Job Discussion Forums

[Kurochan]

About a week ago, I started getting all these e-mails in Chinese. They've contained stuff like, "Falun Gong cures SARS," "SARS is a form of ebola," "secret information about ..... (I couldn't understand it). I just got another one about old people's psychological problems, that I think also has something to do with Falun Gong. They're these weird, really long screeds. The url ends in "china.gov," but of course it has to be bogus. Usually they come with the username Homeway or Gogo.

Has anybody else gotten these? Why am I getting them? Could I get in trouble for getting them? I mean, because of my username it should be obvious that I'm not Chinese, so is some disgruntled person sending them to me because they want me to get in trouble? Or, did I just end up on some sort of spam mailing list?

[Joe C.]

You probably ended up on a spam mailing list. It's not terribly difficult to harvest e-mails of a Chinese ISP.

These Falun Da Fa spams have often originated from the US, but now are coming from Taiwan.

I guess you could, theoretically, get in trouble if they were found on your computer. Practically speaking, though, you'd have to be terribly unlucky.