Rob, what's with the Mercado Libre spam in Spanish?

lousygolfer · Post by **lousygolfer** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:02 pm

I just received a cryptic e-mail from hifi-remote.com with the title "MercadoLibre" that contains a bunch of HTML codes, statements in Spanish and links to mercadolibre.com. A google search reveals that mercadolibre translates into "free market" and mercadolibre.com is owned by eBay and is essentially the Latin American version of eBay.

What's up with this e-mail? Have you been hijacked by some spam artist? If somehow some person or entity has been requesting my/our e-mail addresses, could you please refuse to give them out?

I never used to get spam, but I had a little tiff with a guy on eBay who defrauded me and became enraged when I dared to demand a refund and ever since then, I've been getting hit with spam. Over the past month, it's gotten worse and on somedays I delete between 50 and 100 spam messages a day. As you might imagine, I'm not eager to receive any more of this crap, especially masquerading as legitimate correspondence from a website that I sometimes do visit.

Please advise what is going on.

Thanks.

rhm5757 · Post by **rhm5757** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:05 pm

I got presumably the same email, basically unreadable since it displays as plaintext but contains lots of HTML.

shadsnz · Post by **shadsnz** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:13 pm

Me too.

Post by **The Robman** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:13 pm

I got it also, I don't know where it came from but it wasn't from me.

And I'd like to thank the 30 or 40 people who have sent me copies of it via email also reporting it as spam, as id I don't get enough already.

sfhub · Post by **sfhub** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:22 pm

I guess maybe it is looking to graduate from spam to worm status.

greenough1 · Post by **greenough1** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:30 pm

Hi Rob,
I got an odd email from the admin of "JP1 Remotes" that didn't make it through the comcast screening intact. It came through as raw html. Might part of the forum/website been hacked?
there are some odd http stuff in it like:
http://www.mercadolibre.com.ar/org-img/ ... OMO_01.gif

I don't recommend clicking on that...

Best,
jeff

aperry · Post by **aperry** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 5:55 pm

The Robman wrote:And I'd like to thank the 30 or 40 people who have sent me copies of it via email also reporting it as spam, as id I don't get enough already.

In fairness to the forwarders, that is what the email tells you to do...

Herbie · Post by **Herbie** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:05 pm

aperry wrote:
The Robman wrote:And I'd like to thank the 30 or 40 people who have sent me copies of it via email also reporting it as spam, as id I don't get enough already.
In fairness to the forwarders, that is what the email tells you to do...

Yep, that's the only reason I sent it... Sorry.

SemperFi · Post by **SemperFi** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:07 pm

I have been away for a while and recieved an email just like above. Just came to see if anyone figured it out. I figured it to be some kind of spam/junkmail lifted from hifi-remote.

laytonlight · Post by **laytonlight** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 6:14 pm

Rob

Count me as one of the ones who sent you something. I sent just the header information in the hopes that you could track down who hacked in as a moderator and sent me spam.

Then you could kill them. ':twisted:' Just kidding...

By the way, it was in Spanish, so I'm betting they snuck across the southern electronic border with nothing but a few pesos and a dream. ':eek:'

Post by **The Robman** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 7:08 pm

Now it's more like 60 people have forwarded it back to me, plus I'm starting to get PMs on it too, so I'd say this one's already passed the graduation. Ain't I the lucky one!

Post by **The Robman** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:11 pm

I found the user, his id was "root" and he had somehow made himself an administrator and was therefore able to use the admin-only "mass email" function.

I have since deleted that function from the admin panel.

Plus, I've now received 70 emails from kind souls letting me know about the spam.

greenough1 · Post by **greenough1** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:32 pm

Hi Rob,
Aren't you glad that I didn't forward it to you?

Best,
jeff

ecarlson · Post by **ecarlson** » Fri Mar 23, 2007 10:15 pm

I almost forwarded it to you too.

Capn Trips · Post by **Capn Trips** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 3:56 am

I'm still debating whether to forward it.

Rob, what's with the Mercado Libre spam in Spanish?

Rob, what's with the Mercado Libre spam in Spanish?

odd email from forums@hifi-remote.com?