Vonage customers get email spam

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 30, 2006 Posts: 1

I use a unique, specially-coded email address with every company I do business with, so if I start getting spam I can see which company played fast and loose with my info. This just happened with Vonage: I just got "Get rich quick" spam addressed to the special email address I used with Vonage, which I never shared with anyone else.

At this point it's unclear whether Vonage intentionally sold me out to spammers, or whether a hacker stole info from their customer database, probably the latter. But either way, Vonage was completely unconcerned when I called to tell them about this. As a result I will be canceling my Vonage service and will no longer promote them as an affiliate on my website.

Before you lunge for the Reply button, please note that this is a *completely different issue* than some Vonage affiliate promoting Vonage. What happened is that I got NON-VONAGE spam to my Vonage-only email address.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 7:14 am Post subject:

Yikes, that's not good.

I also encode special addresses. Checking today's inbox, I received one from my account created so Speakeasy broadband could notify me if and when they start service here (Speakeasy has apparently sold my name to GreatBigValues), and the address that my daily Dilbert cartoons and DNRC newsletter get delivered to. Plus the usual batch of guesses at names in one of my 5 domains, and the flood of spam to my already-compromised older account names.

So far, haven't seen anything to my Vonage address, but I'll keep a closer eye on that one. I have messages coming through the Vonage email tagged for easy identification now (thanks to my Gmail filters). Thanks for the heads-up.

Posts: 7 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 14, 2006 Posts: 7

I have not seen this occur with Vonage, but thanks for the warning.

One reason why I decided not to go with my cable company's Voip solution was that after I set up my cable modem and the five email addresses they offered me, I started receiving spam on them before I even told anyone what they were. Someone had either hacked into their site or some insider was selling email addresses. At least one account was somewhat nonstandard for a name generator to guess, so I am pretty sure they were given away either accidentally or on purpose. When I notified them of this, they did not seem to be at all concerned about this apparent security breach. After several years of total nonuse, they continue to receive nothing but spam.

Posts: 1424 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:43 am Post subject:

If you allow the possibility of an insider or hacker gaining access to your email address then it doesn't follow that Vonage must therefore be at fault.

Your email address travels through other machines and resides in mail servers for a time. Are you going to cancel your ISP as well?

If you don't host your own mail server, will you cancel your hosting service as well?

Heck, the DHS is monitoring all email, maybe they were the ones who leaked your address.

I suspect you were a victim of a randomly generated spam message. Does your email server respond to vrfy requests? Is your email address complex enough that it is unlikely to guess? (One of my current email addresses is over 25 characters long.)

Posts: 2251 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:51 am Post subject:

Please post the email headers.

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:53 am Post subject:

Well, that is true, I suppose, it wouldn't be that hard to generate if the email address is pretty obvious, and the domain is somewhat known.

I guess one way to be sure would be to change the Vonage email address on their website to something a lot more unique and hard to guess, and see if any spam starts filtering through on that address, too.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 07, 2006 Posts: 1

I also received spam messages at my Vonage-only email address (one two days ago, one today). There is no doubt this is spam (quote: "Earnings of 1500 to 3500 a day are attainable and I do it every single day. Why not call me to find out how"), but the headers only indicate this is coming from a probably compromised machine in China.

Interestingly, my Vonage-only email address is absolutely impossible to guess correctly (8 random letters and digits giving a less than 1-in-10-billion of a correct guess). Also, all emails I have received from Vonage in the past have gone directly from Vonage's servers to my mail service provider's servers. This indicates the disclosure of my Vonage email address can only have come from from Vonage, my mail service provider, or my own computers.

My computers are audited for security regularly, and they run the latest version of Mac OS X, which currently has no known virus, so it's unlikely that they are the cause of the breach. My mail service provider is Fastmail.fm, whose entire business is based on the reliability and security of their mail servers, and I have never heard a report of mail addresses being compromised through them, so they're unlikely to be the culprits.

That leaves Vonage as the party most likely to be responsible for the disclosure to a spammer. In addition to mbluejay's report and mine, I've found at least one other person who reports a Vonage email address disclosure at about the same time (see <http://michaelbluejay.com/consumer/phone.html>).

My question is, does this indicate a wholesale compromise of Vonage's customer database, and should we be worried about our other personal information, such as credit card numbers and expiration dates, falling into the wrong hands? Spammers often have ties to other criminals, so any information they would have access to would also be accissible by people who would know how to make illegal use of someone else's credit card number and such...

Posts: 2257 · Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject:

Well, if Vonage has disclosed the email address, then I somehow got missed. I have been a Vonage customer for a year now, and for the last week I've flagged any and all messages coming through on the address I've been using (the same address I've used all year). No sign of any spam yet.

I also haven't received any I know of for the last year to that account, but I haven't been watching too closely. I get a lot of spam on a daily basis. But, I think if one had made it through my Vonage account, I probably would have noticed.

Posts: 64 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 24, 2006 Posts: 64

I've been a Vonage customer for almost 3 years and have not noticed my e mail address to be compromised. BTW, I get no telemarketers on Vonage and when I had SBC, I did get telemarketing calls (I did not port the SBC number, got a new one from Vonage).

Does your e mail *really* go *directly* from Vonage to your ISP?

Here's an example of how many hops between me and Vonage. Any hop along the way has your e mail address and could compromise it....

Tracing route to 216.115.22.200 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.102.100
2 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.102.1
3 19 ms 13 ms 26 ms ip68-229-208-1.ok.ok.cox.net [68.229.208.1]
4 22 ms 18 ms 71 ms 68.12.10.49
5 21 ms 24 ms 29 ms mtc3dsrj01-ge704.rd.ok.cox.net [68.12.14.21]
6 31 ms 26 ms 27 ms so-1-1-0-0.gar1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.78.232.1]

7 36 ms 22 ms 24 ms ae-12-51.car2.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.68.122.14]
8 28 ms 21 ms 25 ms te-7-4.wch010.dllstx2.Level3.net [4.68.110.14]
9 28 ms 21 ms 56 ms 64.200.249.129
10 34 ms 25 ms 44 ms hstntx1wcx3-pos1-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.210.66]

11 31 ms 35 ms 28 ms hstntx1wcx2-pos6-0.wcg.net [64.200.186.77]
12 53 ms 51 ms 58 ms drvlga1wcx2-pos12-0.wcg.net [64.200.240.78]
13 54 ms 75 ms 57 ms hrndva1wcx3-pos14-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.210.23
8]
14 53 ms 56 ms 55 ms hrndva1wcx2-pos4-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.89.121]

15 64 ms 64 ms 62 ms nycmny2wcx2-pos1-0-oc192.wcg.net [64.200.210.177
]
16 60 ms 74 ms 60 ms nycmnyzlce1-pos5-0.wcg.net [64.200.68.34]
17 62 ms 70 ms 90 ms nycmnyzlrs1-vonage-3-2-0.wcg.net [64.200.81.154]

18 * * * Request timed out.
19 75 ms 80 ms 62 ms 216.115.22.200

Trace complete.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 24, 2006 Posts: 1

I found this post researching the spam I started receiving to my dedicated Vonage email account within one day of signing up for Vonage.

I realize that there are many potential ways for an email address to be compromized, but out of all of the companies I have given an email address to, this is the first time I have recevied spam on any of these accounts. The fact that it happened so soon after registration is very suspicious.