Re: TLG GREATFN - unauthorized $8.99 credit card charge

In article <vqvpe159m4pj90p5l04g9bkm9r7050kg7k@xxxxxxx>,
Scott en Aztl?n <scottenaztlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Sun, 31 Jul 2005 07:35:51 -0400, Shawn Hirn <srhi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> >In article <fn3oe19u06gc1p0euf2vche3m4ucjqdtd4@xxxxxxx>,
> > Scott en Aztl?n <scottenaztlan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >> On 30 Jul 2005 13:29:17 -0700, "dmer" <dmer0324@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> >If you have an entry on your cc statement similar to this:
> >> >
> >> >---> TLG GREATFN ...800-285-5903 CT MAIL/PHONE $8.99
> >> >
> >> >It most likely is an unauthorized $8.99 credit card charge. TLG GREATFN
> >> >(www.greatfunonline.com) or its affiliates may have mislead you and is
> >> >charging your credit card!!! Lately people have been unknowingly
> >> >charged. TLG is Trilegiant at www.trilegiant.com. Don't let them
> >> >slowly syphon money from your credit card account!!! TLG is a parent
> >> >of cheaptickets.com and many others.
> >>
> >> This may or may not be related, but I've noticed a resurgence of SPAM
> >> sent to an email address I used *exclusively* for TheTrip.com (now a
> >> part of CheapTickets.com). Now, maybe some SPAMmers hacked a website
> >> to get this address... Or maybe this TLG company is just a gigantic
> >> oozing bag of sleaze.
> >
> >There's a third option, and its most likely the correct one. The
> >spammers may simply be sending out emails to fairly random sets of
> >characters to the server where your email account resides. Any grade
> >school kid could write a perl script of VB script to do this kind of
> >thing in about five minutes.
>
> How long do you suppose it would take to brute force your way through
> all possible combinations of 14 alphanumeric characters? Do you think
> any SPAMmer has the attention span?

Are you kidding? All you need is a tiny piece of software to run through
the different combinations of alphanumeric characters. Such a program
would take no more than a second to run on a reasonably equipped PC. You
then feed the output file into your spam software and away you go! A
long attention span is not required.
.

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