About Mobileme MobileMe is Apple’s “Exchange for the rest of us”. The product allows users to sync email, calendars, and other files between multiple devices.
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Posted on: 2008-08-22
I guess I’m unclear about how Mobileme is publishing the list…. what they are publishing is a method to test for usernames, but that doesn’t mean this is crawl-able. Spammers will shotgun-send emails to every username they think might exist, without any ability to test.
So, I don’t see how Apple is publishing a “list” exactly, or how one could write a ‘crawler’ in the common-sense use of the word.
Jen, You guys do a great job for PR but what about customer satisfaction. what do you do when the end user is not happy and can't find anyone who will listen. spam is spam regardless of how you package it.
listen you moroooooooooon's Do you understand how much the value of an email address increases when you know that there is a user at the other end? I am going to explain this once in the comments here, instead of replying to every person in the thread here who has said the same thing you did and who doesn’t see what has actually happen here.
* In standard spam, the spammer would send to random usernames at a certain domain. Most common webmail providers now detect this easily and block it off.
* For the spam that does make it though, the spammer would include a tracking image (now also blocked by default in most email clients), or an opt-out link. The reason why they do this is because they then know that it is not only a valid email, but a LIVE email address.
* Out of tens of thousands of random emails a spammer would send or harvest, they might get ONE or TWO live addresses out of it.
NOW
this apple vulnerability - which is BASIC DESIGN COMMON SENSE, that hundreds of other applications CLOSED OFF YEARS AGO allows a spammer to PASSIVELY check if the user is valid or not. They dont need to send an email, they dont need a tracking image, they dont even need to worry about the email client. Instead they can HARVEST *EVERY VALID MAC.COM USER* because of this completely ridiculous oversight.
This error IS a privacy leak and no matter how you argue it including a live username in the URL which tells you if the username is live and valid or not is NOT OK.
Mobileme has done it. @sam, c’mon. this is bad. as if MobileMe didn’t have enough problems, but to make such an easy privacy mistake is just more crap piled on it.
yes, spammers can get emails & most of us get spammed everyday, but this is the kind of newbie security mistake that undermines the MM service.
you gotta ask yourself: if they made this simple of a mistake, what else are they missing — and what else am i exposing myself to if i join? phishing, etc…. i’m definitely less confident in a service that’s been slammed already.
& as for “no one complaining” or blaming Mike for raising a stink — well, that’s what he’s supposed to do & though i don’t agree with MA on everything, this time he nailed it.
apple’s got some great products (i love my iphone) but this is one of those CS101 mistakes that make you go HUH? Letting iphone app vendors jump to the top of the list with special characters was another noobie mistake.
Spam made easy, wow this is the great for some of you out there. this post might even be placed in the positive but spam is spam. Apple is making it really easy with this mobileme shit to spam the world.
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