On Sun, Feb 12, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Barrie Robinson <barrie@look.ca> wrote:
> Simon,
>
> All things are possible! But I got false emails from people I had not
> corresponded with for years - I had to search my archives to find out who
> they were. So keystroke pinching would seem unlikely - unless it mined
> their archives if they had them.
>
Barrie,
I have seen many spam emails that come from Yahoo (I have carefully
inspected the full message headers to assure myself that the emails really
did come from yahoo).
What happens is that someone responds to a phishing email, clicks on a bad
link, or gets infected by a virus. The malicious software now installed on
that person's PC grabs the login credentials for yahoo and sends them to
whoever controls the virus/phishing/etc. Then, using those credentials,
spam emails are sent to everyone in that person's contact list. No need to
mine email archives -- services like yahoo remember to whom you sent
emails.
It happens. Gmail employees were hit with a similar login-stealing system
some time ago and now Google has pushed its employees to use Macs or Linux
desktops instead of Windows.
I personally limit my use of cloud services, but that is because I am
offended by what liberties the government has taken with our fourth
amendment rights. I use gmail, but for private communications, I use
services that I host myself. Not that I have anything to hide, but the
principle remains.
Simon
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