Spam mail send to my @me.com address, never happened before

engelsk wrote:

I'm concerned by comment number 31 here, where someone has written:

I received this spam email and I am not on Icloud or @ me. I suspect it may be my apple ID email account that was compromised.

If this is true, then I think Apple needs to make a public statement about whether a database of Apple IDs has been hacked.

If it is true that the writer of the comment does not use iCloud and does not have a @me address how is this even connected to Apple?

Old Toad wrote:

I've also been getting the Christine Meyer spams.

Me too, maybe I'll get a date with the young lady 🙂

Re:

If it is true that the writer of the comment does not use iCloud and does not have a @me address how is this even connected to Apple?

It may or may not be, of course.

Plenty of people use non-Apple email addresses as their Apple ID. If the person received this spam email at the same sort of time as all the others, then it might be, as he suspects, due to it being the email address he used for his Apple ID.

Or it could be a pure coincidence.

There's something unusual going on, anyway - especially when people around the world, including people who've never used their iCloud/MobileMe email at all, are receiving the same spam email on it and all on the same day.

It is not difficult to generate thousands (millions) of speculative @me (or @anything) addresses and use a bulk mailer to send them, many will be right even if most are not.

Understood. But this raises other questions:

• Why's this happening now, all in one go, and on an apparently massive scale? (I've never before knowingly received to my other email accounts the same piece of spam at the same time as lots of other people I know. I have now.)
• Why has no email generator been able to work out my me.com address in the last nine years that I've had it? Or my parents'? Or plenty of other people's (for varied periods of time)? Have they developed some amazing software that out-generates all software that's come before?
• If they can suddenly generate and send spam email to email addresses more successfully than previously, have corresponding numbers of Hotmail and Gmail users around the world suddenly received this spam email this weekend, too? I know I certainly haven't received it in the spam folders of any of my other email accounts (which have no connection with Apple).
• If, apart from mac.com/me.com/icloud.com, the spam's only gone to the email addresses of Hotmail and Gmail users who used those addresses as their Apple IDs - and not to other Hotmail and Gmail users - then there's reason to be concerned. But that seems to be unknown at the moment.

Let's hope it's not serious, anyway.

engelsk wrote:

Understood. But this raises other questions:

Why's this happening now, all in one go, and on an apparently massive scale? (I've never before knowingly received to my other email accounts the same piece of spam at the same time as lots of other people I know. I have now.)

Why not now?

Why has no email generator been able to work out my me.com address in the last nine years that I've had it? Or my parents'? Or plenty of other people's (for varied periods of time)? Have they developed some amazing software that out-generates all software that's come before?

You're protected by Apples server side Spam filters, they are not always perfect:

If they can suddenly generate and send spam email to email addresses more successfully than previously, have corresponding numbers of Hotmail and Gmail users around the world suddenly received this spam email this weekend, too? I know I certainly haven't received it in the spam folders of any of my other email accounts (which have no connection with Apple).

You'll need to Google that:

If, apart from mac.com/me.com/icloud.com, the spam's only gone to the email addresses of Hotmail and Gmail users who used those addresses as their Apple IDs - and not to other Hotmail and Gmail users - then there's reason to be concerned. But that seems to be unknown at the moment.

That too ......

Let's hope it's not serious, anyway.

🙂

I don't know. I believe you're a German speaker? If so, it's discussed a little on this German Mac forum. (It might even be the one you referred to earlier.)

It seems that allowing HTML pictures to download might confirm that your email address exists. I also let the pictures download. I've never had any spam in this account, and so I had no reason to be wary. I've now altered my own settings so that they don't display distant images. I believe that as long as you didn't click any links in the spam email there's probably nothing to worry about.

Message was edited by: engelsk (typo)

There is information in the extended header that can be used to redirect the message back towards the source. Since the users (the email targets) are not IT pros, we're not equiped to provide an adequate solution at our end, however we should not be forced to accept spam folders as our only response. This issue should be addressed upstream by the IT pros who control the system. Has spamming/phishing/etc become the perfect crime?

Just got the same one, but it went straight to my Junk folder on my Mac, as I've now set that up to happen automatically. The email arrived with a notification on my iPad, though.

I still wonder if there's been some kind of a breach, but I've not read anything else on the matter.

gravity44 wrote:

Isn't spam@me.com working anymore? Is this failure normal?

Several people have compained that attempts to send to this address get an 'account over quota' error (bsically meaning that the account space is full and can't accept any more emails). Hopefully Apple will get round to dealing with it sometimes.