Wendy Howard wrote: > I've seen two obvious spam emails on two different Rootsweb lists today, > where the subject line was the name of the poster, as seen in the "From" > part of the email. 8>< > Both of these posts came from Yahoo accounts, one yahoo.com and the > other yahoo.ca. Steps should have been taken to remove those messages but it seems Gerhard has left and two other people are battling through the reports. It took them a week to get to a report I sent in. > Recently, yahoo.co.nz was hacked, resulting in many spam emails being > sent out from email accounts there, including xtra.co.nz accounts which > are hosted at yahoo.co.nz Xtra is New Zealand's largest ISP, and they > out-source their email service to Yahoo. It was a huge headache. 8>< > I'm not saying it *is* happening, only that it might. I don't want to > start a panic, but I do want you to be aware of the possibility so > you're not scratching your head over these odd posts if they start > turning up on your lists, but you're aware and ready to take action if > required. > I do hope I'm wrong, but I have a bad feeling about this. I don't think you are wrong. I've been receiving spam from hacked Yahoo addresses for several weeks now. It started with Yahoo AU, followed by Yahoo CA, one Yahoo UK then Xtra. I can't recollect if any Yahoo US has been affected. In every case it seems to have been UK lists that have been targetted, plus the FreeHelp list. I am on some overseas (to me) lists but I've not seen the same thing with them but I'm only on a handful. I've taken precautions. I recently had a list member who was with AOL have their account hacked. The "appeal for help in the wake of being mugged" spam was sent to the list but didn't get through.. Another list member posted to the list asking if the apparent sender was on the list, which she knew was so, and immediately had a reply *from the hackers* saying it was genuine!! I've *never* seen that happen before and it WAS from the hackers - I'm not saying how I knew either. I unsubbed the address before sending a mail to the list saying it wasn't genuine. I think most people knew that anyway. Many of us have met the list member in question and know they know asking for help via the list is NOT the thing to do. Contact was made by phone and the problem resolved. -- Charani (UK) OPC for Walton, Ashcott, Shapwick, Greinton and Clutton, SOM http://wsom-opc.org.uk