If you use Apple MobileMe, expect more spam...

[BigBoy]

Creating email spam lists is a multi-billion dollar business. Most webmail providers long ago closed a number of the more obvious methods spammers used to put together their lists in an automated way. One example - you don?t get bounced email messages from webmail services for emails to address that don?t exist. That way spammers can?t verify if an email address is good unless they get a response (clicking the opt out link is one sinister method to verify an email is good) or include a tracking pixel.

Apple, however, has created a dead simple way for spammers to easily spider their idisk property to retrieve the entire MobileMe user name list. And each of those usernames can be converted to an email address by adding @me.com or @mac.com to the end of it.

Here?s how it works. Every MobileMe user gets a public idisk file sharing site where they can post files for their public or private use. It?s simple to set the page to private, but it still shows the username if you to to the page. An example of a bad username: idisk.mac.com/mehmehmeh-Public. Here?s a good one: idisk.mac.com/steve-Public (That?s Steve Jobs? account). There is no way as a user to hide or delete your public folder. If you are a MobileMe customer, you have one.

Gathering the entire MobileMe username list, and therefore email list, via a simple dictionary attack is trivial.

Apple knows about the problem but insists it isn?t an issue because no one has complained publicly. An Apple representative said to on?We?ve never had a complaint from a customer about people spamming them because of their iDisk public folder name. There is no way to remove your account name from the iDisk folders. I?m very sorry.? I?m very sorry.?

Sourc:blink:rl]

Ummm :blink:

[(Spork)]

LOL Spam inc !!!

moblieme is trash and should have never been installed with out the user giving permissions

[Qumahlin]

and yet, with this being EXTREMELY old news...i've never had a problem with my .mac account or know anyonw who got more spam to their .mac account then any other account.

Right now the account of mine that gets the most spam is my yahoo account. My gmail account gets TONS but seems to do an amazing job filtering it.

Also, Spork, I have no idea what your talking about. These two things have nothing to do with each other. Mobile Me's "Installation" is nothing more then the syncing service. Unless your actually a mobile me subscriber it means and does nothing at all.

[CPressland]

I get like 2 spam e-mails a day on my MobileMe account, they all go into the Spam box so I dont really care/mind.

My GMail account gets about 100+ a day, again, not an issue as I dont get any in my inbox.

[mattmatik]

Gmail forwarding to MobileMe = no spam in my MobileMe email!!

Hehehe.

[Impact]

Apparently some people have never heard of spam filters. I honestly haven't had a spam email in my inbox for like 3 years.

[BigBoy]

Wow... I am actually quite surprised by spam #s you guys are mentioning... I get perhaps 3 spam emails a week in my Live Mail? And yeah - I have been using that account for anything from online purchases to subscriptions to newsletters for about 4 years now...