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Update to members: recent spam emails claiming to be us

Hi all,

As some of you will be aware a number of members received spam emails today that reference Wired Sussex, as it appears email addresses have been scraped from the public facing business directory part of our website.

I just wanted to take a moment to apologise for the inconvenience this may have caused you and to also let you know about the additional security measures we are looking to introduce across the site.

It appears these emails originate from India and unfortunately now the addresses have been stolen there is little we can do to stop them making contact with our members.

However, we are looking at putting additional security steps on the website directory to at least make it harder for others to scrape the site moving forward.

Currently, we do obfuscate the addresses so they can’t easily be scraped: e.g. this page: http://www.wiredsussex.com/directory/company.asp?c=CUR3ES&tab=Contact

appears as:
<a href="mailto:cur3e@y&#
7;hoo.com">cur3e&#
4;yahoo.com</a></a>

which displays on the website as: cur3e@yahoo.com

To make it harder still we are looking at sending the email addresses via AJAX once the contact tab is clicked, which would stop them being read from the page source.

However, given enough time and effort someone will find a workaround on how to get the email addresses. Unfortunately, as the data is on public pages (and needs to remain so) it will never be infallible, as we don’t want to limit access to the search engines for SEO reasons and the benefits this provides member companies with their search rankings.

We are also looking at introducing a google captcha before the email addresses can be viewed, but again this is a deterrent not an absolute fix.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the issue please feel free to contact me directly on kieron@wiredsussex.com or 01273 692888 to discuss.

Please note, I’ve pasted a copy of the spam email below, which isn’t malicious in nature, but more likely intended for data capture to generate marketing leads.

Thanks for your time & apologies for the annoyance this may have caused you today.

Best,
Kieron


Greetings for the day,

We're happy to inform you that we released a business client's list across the world for “Wired Sussex Directory”. Would you be interested to sell your products/services as per your required location? If you are interested, please let me know the below format and I can get you list of clients with their company name, contact name, job title, phone number, e-mail addresses and much more information as per your requirement.

Kindly reply with your targeted market, target title and target geography (where you want to expand your business) below format so that we can take it forward.

Target Industry: ______________

Target Location: _______________

Target Job Title: _______________

Look forward to your response.

It would be GREAT if you could reply at the earliest!

Thanks and Best Regards,

Carol Burnett

Marketing Manager

Other Industries: - Oil & Gas, Energy & Utility, Health Care, Transportation, IT Security, Manufacturing, Finance, Insurance, Food & Beverage, Hospitality, Publishing and Printing, Semiconductors, Security Etc.

P Please consider the environment - do you really need to print this email?

P Please consider the environment - do you really need to print this email?

About the author

Kieron Cropper

Hi, I'm Head of Member Services at Wired Sussex. I help our members get the most from their membership, whether that’s the benefits of joining or you’re an existing member in need of advice.

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