Warning: Do not register an email address you care about on RC Universe.

Today I received an email from a spammer on my main email address, something I rarely give out and I'm surprised I even had it registered on this site.. Never the less, I don't subscribe to many RC-type forums and this is the ONLY one that I gave my main email address to so it was easy to catch RC Universe.com....

The spam is in regards to cheap RC toys, subject: Remote-Control Boats & Cars - Great Xmas Gifts.....hans

This is a professional, since he is using random keys ("hans") in his subject to trick spam tracking software. Also, the email address supposedly sent from is a throwaway (Fletcher Head [[email protected]]).

Really don't appreciate RC Universe selling my email address to spam houses. [:@]

HMMM Dis not read that in the user agreement as I recall wouldn't that make it illeagle for RCU to give out our ADDYS?

Here we go again....................

I'll simply ask, why has it not happened to me in the past couple of years?

Ed M.

OK, I know you are going to say that I am posting this because I am a MODERATOR here, but this is fact......

I have been a member of RCU since the time of conception (or darn close to that) and I have NEVER received anything of the sort. I am a member of SEVERAL RC sites and I do not get SPAM from any of them.....I do not know what SPAM you have received, but I would put $$$$ on it that it didn't come from anything you didn't sign up for

Xed:

I am going to tell you a fact of life. I can send you an email without knowing your email address.

To repeat, I can send you an email without knowing your email address.

And it's not because I'm a moderator either, as I said, I don't have to know your address.

When you registered you put your email address into the system, and since you did not block emailings in your profile, all I have to do is go to your profile and click on "Email Xed," and it's done. I still will not have your email address. But you will have mine, in the header of my email. If you respond I will then, and only then, have yours.

And there's an easier way also. Just click the "EMAIL" button in any of your postings.

So, if you really think you were addressed through RCU, and you want to eliminate the possibility of any further email, just go into your profile and turn email off. The "EMAIL" button will disappear from your postings also.

We can still send you a note by using "PM," but if you don't check your inbox you wont know someone has rung your bell. No addressing information is given on a PM.

So. Your email address is secure, regardless of how many notes you might get through RCU, unless you answer one of them.

Hope this settles your mind, as there's no loss of security.

Bill.

I don't really believe that it's RCU that's giving out the email addresses. My wife, who very rarely gets on the internet and has very little to do with participating in any forums receives spam from viagra, (like I need it) and RC Mini Racers (well maybe I need the RC Racers). Don't blame RCU.. Maybe someday you'll see a mini racer on viagra!

Most unlikely it came using data from RCU.

When you visit a website, it's possible for the site to register your email address (and, for instance, the website you visited immediately before their's).

You probably went to a website selling RC stuff. and they caught your email address and added it to their data base.

-David C.

We take your email privacy very seriously and have taken measures to secure your email address from would be spammers. We also have not, will not or do not sell your email address. That being said it IS possible that it came from RCU, however it is not spam as you suggest. You have the option to receive email from our affiliates no more than 2 times per month but may elect out if you decide so that is where it may have originated. You may also elect to hide your email address and not allow any person other than administrators to contact you via email. It's important to understand that even if you allow others to email you they do not see your email address until you reply to their message so it remains secure until that point.

To discontinue receiving RCU partner email:
Click My Account > General Settings > R/C Modeling Experience Edit > I would like to occasionally (no more than 2 times per month) receive information about special RC promotions from RC Universe partners.

To disallow your email to be used:
Click My Account > Forum Settings > Allow others to send you e-mail (email remains hidden at all times)?

I have a public RC email address and a private one. For the first year, the private email address didn't have any spam. Now I get spam like crazy. Why, I don't know but I get more on my private email address than I do my public one. I attribute it to my ISP which is Charter Communications. RCU has my public email and I haven't see any problems there.

