07.29.07
Update on Acunetix
A few days ago i posted about how a unique email address i created for signing up to acunetix.com started to receive a large volume of spam. As i wrote that article, i also mailed the company to complain, also cc:ing their upstream provider.
I looked through the original mail from Acunetix, and it came from the IP address: 213.165.181.136, which appears to be a cable provider in Malta. I then looked through my web logs, and low and behold:
213.165.181.136 – – [27/Jul/2007:11:16:27 +0100] “GET /wordpress/2007/07/27/acunetixcom-sells-your-mail-address-to-spammers/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2605 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5”
213.165.181.136 – – [27/Jul/2007:15:13:51 +0100] “GET /wordpress/2007/07/27/acunetixcom-sells-your-mail-address-to-spammers/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2605 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5”
213.165.181.136 – – [27/Jul/2007:15:16:00 +0100] “GET /wordpress/2007/07/27/acunetixcom-sells-your-mail-address-to-spammers/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2605 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5”
213.165.181.136 – – [27/Jul/2007:15:42:51 +0100] “GET /wordpress/2007/07/27/acunetixcom-sells-your-mail-address-to-spammers/ HTTP/1.1” 200 2605 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5”
213.165.181.136 – – [27/Jul/2007:15:43:00 +0100] “GET /wordpress/2007/07/ HTTP/1.1” 200 7811 “http://www.ev4.org/wordpress/2007/07/27/acunetixcom-sells-your-mail-address-to-spammers/” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5”
So interesting… They have viewed my site using several different computers, my guess is several employees of the company. However, they have not replied to my mail… They haven’t yet tried to deny selling their customers’ email addresses. It does look very much like they’re trying to lay low having been caught out.
Nick Galea said,
July 30, 2007 at 9:56 am
Dear Bert,
I am not sure how you got the idea that our company sells email addresses. Our company does no such thing. Our website has been independently verified as “safe” by Mcafee Siteadvisor (http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/acunetix.com) This service checks that email addresses are not re used. (see top part of report)
I think you must have made a mistake (used it several times), or else the email address you created must have been guessed by a spammer. Spammers use things like Directory harvesting so its quite easy for them to do that.
Before you slander a company and make false allegations, please get sufficient proof and become aware of latest spamming techniques.
If you have any further questions dont hestitate to contact me.
Nick Galea
CEO Acunetix Ltd.