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Strange BearsI know as editor of the magazine I often ask for emails from TT members...and I often include my direct email...........well obviously someone with a perverse sense of "humour" has read them as well.
I have recently received some emails with members names .......regular contributors who I trust.....attached to them.......though after I opened them and saw what was in them I went and checked and the email addresses were not theirs.
The content of the emails were certainly not your regular teddy bears......rather from that part of the community that has corrupted the the teddy bear name....x rated is putting it mildly...........perverted and obnoxious more like.
I have complained to my server and they are tracing the emails but I just thought others may want to NOT follow my example of putting your email address in the messages put up here for a while.
There really are some sad people out there.
PennsylvaniaThere are spam bots that harvest e-mail addresses from web forums and similar sites then use that information to send out spam, much of it [INVALID] and fake Viagara, etc. Is that what you are getting?
Or are you talking about e-mail sent by humans who pose as another person for the purpose of sending out harassing messages containing [INVALID]?
Best course of action is to have the IT department at your place of business track down the source of the e-mail and blacklist the sender(s). Do not reply to them in any way. Do not even open or display the messages or any attachments therein. Send them directly to the trash. This is a good reason to install spam blocking extensions to your e-mail program if it doesn't already have one built in.
In the first case, you will be able to block the messages only temporarily. When the spammers change proxy servers and hide their tracks they will be able to evade the block your IT people have put on them. But this block will slow them down, at least for a while. By that time, hopefully, your e-mail address will have gone "stale" in their databases and they will stop spamming you so much.
If it is the second case, your IT people MIGHT be able to track down the sender. If you are so lucky, there is a chance the person could be busted. Unless they have a darned good explanation for their actions they could be blacklisted from this site.
Generally speaking, you're going to get a certain amount of this crud on the internet. Basically ignore it unless it creates a problem of some kind.
Strange BearsThe emails appeared in my in box as as coming from TT members........the senders names were names I ecognised from the list and the subject lines were mentioning teddy bears and photos.
When I opned them they were embedded photos ........displaying [INVALID] photos of the section type of male that take the name in vain.
So it has teken someone some actual thought to look for and use the email address and to set up the sender name......it hasb\n't just been harvested.......plus using hte teddy bear subject line.
Very annoying and distasteful.
PennsylvaniaDo you know that the word "bears" often refers to hairy gay men?
There could be a spam bot searching out all websites containing the word "bear" and harvesting all the e-mail addresses it finds then sending out "bear" pictures to all those names.
Yes, spam bots are pretty smart. They can harvest e-mail addresses and the real names associated with them, allowing them to make it appear like the messages came from real people.
Strange BearsYep..........did know that!! I still think it corrupts the word though..........and yes that was the tyoe of photos but very very explicit couple photos!
Sorry I could only say YUK........well that was more mild reaction. I also opened the emails while my daughter was standing talking to me......which only me mad me more angry.
Benson BearsEugh Sandra, I hope Lara didn't cop an eyeful! I've been getting so much rubbish lately it's not funny. The latest is from the "Tax Department" yeah right, I know I'm not due a refund! I just wish they'd give it a rest, it gets so tiresome. I haven't had any "beary" emails thank goodness!
PennsylvaniaIt does corrupt the word. Us Bears don't like it either! 
Harvester bots don't care what the site really is. They dont' care who sees the messages. All they care about is getting e-mail addresses. The more opportunity to sell the "product" the better.
This is a good reason not to post your e-mail address in the clear.
Have you ever noticed that this bulletin board doesn't allow that unless you type it directly into a message? This is an anti-spam measure. Only logged-in members are supposed to be able to read e-mail addresses and only after clicking on a button or link to do so. Spam bots don't (can't) log in as members thus they can not see e-mail addresses.
Don't help them by posting your e-mail address where they can be seen. At the very least, cloak your e-mail address.
For instance, add the word "SPAM".
myname@email.com then becomes mynameSPAM@email.com
If a spambot harvests your address it will get the wrong name. Humans who read your address will know to remove the word "SPAM" before they send a message. The bots usually don't know how to do that.
