Got spam to launchpad-only email address, can this be prevented?

Hi Mike,

What kind of emails are you receiving? General spam or other Launchpad emails like bug mails or question mails?

Thanks!

Úrsula

I got a single spam that was unrelated to launchpad sent to my launchpad-only email address.

Sometimes spammers try emailing every possible combination of words automatically on any SMTP host they can reach. In general, Launchpad doesn't publish your address anywhere, especially since you are hiding your email address (and even if you are not, it's shown only to logged in users).

If there is a publically accessible page which lists your email address on launchpad.net, please let us know and we'll fix it.

I have also received spam at an address that *I have never given to anyone other than launchpad*. There is no way they could have randomly guessed this address.

This is the email message that was sent (by bcc) to my launchpad address:

===

Dear Partner,

I guess this letter may come to you as surprise since I had no previous correspondence with you.

I am the Chairman of the Electoral Commission Ghana (EC). I got your contact in my search for a reliable person to handle a very confidential transaction involving the transfer of the sum of $14.500.000 Dollars (Fourteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) the above fund is not connected with arms, drugs or money laundering. It is the product of an over invoiced contract awarded in 2008 by (EC) to a foreign company for the supply of electoral materials that were used for conducting the 2008 elections.

The contract has long been executed and payment of the actual contract amount has been made to the foreign contractor leaving the balance of $14.5 million which my colleagues and I now want to transfer out of Ghana into a reliable foreign account for our personal use.

As civil servants we are not allowed to run foreign accounts.
Hence we have chosen to front and support you as the beneficiary to this funds. If you are interested in the proposal kindly get back to me by sending me your letter of acceptance along with your direct telephone and fax numbers, we have decided to share the money in the following percentage, 60% for us 30% for you the account owner and 10% for all local and international expenses that may arise in the course of this transaction. Further details about this transaction will be discussed in subsequent correspondence.

Note also that the particular nature of your business is irrelevant to this transaction and this transaction is expected to be concluded within 5 working days since all local contacts and arrangements are in place for a smooth and successful conclusion of this transaction.

Contact me via email with your contact telephone and fax numbers, so that I can call you for a discussion.

Thank you as I await your response.

yours faithfully,
Dr.Kwadwo Afari

Yeah, the problem is that someone can register for an account and then just scrape email addresses from user info. I got a message this morning after signing up yesterday with a spamgourmet address that it would be a very large coincidence for it to have been guessed just the day after I generated it during my registration.

I'd suggest that the email address on the user info page could be protected by a CAPTCHA at the least, or else by only allowing email to be sent to users via the site itself?

If you don't want authenticated Launchpad users to be able to see your email address, you can hide it at <https://launchpad.net/~/+edit>.

Good call, thanks for that tip.

I read another question after this one, though, that suggests in probably got forwarded to another mailing list (ubuntu) that doesn't protect the email address anyway.