How Counter-Strike Map Credits Led to Email Harvesting and Forced Blackholing in 2002
By
semyonsh
Plain bagel done well. Pleasantly substantive.
Summary
The author recounts a personal story from 2002 about how his email address ([email protected]) was harvested by worms due to being credited in Counter-Strike map files, leading to massive spam volumes that threatened his broadband account termination. He had to ask his ISP to blackhole his primary email address to prevent the account from being shut down, highlighting early internet security challenges and the unintended consequences of online recognition.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledIn my own experience, it's not particularly often that you find yourself asking your email provider to blackhole your primary, personal email address.
To find an available 2-letter username that was vaguely similar to 'Dave' felt lucky.
How Counter-Strike map credits led to my email address being harvested by worms, and why I had to ask my ISP to blackhole it.
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