On forums, I often see people spell out their e-mail addess sort of like "abc at something dot com". I understand that this is a type of anti-phishing technique, but what exactly are they trying to prevent?
I could see where someone could grab a known e-mail address and add it to a spam list, but is there something more evil that the phishermen have planned? What can they accomplish with just your address?
Only spam. And then through spam, the anti phishing stuff, but you need to respond to it.
It's to prevent your email address from being harvested by bots.
Make a free email address today and post it in a mailto tag in this thread. Bet you start gettingspam within the hour.
It makes people manually grab/edit your address so a SPAM bot can't. Same thing with phone numbers: 555 five five five 5555.
Can they back into your computer with just the email address?
A well programmed bot can circumvent that, all it needs is 3 lines of string replacement in the code.
Woody wrote: Can they back into your computer with just the email address?
No. But my school email webpage has this warning on it:
Don't get scammed. Never send your password in email.
Learn to recognize ILSTU TEAM phishing scam emails.
Now I have Primus in my head... "I want to be a phisherman" 
EastCoastMojo wrote: Now I have Primus in my head... "I want to be a phisherman"
Yayayaya!
Johns a weird name for a girl, but that's ok!
Joey
Woody wrote: Can they back into your computer with just the email address?
Sure, it all depends on where your computer's located and how far it is from the road
Your computer could be broken into with some carelessness on your part, but if you have a proper anti-spam system and treat links and files in suspicious emails like the plague, you should be fine.
Woody wrote: Can they back into your computer with just the email address?
Only through ignorance on your part.
Basically, with your email address, they can send you an email. The content of that email will most likely target the wet stuff between your ears and try to get you to either open an attachment or to send them information.
Some really simple things that people can do to help prevent a lot of spam:
1) Just forget that electronic greeting cards exist. For every one of those that's legit, there's 50 there are just a trojan. If someone sends you an e-card, berrate them 'til they wet themselves and make them swear they'll never do it again. E-cards are the devil.
2) Remember that no company, EVER, is going to ask you for any personal information in an email, and certainly never ever for your password. If you get an email saying your company is doing an upgrade and they info so your account won't be deactivated, it's a scam.
3) Anyone you don't know offering you anything is a scammer. Usually it's money, but I've started to see scams where people say they're trying to find homes for puppies. Then they double-whammy you, by saying their an investigory team looking to nail the scammers.
4) If an email ever contains the line "I've checked it with Snopes, it's real!" NEVER take their word for it - check it yourself.
5) No internet petition is real. They're not accepted as legal, all you're doing is wasting everyone's time.
5) If you do get spam, just delete it. The police, FBI, NSA, etc aren't going to do anything because some bot sent you an email.
6) See that "Forward" button? Forget it exists. Forwards are one of the easiest places for spammers to collect legit addresses from, as the whole list of contacts is usually included.
7)Just because it's "from" your friend, doesn't mean it is. Return addresses for email are as easy to fake as they are on real mail.
8)If you can, don't use Outlook for your mail client, and try to get whoever hosts your mail (assuming it's not a webmail account) to not use Exchange.
9) NEVER click through an email to sign into a bank account, ebay, paypal, etc. If you really want to check your account go to that website through your browser as you would normally do and then log in.
That's a good list. Thank you, Reverend.
ReverendDexter wrote: 4) If an email ever contains the line "I've checked it with Snopes, it's real!" NEVER take their word for it - check it yourself.
And if the last line of the email says, "Send this to everyone you know", it's virtually guaranteed to be fake.
ReverendDexter wrote: 5) If you do get spam, just delete it. The police, FBI, NSA, etc aren't going to do anything because some bot sent you an email.
All right, except that one.
IC3 and others care about spam, specially those of great magnitude that may be a result of a botnet. Cyber crime is a big deal, and I am friends with a lot of the fellow grad students working on the various projects as well as the law enforcement and faculty.
If you have a bit of time, some good reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet
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