What if, when I send the email, I check "send me a copy". Will the copy I get reveal the recipient's email address?

data mining software; spybots, adbots. they are getting very sneeky, and are usually teh culprate

1st, get a fire wall. Most useres don't have one, nor really now what one is.
2nd, get a good anti-virus program , and keep it updated! again, most users don't or have one, but don't know about 'updates' (I get mine updated once every two weeks, and run the virus scanner 2x a week)
3rd, get a 'spybot / adbot' removal tool, like "ad-aware" and run it. You'll be surprised how many 'things' are running the back ground.
Set your internet security to 'high' with cookies switched off..

Don't forget, your addy might be on someone elses e-mail list, and teh spambot got your addy from that..

If you have NT, 2000 , or XP: 'ctrl-alt-delete' and look at the processes in the task manager and see what is running. This you really do have to know a little about is running and why.. But again, amaizingly you'll be surprised at what you might find... If you don't recognize it, type it in a search engine (includeing teh .exe) and see what come up. mostly it'll be a description of what it is.

Mike:

No. You will get the recipient's email address only is there is a response.

Bill.

I feel very slighted...I have been registered with RCU for over a year now and I haven't gotten any spam!!! How come you get to have all the fun???

Not only have we never sold our list OR given it away we have NEVER even had a request from anybody who wanted to buy it! If we sold our email list that would be the end of RCU. For the $200 we could get for the list I would hardly think that is worth ruining everyones trust here. If you think we are suspect then hire a shill to offer me any dollar amount on any day and the answer will always be the same response "we don't sell or share our mailing list, period".

Now as mentioned above there are many ways to snag your email. Did you know a site can make a popup and then have a little close button on it. Say you click that close button...innocent right? Nope...clever javascript just got your email. That is one of MANY ways to snag your email. Be careful what you download, click, surf and so on.

If it makes you feel any better I get 100 of those RC spams a day and another 500-1000 of other junk that I have to sift through and waste my time with. I am hoping this new law in the US which fines and jails spammers curbs this. They say junk mail may TRIPLE in the next year or two. Can you imagine? It literally threatens the use of email altogether. Imagine coming home to 60 minutes of voice mails from telemarketers? You would have to sift through all their drivel to get to your messages. Eventually rendering your answering machine useless. Well email is headed that way unless somebody finds a technology solution or makes the fines so high and jail time that most will stop it.

The idea of a hidden e-mail address for yourself is a fantasy.
It's not RCUs fault it's just a fact. If your on the internet EVERYTHING in your computer can be accessed if hackers/ trackers/ spammers want it bad enough.
I was getting RC related spam mail before I ever signed up here (or anywhere else for that matter)
Just browsin a few RC sites is prob where the tracking software came from.
Just go to Towers site a few times and I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut you'll get some mail.

Please send me the dollar. I've been to the Tower site tons of time, and never get any spam.

The idea that Tower Hobbies would put some kind of JavaScript in their pages to steal email addresses from people who browse their site and then sell them to spammers is, to put it gently, ludicrous.

By the way, around here, a dollar to a doughnut is pretty close to an even bet these days!

Great, thanks for this information, I have checked my profile and had the "Hide Email" option turned off. It is likely this is what the spammer was using since it was an RC targetted email with "throw-away" email addresses (a feature of Mailblocks.com).

Was off already.

Off now, thanks again. Sorry for the my alarm bells ringing...

ive been to towers site atleast 15 times a week.. i order from there probably 2-3times a month.. never had spam... i am a member of a sportbike forum.. never had spam.. in fact my email account (Aol at that) never gets spammed..oh and my email addy is on my Sig line at the bottom!

I have a Yahoo address, SPAM is rare. They have a SPAM blocker on it, and if you do get something, it goes into your SPAM folder. I love the set up. Id say get a Yahoo address, i use it and quit using my net servers email box.

