[F0nage]

I added a few email accounts to my BlackBerry, they were never used before. Now I started getting the same spam on several accounts. The only place these accounts are all together is in RIM, nobody else has any way to connect them. It looks to me like RIM is selling information to spammers. Today I got 3 ads for BlackBerry handsets from the same spammer, on 3 different email accounts on my BB.

Anybody else experience this?

[dannylill1981]

i find this hard to believe, IF rim were selling e-mails to spammers it would hurt them a lot as theyd lose so much business, and tbh they dont need to sell your e-mail addresses as they make enough money as it is, have you thought it could be your operator/carrier???

[amazinglygraceless]

i find this hard to believe, IF rim were selling e-mails to spammers it would hurt them a lot as theyd lose so much business,

Not really given that (a) corporate and governmental entities are very reticent
to move to another platform as it is cost prohibitive and they would lose RIMs
"vaunted ) security and (b) the number of casual / consumer and
prosumers who run around prattling on about how "BB Rules," :BB for life," "I'll
never use anything other than a BB" they are solid for a lot of the wrong
reasons. Read: user bias and blind worship.

and tbh they dont need to sell your e-mail addresses as they make enough money as it is, have you thought it could be your operator/carrier???

This ignores one basic tenet of any for profit entity, enough money is good,
MORE money is supremely better. Secondarily, the carrier is in a more vulnerable
position. People will drop a carrier because of things like this in a blue minute. Most
would never consider the device manufacturer to be the culprit.

@F0nage: Keep us posted. I'd be very interested in what you find out.

[Snarfler]

I doubt RIM sold your email accounts to spammers. You said "they were never used before" but they must be used now or there' be no reason to check them from the BB. I don't expect you to post full details of the accounts and how you have used them but consider non "evil RIM" options, such as address leaks from whoever you emailed with those accounts, spyware on a pc you've used to set up or check those accounts, etc.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Tõnis]

It does seem like an experiment most of us could rather easily perform and report back with results. We could each set up 1-3 emails, add them to our blackberries, not use them, and see if we get spam. I probably have three I could set up (secondary addresses tied to my home cable).

One thing that does seem shady to me is that my primary home cable email address (the main one for the account) gets at least 3 spam emails a day. I don't even use that email address to write to anyone or receive emails. The other 5 secondary email addresses which are tied to that primary address/account (and which I do use all the time) never get spam.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[F0nage]

I doubt RIM sold your email accounts to spammers. You said "they were never used before" but they must be used now or there' be no reason to check them from the BB.

I don't "check them from BB" I added them to BB and used 2 of them, the 3rd I only mailed to myself to see if it worked and I added a product notification from a website through BIS browser.

I wouldn't have been too surprised to have spam on any *one* account. But even the *same* spam on 2 accounts I use from my BB is too much of a coincidence. Those two accounts are totally separate, not used for websites, etc.

I got 3 *identical* spam emails, even to the 3rd account which hasn't been used except to send one email? That's too much of a coincidence to be ignored. As far as I know, there is only one site where those email IDs are tied together, and that is on RIM.

The new account is on hotmail (live.com) in case anyone else notices something similar.

[pilsbury]

HIGHLY improbable. RIM prides itself on its security features, besides, if it were true can you imagine how many customers would run and how many future customers they would lose?

[i7guy]

Not really given that (a) corporate and governmental entities are very reticent
to move to another platform as it is cost prohibitive and they would lose RIMs
"vaunted ) security and (b) the number of casual / consumer and
prosumers who run around prattling on about how "BB Rules," :BB for life," "I'll
never use anything other than a BB" they are solid for a lot of the wrong
reasons. Read: user bias and blind worship.



This ignores one basic tenet of any for profit entity, enough money is good,
MORE money is supremely better. Secondarily, the carrier is in a more vulnerable
position. People will drop a carrier because of things like this in a blue minute. Most
would never consider the device manufacturer to be the culprit.

@F0nage: Keep us posted. I'd be very interested in what you find out.

This could be grounds for a class action lawsuit, unless one has opted-in.
As far as user bias, blind worship and vaunted security, tripped over this post on why all phones should be secured. Blackberrys with no change in software on the phone side, can go from unsecured to very secured by BES.

http://forums.crackberry.com/f2/i-lo...5/#post5092500

[aaron.e.fleming]

RIM prides itself on it's higher user end and server side security protocol. I highly doubt that they sold your email address to spammers.

[F0nage]

Improbable means nothing guys. All that matters is I got the same spam on 3 different accounts on my BB within 2 minutes of each other. There is nothing that ties these accounts together except RIM, they don't exist anywhere else grouped together.

Until I find a better reason, the facts strongly suggest, despite your doubts, that this is exactly what happened.

[Tõnis]

"It's not RIM that I would ask this question about. The way I would have phrased the question, is what information does the government collect when we make phone calls and use the internet"

Yes, but also ask: to what degree does the government subsidize "private" companies like RIM, Microsoft, Google, etc. thereby enlisting their help in the spying? I would guess to a substantial degree.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[rhoads00]

I just added anew email account the other day that was new and I haven't recieved any spam on it...

[GapBoyPCS]

I doubt RIM sold your email accounts to spammers. You said "they were never used before" but they must be used now or there' be no reason to check them from the BB. I don't expect you to post full details of the accounts and how you have used them but consider non "evil RIM" options, such as address leaks from whoever you emailed with those accounts, spyware on a pc you've used to set up or check those accounts, etc.

Pretty much what I was going to say.

The instances of spam I've receive are my fault - those emails from whom I'm not particular in what gets redirected to my device.

[Reed McLay]

If RIM were harvesting email address and selling them to SPAMers, most of us would be seeing SPAM on our BlackBerrys. The fact that your case is unique pretty well rules that out.

what information does the government collect when we make phone calls and use the internet" ...

