Author Topic: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(  (Read 16368 times)

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Offline RejZoR

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #15 on: October 15, 2009, 10:57:22 AM »
With GMail i don't even care about the spam. I never see it anyway :)
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Omega40

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #16 on: October 15, 2009, 11:00:47 AM »
With GMail i don't even care about the spam. I never see it anyway :)
Yeah, I know....but it's still there in huge numbers everyday. lol

Offline RejZoR

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2009, 11:02:36 AM »
So what? ;D It's located in the Spam folder that i don't even check anymore. In all these years since GMail was first in beta, i got around 4 messages in Inbox folder. So thats nothing compared to other mail providers.
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Omega40

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2009, 11:11:48 AM »
So what? ;D It's located in the Spam folder that i don't even check anymore. In all these years since GMail was first in beta, i got around 4 messages in Inbox folder. So thats nothing compared to other mail providers.
Agreed.  :)

YoKenny

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #19 on: October 15, 2009, 11:26:47 AM »
@AndrueC

There are 78006 Members here with probably about 100 active prticipants and you seem to be the only one complaining about spam from avast! so you should heed the advice of CharleyO.

In all the time I have used avast! I have never received spam from avast! to my email address I registered with.
I have the emails that I need to activate avast! and that's all.

Omega40

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #20 on: October 15, 2009, 11:31:08 AM »
@AndrueC

There are 78006 Members here with probably about 100 active prticipants and you seem to be the only one complaining about spam from avast! so you should heed the advice of CharleyO. .........

FTW!

Offline Yanto.Chiang

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #21 on: October 15, 2009, 02:09:58 PM »
Well @AndrueC

At least but not last,

Normally Spammer could gain and attacked the victim thru various ways :
1. Your IP Address from ISP, because the ISP has recognized as a black IP Address
2. DNS, if spammer could gain your domain server then their will be sent to you by every second spam
3. Human's error it is mean everyone should be ever submit or register at some famous forum or advertising forum. It wouldn't be ignored if spammer gain the information from them and blast the email to victim
4. Spammer could create a zombie at your internal user, and then the user as a zombie will blast the spam every second
5. Spammer could using your company's domain and then change the user name to blast to everyone
6. Spammer will always found the way to could attacks your mail server......

My suggest, your company should have Anti Spam Server/Gateway to filter all of your inbound/outbound mail address to avoid your domain recognize as violation email address and instead of that to filter each received email.

And i think each system have their weakness to control their data leaking. So far, i registered this forum under my company mail address doesn't received a lot spam, because we also implemented anti spam server at our mail server.

Regards,
Yanto Chiang
Yanto Chiang | IT Security Consultants | AVAST Premium Security | GarudaSinatriya

Offline MikeBCda

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #22 on: October 15, 2009, 09:24:05 PM »
I agree with the others, I've never gotten spam from or via avast or its forums.  Sorry, one exception, if I remember correctly; a year or two ago a new "member" here was spamming others very briefly, but vlk and others at alwil quickly took care of both that individual and improvements to their security setup here.

I've only got 2 email addys, my "main" one (which is what I use just about everywhere) on my ISP's POP server and one at Yahoo which is essentially a backup.  My ISP's own "SpamGuard" service (they use the name generically since they've switched service providers a few times over the years) is excellent at filtering and quarantining stuff, and I might get all of two or three messages a month slip past that.  And for those, I simply tell Thunderbird to treat them as junk.

There's almost no mail at the Yahoo addy, since I don't normally give that out, and Yahoo's so far been 100% effective at catching the rare (1 or 2 a day) spam that goes there.

So I don't bother with MailWasher or the like, I feel that I'm getting excellent protection from outside.
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(default). 320 gig HD, 15Mb DSL, Win firewall, Avast 12.3.2280 free, SpywareBlaster, MBAM Prem., Crypto-Prevent

AndrueC

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #23 on: October 19, 2009, 10:04:04 AM »
This will probably be my last post on the subject. I came here to try and warn/help Avast and their customers but I guess I've failed. Most of you don't even seem to understand the situation. But now that it's been several days since I first reported it I can try one last time be restating the situation.

I am not a company, I'm a private individual who happens to have his own domain. I'm not trying to harrass Avast or anything like that. I just feel that they (and perhaps you) need to be aware of this problem. I don't operate any anti-spam software. Nada. AVG scans emails for viruses but I haven't bothered with their spam offering. Everything that arrives at my domain initially gets put into a single mailbox on my domain provider's server. It is then filtered by Thunderbird based on the 'To:' field before being copied to my inbox.