Another thing to do is type out your whole e-mail address without using symbols "@" or "."
myname@email.com then becomes myname-at-email-dot-com
This works because spam bots look for the "@" symbol and the words ".com", ".net" or ".edu", etc.
If the bots can't find those symbols and keywords they won't recognize your e-mail address.
People don't realize just how much personal information they give out over the internet. It is downright scary to see how much information people can find out about you just from knowing your name, e-mail address and the city where you live! They should be more cautious about the personal information they give out to places they don't know.
Also, another thought is to do a virus scan on your computer. In addition to your regular virus scan program I highly recomment Ad-Aware (can get free version from download.com) which checks for the kinds of stuff that will do what you're seeing.
In some cases, emails are 'coded' to display an email name that it picks up from your computer.... Example if you've ever sent or received an email from BLAHBLAHBLAH@msn.com the spam email is coded to pick up info from your email program and will display to you as being sent by BLAHBLAHBLAH@msn.com or even by yourself instead of the true sender. This is a common little spam ad virus that Ad-Aware will find and remove for you. This stuff is picked up by visiting websites so there's really no way around it. The best thing to do is virus scan your computer and check it with Ad-Aware on a daily basis. It will really slow the ads down once the ones that already have tapped on you fade away.
/miniteddyhugs,
Bubble Up Bears!Thanks for the heads up Sandra.
I will be extra careful. 
PennsylvaniaIf you are using Outlook or Outlook Express as your e-mail client, I suggest you dump that program and go with something more secure like "Thunderbird."
http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Thunderbird is made by the same people who make the Firefox web browser. It's just as good and it's just as free. Plus, it has several features to make your e-mail more secure.
It's got adaptive spam blocking which reads all your e-mail messages and watches the messages you mark as "spam" and "non-spam." As you mark more and more messages as good or bad, Thunderbird learns from you. After a while, it will "know" which e-mails are spam and automatically sort them out for you.
Thunderbird has another feature to help you fight spam that isn't so intuitive. It prevents "web beacons" from nabbing your e-mail address.
A little lesson:
Spammers like to put images into their e-mails to help track who is a good e-mail address and who is bad or bogus.
If I embed a picture into an e-mail and send it to you, I can tell if you read my message by checking the logs on my server to see if that picture was accessed by the internet. If that image was viewed, I know you read it.
The thing is that those images only have to be 1 pixel tall and 1 pixel wide. You won't even know its there because it's only a single dot. It will look like a tiny speck on your screen if you notice it at all but I will know you saw my spam message. Once I know that, I know that the e-mail address linked to that message is a "live" one. My spam bots will mark you for even MORE spam!
Now that you know what a web beacon is, you can understand that blocking remote messages ( and remotely loaded HTML or Javascript code) prevents spammers from using them to track your activity on the internet.
Thunderbird blocks remote images by default. If it detects a remote image it will put up a little button for you to click. If you decide that the e-mail is "safe" you can click that button and see the images. If not, the images won't be displayed and the web beacons can't track you.
You can also "blacklist" and "whitelist" e-mail addresses. "Blacklisted" e-mail addresses will never have images displayed. "Whitelisted" addresses will always be displayed. That way, if you have friends on the internet who send you pictures you can see them without having to click on a button all the time. If there is an e-mail address you know is bad you can "blacklist" it and you won't be bothered again.
I really suggest everybody go visit Mozilla's website and see what Thunderbird has to offer. I think you'll like it! :)
And don't give me that fluff about being afraid to try a new program because you already know how to use Microsoft junk! Let me tell you a story... My mother uses Thuderbird for e-mail and she loves it!
She was having trouble with her computer and, after several attempts at repairing her broken installation of M$ Windows, I cleared her hard drive and installed Ubuntu Linux. She whined for about a week but she eventually got used to it. Now she actually LIKES Linux better than Microsfoft!
A couple of weeks she was out shopping and she needed to look up something on the internet real quick. She stopped at the public library to use the computer there. After about 5 minutes of struggling with Microsft, she quit and decided to wait until she got home!
If my Mom can learn to use Linux, ANYBODY can!
And, to top it all off, Linux doesn't get viruses like Windows does.
You should check it out!