You are all making this too hard. If you are ever on anyone's e-mail list where someone sends a (for instance) joke to 20, you have no clue where all this will end. How do you know where the end of the passed on e-mail will go. I tell two, they tell two and they tell two, and very soon your e-mail address that is in the header is everywhere. THen I take your address and send e-mail to everyone and they think it's you. "you think" you've given it to no one, you're dreaming. Next there are robots that search for addresses, spybots that pass data on to other robots. You are only dreaming if you thin RCU did this.

Sorry, welcome to the world of e-mail. By the way... I get about 600 spam mails a day, I use netscape 7.1 and it catches about 98% of them for me.

easiest way to get spam is from those great friends that send you and all their mates jokes or those other stupid mails, if one of those people on the list sends it to someone else theres your address, i keep trying to tell these people to simple clean up the mail before they send it but noooo, thats too hard

also get a program called Mailwasher, it shows you whats on your mail server before you ever download it. you can add RCU and known addresses to the friends list and block the bad guys, you can even send them their cr&p back. you can see junk and virus mails before you ever download them. set it up the same way you do with Outlook, then send Outlook never to check, Mailwasher will load Outlook on it's own and you can check mail yourself. Great program.

if you think spam is bad now wait a year from now. it will grow 300% at least. it will soon encompass as much of the internet traffic as the adult stuff does.

RCU won't selll, share or give away your personal information or email. If you post your email on the board here any robot can troll the site to find it so never put it in a post. Our system allows users to click the email button and send email via a proxy for just this reason. It keeps your email hidden and private.

There are all sorts of anti-spam strategies in place that you can use. Whitelists, blacklists, filters, etc. Outlook 2003 has a decent spamfilter built into it now.

No matter what your email is you can figure it will get out in short order and spam will come. Some guys accused us of letting their email out since RCU was supposedly the only site they gave it to. Well if they email any other user on the net or click to close any window on any website which has an email snagger on it they can make their email known. We don't give them out ever, period.

Another great tactic is called "tarpitting". This uses a random generator to make names and strings of every possible combination to addresses. For instance I send to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and on. this is a great technique to generate emails to known AND unknown emails. Most any combination can be computer generated at no cost to the spammer. Highest profile targets for tarpitting are aol..com, earthlink.net, yahoo.com, hotmail.com and any other isp with significant size but small time spammers go for the easy ones too with even smaller isp's.

So the story is you will eventually get spammed and then get on more lists and it will never end until they make the law to kill spammers or put them in jail so they stop. In the meantime look for about a doubling of spam every 3-4 months

If you need total security, never turn on your computer. I have a safe list set up and everything else goes immediately to the trash can,so I dont see the big deal about getting spam messages that are deleted before I ever see them, and there are options available in windows letting you block cookies from 3rd partys as well as an option to choose whether to accept cookies or not on an individual basis. Also, the net is full of downloadable free pop up stoppers. I haven't seen a spam message in my e mail in many a month. The options to eliminate it all are there, just gotta use em.

I here Local Club's and AMA e-mail lists are being bought and sold by old and new companies. Wonder if this is where some of this problem is coming from.
Turn about IS FAIR play!
Get at sites by Listing them as YOUR e-mail site. Fill out information of the bad business e-mail and web sites, to other companies as your own e-mail and or web sites and let them get there own e-mail address passed and sold to themselves and see how they like it.
Get a data base going with the compaines that send you this junk and spam, then pass there junk right back to them and others in those same business pratices.

What is good for the Goose is Good for the gander.

since I have "catch all" domains I find out who is selling my name by preceding the name with the websites name. For example if I signup at site xyz.com I make my email on registration [email protected] so if I get spam on that email I know where it came from.

Just to reiterate RCU does not sell, give away, trade, share or disclose its mailing lists to anyone. If a vendor wants to reach our members they can advertise on the site or have RCU send an email out with our opt-in partner special deal newsletter but they never get a hold of any RCU member emails.

We realize that spam is a significant problem (we get 100's daily ourselves) and are part of the solution rather than part of the problem.