Email harvester

April 18, 2002 8:19 PM

Email harvester poorly disguised as cute girl who started emailing her friends about great deals (and other interesting tidbits) that she found on the 'Net after she was laid off from her dot-com job. I can't believe anybody would fall for this, but I might just be angry about some one using such a nice name for evil.
posted by jennyb (24 comments total)

The whois info has the domain registered to:

Little Miss Jenny
chillin in the city of
San Francisco, CA 94401
Phone: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
posted by jennyb at 8:21 PM on April 18, 2002

...because no one would think that was a fake phone number...
posted by Lionfire at 8:32 PM on April 18, 2002

Damn my email is already there. Who else here has the email root@127.0.0.1? I thought I was the only one!
posted by plemeljr at 8:33 PM on April 18, 2002

Don't worry, jennyb, despite this spammer, you're still the cutest jenny online.

Golly, I'm shameless. Don't mind me it's the Ballantine typing.
posted by jonmc at 8:35 PM on April 18, 2002

I'm a sucker for a good looking girl so it's a good thing she doesn't have a picture on that site. Otherwise I'd be finding out how "YOU TOO CAN MAKE MILLIONS FROM HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1"
posted by jaden at 9:13 PM on April 18, 2002

What a shame. She's so wrapped up in the important business of sending out an e-mail once a day, she can't reply to me personally.

Did she reply to any of you personally? I'm so envious.

Bueller?

Bueller?
posted by dhartung at 9:29 PM on April 18, 2002

Though I don't doubt it's a harvester.... how do you know for sure? Because she gave a fake name/number to her registrar? I often wonder if people think my site is a harvester; it's info is about as vague as Jenny's and I gave fake info to the registrar also. (I assume anyone who doesn't want freaks showing up at their door does.)
posted by dobbs at 9:32 PM on April 18, 2002

I signed every body from Mefi up on her mailing list. Enjoy!

Just kidding
posted by MaddCutty at 9:39 PM on April 18, 2002

Hello, is this Jenny?
Tell her I will **** her and **** her with an extension cord.
What?
Yes, I'll hold.
posted by Settle at 9:50 PM on April 18, 2002

"6. How can I let you know what you think?"
(from faq)
brilliant question, jenny.
posted by catheter_cowboy at 9:52 PM on April 18, 2002

(I assume anyone who doesn't want freaks showing up at their door does.)

Oh, so you are too good for freaks? Anti-freak bastard!
posted by bargle at 9:59 PM on April 18, 2002

Oh, so you are too good for freaks? Anti-freak bastard!

hey, i get enough oddness in my email box and po box as it is. i don't mind the freaks. i just want to know when to expect them so i can get properly dressed.
posted by dobbs at 10:04 PM on April 18, 2002

You know, it would have been so easy for the whois info to instead use 867-5309 as Jenny's phone number, and I bet most people would believe it was real.
posted by mathowie at 10:06 PM on April 18, 2002

damn matt, THAT was funny
posted by plemeljr at 10:09 PM on April 18, 2002

Jennie's stats: Favorite colors: Red, white and blue. Go USA!

Yeah. Sounds just like all those laid-off SF women dotcommers. They all talk like Barbie.

(on preview: ha ha ha.
"Jenny I've got your number
I need to make you mine
Jenny don't change your number!"
AKA the stalker's anthem).
posted by RJ Reynolds at 10:12 PM on April 18, 2002

Actually, it's the jerkoff's anthem. I never got the impression the guy was actually going to do something drastic like use the number for anything other than a little mental stimulation while he, er....
posted by geneablogy at 11:06 PM on April 18, 2002

matt: You know, it would have been so easy for the whois info to instead use 867-5309 as Jenny's phone number...

Funny thing, that I CAN remember that number easily, but can't remember the number at my last apartment, where I lived for five years.

Did you know that 8675309 is a prime number?

I know this because the University of Tennessee at Martin, strategically located between Memphis and Nashville, has a whole subdomain about prime numbers!
posted by planetkyoto at 12:10 AM on April 19, 2002

I think this is related to the infamously evil CrushLink, because the e-mail I received came to the easily identifiable "[e-mail]."

I guess now we know who's interested in finding out if someone has a crush on them, don't we?
posted by nanette at 5:42 AM on April 19, 2002

Jennyb, do you want to explain to us what your role is in this site, if any? Unless she just added the visitor counter, it's really very low for it to be anything but a brand-new scam. So how, then, did you find out about it?
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:40 AM on April 19, 2002

Mo can't handle the truth.
posted by Sapphireblue at 9:54 AM on April 19, 2002

Never, in the history of the web, has a page counter contained inaccurate data. 'fess up, jennyb.
posted by ook at 11:11 AM on April 19, 2002

Jennyb, do you want to explain to us what your role is in this site, if any? Unless she just added the visitor counter, it's really very low for it to be anything but a brand-new scam. So how, then, did you find out about it?

Well, Mo, it's kind of a long story, but I'll be happy to tell you. I wanted to send a quick email to a friend regarding a meeting time for a GBV show in Athens. Rather than unpack and boot up my laptop, I just opened Outlook on my boyfriend's already running computer to send the email.

As I was composing the email to the friend, the normal tons of spam began to pour into the BF's spam-laden account. One of them had the name "Jenny" as the subject line.

Because it's always all about me, I thought, "Who the fuck is emailing my BF about me?" and went in for a closer look. Turns out it was an HTML email from jennyslist.com. The tone of the copy in the email ("Hey! Somebody gave me your name as someone who might be into my mailing list!") struck me as a smarmy marketing wonk attempting to fool lonely people into signing up for a bogus mailing list, so I went to the site.

I posted it because, after checking out the whois info, I thought it was kind of creepy that the people running the site were disguising their ad campaigns as independent web content and even thought the whole thing out thoroughly enough to put (sort of) humorous bogus whois info. It's like their disguises are getting better all the time.

I hope that exonerates me from any guilt you may have imagined.
posted by jennyb at 11:54 AM on April 19, 2002

My wife just got SEVEN copies of the above-mentioned e-mail sent to her private-domain e-mail account, to addresses like "5@...", "f@...", etc.
posted by tpoh.org at 3:48 PM on April 19, 2002

Ah, Jenny, please excuse my suspicions. They must have just put in the counter, either to mock those who visit and are not in the know, or to put smirks on the faces of those who visit and are.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:45 PM on April 19, 2002