Servers do two things, they host resources and they log events. Those logs are critical to the troubleshooting process and are backed up to off line media regularly. A record of every phone call and every IP packet exists somewhere.

However, the content of the call or packet passes through some number of servers but is never saved. Not even the most paranoid nations (Russia, India and China for example) have the resources needed to pull that off.

[mjbesen310]

yeah, you did something to receive those spam. they did not come from RIM

[Shao128]

Theres a very real possibility that an app you installed did this. As an example it was recently discovered that one developer (who is pretty much a scammer anyways) would have his apps send an email after you installed it (without the user knowing) and you would be signed up to his mailing list for "blackberry tips" and spam.

[dannylill1981]

@amazinglygraceless your statement is pretty much your opinion, as well as mine and I aint bashing you..., and if I read this thread right my opinions pretty much reflect everyone elses in this thread so far EXCEPT yours......... As has already been said this is more likely from a 3rd party app/carrier problem not rims.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[F0nage]

If RIM were harvesting email address and selling them to SPAMers, most of us would be seeing SPAM on our BlackBerrys. The fact that your case is unique pretty well rules that out.

Agreed. But without an explanation the circumstances point in the direction I stated. Plus, this just started happening now, so maybe it will happen to other people. That's why I posted. If someone else has the same situation it will help narrow it down.

However, the content of the call or packet passes through some number of servers but is never saved. Not even the most paranoid nations (Russia, India and China for example) have the resources needed to pull that off.

That is simply not true. Google is a good example what a public corporation can do. They have archived every usenet post almost since the beginning of usenet. Conversations, email, and other key data are almost always scanned and archived. It's no secret that there are several initiatives to do this. The resources to do this do exist, and we all paid for them.

Here's just one of hundreds of articles you can find online about the Verizon debacle back in 2006.
USATODAY.com - NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

[F0nage]

Theres a very real possibility that an app you installed did this. As an example it was recently discovered that one developer (who is pretty much a scammer anyways) would have his apps send an email after you installed it (without the user knowing) and you would be signed up to his mailing list for "blackberry tips" and spam.

That was the first thing I thought. I install very few apps and I always set the permissions based on what the app does. I usually deny USB, Bluetooth, location data, email, organizer data, security data. For Twitter apps I allow email so I can email Tweets.

The only other plausible suspect is MSN/Live.com. I did read somewhere that big email services like Yahoo and MSN do sell access past their spam filters but I can't find the article now. But I don't remember emailing myself from those 2 other accounts to my new live.com account, so I can't figure how all 3 accounts got the same spam at the same time. The odd thing is, the spam is clearly targeted...it was an ad for BlackBerry handsets. So it looks like they examined the email headers and saw the email was accessed by BIS.

It will be interesting to get to the bottom of this.

[grahamf]

I just want to say that, although it's been a while since I checked and it may be wrong, I'm pretty sure that selling email addresses to spammers would be against Canada's privacy laws.
EDIT: yep

The law gives individuals the right to:
know why an organization collects, uses or discloses their personal information;
expect an organization to collect, use or disclose their personal information reasonably and appropriately, and not use the information for any purpose other than that to which they have consented;
know who in the organization is responsible for protecting their personal information;
expect an organization to protect their personal information by taking appropriate security measures;
expect the personal information an organization holds about them to be accurate, complete and up-to-date;
obtain access to their personal information and ask for corrections if necessary; and
complain about how an organization handles their personal information if they feel their privacy rights have not been respected.

The law requires organizations to:
obtain consent when they collect, use or disclose their personal information;
supply an individual with a product or a service even if they refuse consent for the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless that information is essential to the transaction;
collect information by fair and lawful means; and
have personal information policies that are clear, understandable and readily available.

[_StephenBB81]

Improbable means nothing guys. All that matters is I got the same spam on 3 different accounts on my BB within 2 minutes of each other. There is nothing that ties these accounts together except RIM, they don't exist anywhere else grouped together.

Until I find a better reason, the facts strongly suggest, despite your doubts, that this is exactly what happened.

Are all 3 Accounts with the same provider?
I found that I opened a Hotmail account and yahoo account, both of them NEVER used but in 6 months they had more than 10-20 emails that I would call spam.

I have seen no spam on both my blackberry's lately.
I would inspect your carrier, and your email providers.

[F0nage]

No, all three accounts are on different providers, one is MSN (Live) the other two are private services I've had for a few years without any spam, I use them for my business and don't use the email addresses for any websites, etc. The point is, what ties them together?

The carrier should not be able to know what goes over the line, if I understand how BIS is supposed to work. Then again, I have six other email accounts registered on the phone and only 3 of 9 were spammed. So that suggests it's not the carrier. Nobody there can probably read English anyway.

Do you have a live.com account?

[F0nage]

I just want to say that, although it's been a while since I checked and it may be wrong, I'm pretty sure that selling email addresses to spammers would be against Canada's privacy laws.
EDIT: yep

No doubt it's illegal in most civilized countries. That doesn't stop it from happening though.

[dodger_moore]

This ignores one basic tenet of any for profit entity, enough money is good,
MORE money is supremely better. Secondarily, the carrier is in a more vulnerable
position. People will drop a carrier because of things like this in a blue minute. Most
would never consider the device manufacturer to be the culprit.

@F0nage: Keep us posted. I'd be very interested in what you find out.

I don't agree; in my opinion RIM would be risking a lot of good will for what I'm guessing would be a very insignificant contribution to their turnover. I'm sure I'm not being overly idealistic or naive either to think that dealing with spammers would go against the company's core values.

[Pi Guy 3.14]

To accuse that RIM sells emails addresses is just plain crazy talk.