[Shotimes] emailspam from SHO web sites

[Donald Mallinson]

This week, there was a start of spam to people that had 
e-mail addresses posted on the SHOclub.com web site and 
classifieds.  The emails indicated that the SHO Registry had 
given them the e-mail address.

This was not true, but our site was in a way responsible. 
Please let me explain as it has been explained to me by my 
son, and the web master.

The SHOregistry.com web site goes directly to SHOclub.com.

SHO Club, as I have mentioned does NOT give out addresses, 
sell address or information to anyone, nor do we list our 
membership in any way that can be a problem, but apparently 
an automated worm type program is capable of going to web 
pages and extracting just the e-mail addresses whenever it 
picks up the @ symbol indicating an e-mail address.

Thus a program hit SHORegistry.com and thus SHOclub.com and 
picked up all the e-mail addressees in the classifieds, and 
maybe in the links section.

We have now solved this problem, at least for this type of 
spammer software, I hope it is solved permanently.

We have changed the way we list the e-mail addresses on the 
pages so they can't be picked up by this type of software, 
but your potential buyers/sellers will be able to contact 
you through what looks like a "link".

We are in the process of changing all the entries to this 
type of format, but it takes time.  All NEW entries are done 
this way starting late this last week.

Although this problem (additional spam to some of your 
e-mail inboxes) is not our direct responsibility and fault, 
I am sorry to in any way add to the junk that we all get. 
Filters on e-mail programs help, but are not a cure-all.  I 
delete probably 30-40 spam messages a day from my own account.

Please let others that may have mentioned this to you on 
other lists, (techsho is one that I didn't have the address 
to handy) that SHOclub.com has solved the problem, at least 
for the future.  For the e-mails that have been grabbed by 
this one outfit, the damage is done, but we will get all of 
them changed as soon as we can, and NEW listings will be 
protected.

SHOclub.com classifieds have become the most visited and 
successful classifieds on the web for our cars and parts, 
and I appreciate the support that you have given the club 
and our web site.  I was not happy this happened, but I 
wasn't aware that programs did this.  Now I am smarter, and 
I thank my son for helping me solve the dilemma.

Reply off-list if you have questions about this.

Don Mallinson, President
SHO Club