nobody spotted "goatse security"? And here I was thinking I was read the inquirer.

...pretty much. Yes, on several sites. Different passwords, mostly. For several that don't much matter, it's... I'll say "powergen-italia", which it isn't.

Would another news website award me a FAIL icon for doing that?

@dan
spot on.

Actually, Robert, considering that your e-mail address is your username for a lot of services, and a lot of people use the username portion of their e-mail address as their username for other services, I'd say it's a big deal. Having a list of usernames is halfway home to breaking into any given password-based service. Now all you need is a dictionary list and you can start systematically checking those usernames/addresses against all sorts of sites.

Once again, problem is *allowed* by unlimited tries against a password system. (In this case, semi-random names.) Boy, did I get a wrong impression from movies of the 80's where computers had intrusion detection to alert on such multiple attempts.

By the way, some BIG names were snagged by this, though don't know that any have been bothered.

1. Sending e-mail.

2. Receiving e-mail.

3. HAVING an e-mail account, a name, and an Internet provider. (robert.carnegie@fictitious-example.com)

(It's an uncommon name, but there are at least half a dozen of us. If you're John Smith, you're spammed five seconds after someone registered the domain.)

4. Having an unsecured wireless network that reaches out to the street when Google Street View drives by. Until recently. So they claim.

Your e-mail address isn't a great secret.

What doesn't expose your e-mail address...

1. Having the word "spam" or "nospam" in your actual address. Some researcher noticed that you get filtered out of evil e-mail lists. It isn't worth the bad guys' trouble to figure it out.

2. Apparently .mil users are pretty safe too. (Same guy.)

"Ipad users exposed by AT&T security breach"

So they were caught with their pants down?

I suppose the guys who did this (being known as goatse) and the connotations their name invokes would see this title as a little ironic :)