Wikivoyage talk:User email help

Chimney Rock spamming
Archived from the Pub:

I've got the following message to the email address I've published at my user page:
 * From: Laura Essay [settlers@praiSPAMBLOCKFORTHISDISCUSSIONrieweb.com]
 * Under the information about Chimney Rock, you have forgotten to mention that great little gift shop,souvenit shop, snack shop, campground that right there. It is located 1 tenth of a mile before you actually get to the rock.  It is a great place that deserves to be mentioned.  For more information go to: (snip)
 * Thanks

Is the same was sent to many others, I think the addresses were collected by a bot, not manually. Is there any meaningful way of preventing that? Actually, this is the second or third case of email like this (previous were about other articles I also never contributed to).

Normally I don't worry about publishing my email address, as I have efficient spam filters. But I'm not sure this one was very mass :-) --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 10:40, 6 April 2007 (EDT)


 * So, question: was that message sent to several others? It seems like an unlikely thing to make a spam bot for. There's (obviously) no way for anyone to get your email address from Wikivoyage unless you put it on your user page. My guess is that this was more of an innocent mistake than a concerted spamming effort. --(WT-en) Evan 11:05, 6 April 2007 (EDT)


 * Yes, first question is whether it was sent to anyone else here. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 12:34, 6 April 2007 (EDT)


 * I didn't get anything. It looks like just confusion on the part of a user - I occasionally get emails telling me that some information is wrong on an article, blasting me for missing information about a place, asking for vacation ideas, etc.  I think people are just clicking on one of the names at the bottom of a page and then using the "email this user" link, so this sort of thing is fairly harmless. -- (WT-en) Ryan &bull; (talk) &bull; 12:40, 6 April 2007 (EDT)