Spammer Impersonates The Bloglines Team

Over the weekend, a few individuals, including some of us who work on Bloglines, reported receiving Spam from Bloglines. It was a surprise for us and the few other Blogliners who also received the emails. While the total number of emails sent appear to be small less than 1,000, we think it’s serious enough to address because the spammer impersonated official Bloglines correspondence.

The Event

Emails were sent recommending several posts on a Chinese Blog via the “send a post to a friend” feature on Bloglines. The email ended with a signature from “The Bloglines Team.” The emails were not sent by anyone associated with the Bloglines Team.

The Actions Taken

We monitored our logs and suspended the spammer’s IP address restricting their usage of Bloglines. In addition, on Monday 11/19/07, we briefly shut down the “send email” feature on Bloglines to further monitor the situation.

FYI

Bloglines sends out email to our subscribers for purposes specific to operating Bloglines (registration verification, change password, change of terms of service and other policies, significant product announcements, etc) Most product announcements can be found on the Bloglines News Feed. We take your privacy carefully and will protect our customers from spam.

Take Care.

-Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team