Comments on: UNLA Pump and Dump Spam

By: Ted Valentine

Ted Valentine — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:51:02 +0000

Vanguard customer a long long time. Have NOT received any of that spam.

Its a mystery.

By: Thomas in PA

Thomas in PA — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 14:51:09 +0000

I have accounts with Vanguard, yes, and received bulk emails with uber-praise for UNLA stock.
Possibly could have been a couple other financial organizations as well that leaked; I don’t know definitively. I use one dedicated email address for sensitive financial information only, coming from about 4 institutions, including Vanguard and Fidelity, and this is what has been compromised. Thank you for pointing out the possible leaking source.

By: mcspel09

mcspel09 — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:16:45 +0000

Yep, got 2nd one today. Thanks for info share – particularly Vanguard’s canned response. Sent to work address with contact limited to a few including Vanguard, Schwab, AmEx, AT&T & Experian. Finance spam – probably Vanguard or Schwab. May setup dedicated contact address for just Vanguard.

By: TFB

TFB — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:11:36 +0000

I expected no more than a canned reply from Vanguard to my inquiry. They matched my expectation. Here’s the reply:

“Thank you for contacting us about this matter.

Vanguard takes this issue very seriously, and is investigating it
thoroughly. We have not found any compromise of Vanguard’s security
systems, but will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Malicious software is prevalent on the internet. It is possible that your
internet service provider or your PC could have been compromised. Please
check to make sure that your anti-virus software is current and your
firewall is active.

For more information on Vanguard’s security precautions and
recommendations, please visit:

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/help/SecurityCenterOverviewContent.jsp“

By: AJ

AJ — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:08:34 +0000

I don’t think I am a vanguard customer unless they are partnered with fidelity investments. However I have received the same messages the past weeks and today’s email prompted me to investigate who UNLA is. The email addy they send to is my work email. I never associate my work email with any personal forums or follow up contacts, so I’m puzzled as to how I started getting these emails. I’m just going to mark them as JUNK email.

By: Another spammed vanguard customer

Another spammed vanguard customer — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:18:22 +0000

I am also a Vanguard customer and have received 2 spams now for UNLA, on 3/31/10 and 4/5/10. I have my own domain that nobody else uses, which is hosted on my own server that nobody else has access to, and the address was specific to Vanguard (but didn’t contain ‘Vanguard’ in the name) and never used for any other companies or email interactions. I’ve been using this setup for more than 5 years, and I have never seen dictionary attacks to random email addresses. The only spam I see is to addresses that were made public, or addresses that were used with just one company but got into the hands of spammers somehow (rare, but it does happen occasionally).

I sent Vanguard a secure message a few days ago, including the email with full headers, and they sent me a form letter that said “sorry for any difficulty” and “your message has been sent to the appropriate departments for review”. It looked like an auto-generated response, since it didn’t mention any of the details I provided. I responded asking for more of a response and an explanation, but haven’t heard back from them yet.

By: Random Poster

Random Poster — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:40:43 +0000

Vanguard customer (for about 9 years), but did not receive the e-mails.

By: Stuart

Stuart — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 05:35:27 +0000

I’m not a Vanguard customer and I did not receive the spam, although I’m subscribed to more stock related services than I should probably be.

By: TFB

TFB — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:26:57 +0000

I sent a secure e-mail to Vanguard and asked them to investigate. I suggest you do the same if you are also affected.

By: nickel

nickel — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:13:54 +0000

I have 14 messages related to UNLA in my spam folder in the date range of March 17th-30th. Yes, I am a Vanguard customer, and yes, I use that address with them (though I use it a lot of other places, too).