Autoresponder Fraud Alert

13 December 2002

Several groups in England have been blasting out hundreds of thousands of emails which appear to be garden-variety spam. They are not. What they are trying to do is get back autoresponder messages -- especially those which indicate that the person is on vacation and will return at some specific time in the future.

They then take those autoreplies, correlate them with public information that ties ones email address to their name and street address, and then drive up to an empty house/office, stealing everything in it.

If you are going to use autoresponder messages at all, keep them very generic. Indicate only that the incoming email has been received and that you will answer shortly. DO NOT indicate that you are on vacation or that you are not at home/in your office. The same holds true for telephone voice answering machine messages.

Remember, 99 percent of your security involves you not doing ignorant things to compromise your safety. In fact, if you really want to read a good book about how some of the seemingly innocuous things you do everyday without thinking about them can come back and bite you, get a copy of "The Art Of Deception" by Kevin Mitnick. You will be amazed at how he used simple pieces of information to crack into people's computer systems.

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