Telstra Denies Selling BigPond Customers' Data

Red Wolf writes "The Age reports that allegations that Telstra sells email addresses of BigPond customers have been denied by the telco. Melbourne-based IT worker Mark Edwards had doubts in this direction when he began receiving unusually large amounts of spam at his bigpond email address. Edwards grew suspicious because some of the spam being issued to him was also addressed only to a number of users within the bigpond.com domain, indicating that the unsolicited mass emailings were being sent to lists of BigPond users."

Comments

Who didn't buy names from them?!

[Ignominious Poltroon]

I sure as heck bought a few. I've got some Jones, some Smith, you name it. It's like having a friggin phone book, but it costs a lot more.

Re:Telsta's ADSL Monopoly

[The Original Yama]

Here's a more recent story (dated today). Telstra are the Microsoft of Australia.

Telstra Information Minister Denies All

[DrMrLordX]

There are no email lists being sold! There is no spam in the mailboxes of bigpond accounts! Do not believe the infidels! The glorious Telstra corporation will triumph!

Telstra's response

[The Original Yama]

"We didn't sell it, we bartered it!"

Why not ask the other addressees

[cyril3]

You have a list of all the other receivers in the header. So why don't you send an email to all of them asking if they are receiving a lot more unsolicited email recently. Forward the one you got as an example. I'm sure they will be pleased to hear from you.

Maybe you can offer to sell them a filter.

Oh, i see you have already done that. twice.

make that three , no four times

Umm, what's this one about penises say.

Why would I want to shrink my penis?

Re:It could be a staff member

[Anonymous Coward]

How can anyone have such bad morale?

Clearly, you have never worked in a call center... :)

Re:Poorly configured mail servers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's right, typical behaviour of poorly configured or poorly implemented mail servers.

Recent mail servers do not show that behaviour - but instead, this one:

%telnet bastardface.com 25
RCPT TO: <aardvark@bastardface.com>
550 Address unknown locally - dialing directory assitance
555 Directory assistance!
555 Where you looking for:
555 [bagels@bastardface.com]
555 [bandrews@bastardface.com]
555 [bandrex@bastardface.com]
555 [bangels@bastardface.com]
555 [banjojoe@bastardface.com]
(...)
555 or use [all-b@bastardface.com]
555 to send mail to all accounts
555 starting with the letter [b]

Looks like we need better mail servers that are just more userfriendly