Marj wrote:
Having done research into Internet Porn for some years I receive quite a bit of porn spam, though I have never (voluntarily) given my email address at any of these sites.
I was amused to receive one addressed to "The adult site surfers at the University of Newcastle" with a dozen or more names and email addresses in the header. I thought briefly about contacting the others - all male - some well known to me and in areas like aviation and chemistry, to discuss our mutual 'research' interests.
I've read many different explanations about how spammers get their fingers on your (an) e-mail address. However, if you've never given out your (work) e-mail address AND the pornspam (the pinky almost-fake fleshness of spam makes this neologism all the more icky!) is targeted so precisely that they send it to specific persons at the UofN, then this warrants the question: HOW the heck did they gather this set of e-mail addresses including yours? If there is no satisfactory technological answer, maybe a university sysop is making some money on the side by looking at logfiles...? Did you run the message through Spamcop.net or similar service to see where it came from? Frank. -intrigued... <snip>