For the past decade I have given each and every contact their own unique address to use for me. Even family members have their own assigned address. Even I have my own address for sending reminders from work. This address is based on a template so that anything random is easy to filter. Examples of this (using fake details of course are):

bill.wibble@fakedomain.com
john.wibble@fakedomain.com
avast.wibble@fakedomain.com
tesco.wibble@fakedomain.com

Anything that doesn't have .wibble@ in the To: field is deleted. This is a first line defense against dictionary attacks. It's highly unlikely that such an attack would contain the '.wibble@' marker. If run for long enough it might do but since I am currently averaging less than 60 incoming emails to my domain I am clearly not under attack.

Others have suggested that the address was trawled from my system by a trojan. The problem with that theory is that it doesn't make sense. These addresses are not stored in my address book. They can be found by trawling through received messages but what kind of bot would trawl through your email looking for addresses used to send you email? It's daft. If a bot has that much control it no longer cares about you. It wants addresses that you use for sending email out.

Others have suggested that the address was farmed while in use. Well that doesn't add up. First off it's only been used once (ignoring the spam) when I registered Avast earlier this year. It has been over six months since that time. How come other, far more active, addresses have not been farmed?

It's now several days since I reported this and no other address has been used to send me spam. My domain continues to receive less than 60 emails a day. All the addresses used were once given out by me so there's no dictionary attack at work.

So what we can say is that out of several dozen email addresses the only one that has started to be used for spam in the last year or is the one I gave to Avast. Or to put it another way:Out of the approximately 10,000 emails my domain has received since I registered AVG in the last year the only new source of spam is the address given to Avast over six months ago.

Looking at the example above. If 'avast.wibble@fakedomain.com' is the only address being used to send me spam and if 'fakedomain.com' is never getting email sent to it without the '.wibble@' marker - how do you explain it? Because whatever explanation you come up with has to explain what is so unique about 'avast.wibble@fakedomain.com' and there's only one thing that is obviously unique about it.

As for the advice - I don't need. I have added that address to my blacklist and I now receive no spam whatsoever. Nada. How many of you can claim the same without having to resort to anti-spam software? That's how effective my system is. It's not an original idea (I can't claim to have invented it) but it is a very effective system.

Mike Buxton

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #24 on: October 19, 2009, 10:25:15 AM »
Hi,

I hope that is your last ever tediously long and boring post here.

The chances that you are right are close to zero.

It is doubtful that you read the references in the responses.

Thank you. I have my own fast, simple and effective strategies.

My regards

Please make your future posts brief

Offline Tarq57

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #25 on: October 19, 2009, 11:29:16 AM »
AndrueC,
I have two email addresses, a hotmail account set up years ago (which gets a little of the "regular" kind of spam for viagra, online games etc), and the one provided by my ISP. The latter is used for all dealings with Avast. I use no special spam filters, just reasonable care in who the address gets sent to. And a request to all friends who know that address to not forward "FW" messages with multiple recipients. (So, just the usual precautions.)
I have sent a few email messages to Avast, viruses, FP info etc, and reported spam on the forums as I see it, and when reporting spam, if the text field is used (which I do) the users' email address is revealed to moderators. This is also the address used to register for Avast.

I am into my fourth year of using Avast. In that time I have received two spam emails.
Two.
Wonder if I should be worried about this? ;)

Windows 10,Windows Firewall,Firefox w/Adblock.

CharleyO

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #26 on: October 19, 2009, 05:42:15 PM »
***

I just thought of something that seems far fetched to me, but, perhaps it is what might be going on.

I did not read back through all of this thread so maybe I missed it or do not remember. But, I now wonder where AndrueC got his avast program from? Is the avast program he is using the true avast program or is it one of those fake avast programs. If it were one of those fake programs, that might explain why he is getting spam email.


***

Offline nmb

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Re: Avast are now a source of spam/virus attack :(
« Reply #27 on: October 19, 2009, 06:09:12 PM »
@AndrueC

I did not read back through all of this thread so maybe I missed it or do not remember.

how do you get the fake domain id?. by entering your original email id. isn't it?. what if those guys who generate fake domain id, so that you can get the emails without revealing your original email id, are spamming?

nmb
« Last Edit: October 19, 2009, 06:17:25 PM by nmb »