Anick Jesdanun can be reached at netwriter(at)ap.org
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Dave
Citizen
Username: Dave
Post Number: 6476
Registered: 4-1998
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 2:21 pm: | |
It's definitely a spoofed e-mail header because it's impossible to send attachments by Private Line. Give the full e-mail to the police, including the header (view source, then print), which will help them trace it. |
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