SPAM...and I'm not talkin meat in a can!

[flying_silverad]

Okay...which one of you guys contacted the Spam Foundation of America and told them I should get at least 75 spam e-mails a day?

This is getting rediculous!
Anybody got any recommendations for some free downloadable software for blocking this stuff.
I spend more more time every day adding names and e-mail addresses to the block list but I think these guys just turn around and change their name every day!

Any ideas?

 

[huxley]

My ISP (xmission.com) has many free tools that help me. I can put rules, black & white lists...

Mozilla Firefox is good at those pesky popup windows too!

I can also add rules in MS Outlook Express - What do you use to read your email?

Good luck!

(it wasn't me who told!! :Þ )

 

[rstaff3]

The worst are the African-originated spam saying how I just inherited $25M and all I need to do to claim it is to give my ssn, bank account number, etc. These come with all types of names, subjects, email addresses, etc, and seem to be the hardest to block.

 

[flying_silverad]

Originally posted by rstaff3
The worst are the African-originated spam saying how I just inherited $25M and all I need to do to claim it is to give my ssn, bank account number, etc. These come with all types of names, subjects, email addresses, etc, and seem to be the hardest to block.

Yep...I get about 2 of those a day. I wish there was a national do not spam list like there is for the phone.

 

[hokkyokusei]

On my yahoo account (a much maligned service) I get several hundred spam emails/day, but yahoo filters out all but 2 or 3.

Without changing to a new account, you could try a new email client such as thunderbird, which can be trained to deal with spam:

https://www.nidelven-it.no/articles/introduction_to_thunderbird_5

 

[flying_silverad]

I will say that i do have a (an) email filter. It's called the Spam folder or Junk folder. But you still have to go throught the darn thing or risk a new customer's e-mail.

 

[wwattles]

I'd recommend you look for an add-on program that employs internet blacklists, as well as a Bayesian filter. The blacklists compare the source of the e-mail against a remotely maintained list of known bad sources.

The Bayesian filters are a lot more powerful. They start with a basic "spam" definition, and with each and every spam message you send through them, they refine their definition of spam to meet yours. Same thing if you get a ham (non-spam) message that is incorrectly classified as spam. They also use the internet black lists to rate an e-mail as more likely to be spam, but not necessarily. So if a customer also happens to be on a spam blacklist, his order may still get through if it doesn't have enough of the other characteristics of your program's spam definition.

Personally, I use a program that has been learning for about 9 months now, and out of the 240-250 e-mails I get per day, about 235 are spam, and last week it let 7 spams through and mis-identified 0 hams. Unfortunately, the software company was bought out and shut down by Yahoo. There are, however, quite a few other programs out that have this kind of technology - the key phrase to look for is "Bayesian filter."

WW

 

[AKPilot]

You know, from all of those Nigerian and UK lottery e-mails I've received I figure my net worth is somewhere around $60,000,000!!!

 

[hokkyokusei]

Originally posted by akpilot
You know, from all of those Nigerian and UK lottery e-mails I've received I figure my net worth is somewhere around $60,000,000!!!

Is that all?!

BTW anyone else get that one from the relatives of a Nigerian Cosmonaut alegedly orbiting in a secret Soviet Salyut station since the late 80s. The plan is to use part of his back pay to pay the Russians $20M to fetch him back down. Naturally, you get to keep the balance of his back pay...

 

[rstaff3]

The Vatsaas bros reply to one of these:

https://www.vatsaas.org/rtv/misc/mail5.aspx

 

[Hospital_Rocket]

Lets see...

Today I got 81,655 spam messages as of 2;15EST. Granded my inbound content filters bagges 98% of them and the mail scanner killed the attachments on the rest.

Still, I wonder how many legitimate mail messages we had to kill.

 

[dr wogz]

I get a lot of those pesky 'Cialis' ads, and other 'male enhancements' spams. Also are teh 'daily promotions' form free diner cards, Target cards, etc. (and they always only apply to the USA, despite we being a 'global community')

Also, always a 'free' something or other from some promotions company. Trouble is, that they adhere to teh US 'spam bill' but the reply to 'remove' usually goes nowhere.. Also just proves that 'this' e-mail addy is valid. They provide contact details, yet never a phone numnber. Wonder why?!

Spammers are scum, and shoudl be all shot on sight. Even the ones who give interviews to 60 minutes & such. Their adresses shodul be posted so we all can send them the crap we get.

Now, let's start talking about mall-ware, those spybots & adbots that are now becomming the 2nd biggest menace to infect our PCs, next to viruses...

Notice some spam is comming with gibberish at the bottom of teh e-mail? A slew of words strung together to help foil teh spam assasin reports...

get:
ad-aware from lavasoft,
Spysweeper from webroot
and there are others..

 

[sunward]

I find hotmail to be the worst. I have hotmail email addresses that were never given out but get losts of spam.

Never post your email address on a news group or on the web - use a fake or throw away acount.

Have your valid email address contain the word "spam" as this throws off web bots.

I find reporting using spamcop will reduce the amount of spam.

Never reply to spam.

If your are using Windows XP, have visitors ( children ) use an account other than yours when browsing.

 

[Rocketjunkie]

I've found the easiest and most effective way is manual.
Download all the headers. While holding the control key, select all the spam entries. Then hit delete key.
Only then do I allow the display of message content.

 

[Pippen]

I had a spam problem with Hotmail but I was vigalent in blocking them for about six weeks and for the past year it's very rare that I get any. One came through recently and I couldn't even remember the last one.

I use a private email account for friends, family and people I know in person and two hotmail accounts for everything else. I had the private account for three years before any spam came through but recently the unsavory sort has started arriving so I'm going to switch addresses.

Now these email forwards are another story. I am sorry to say the only person who abused this and wouldn't quit and finally had to be blocked was...my dad.

 

[rabidsheeep]

i use two different emails for everything, my gmail is what i use for trusted stuff and my hotmail for things that might be spam (sites i sign up for, tournament or gaming ladders)

last i checked there were 400+ messages coming to the hotmail one weekly... sometimes i pop in and delete everything to not fill up the inbox

 

[AKPilot]

Maybe one of our Aussie friends could clarify, but didn't the guys the started this whole Nigerian scam get caught (through mac address trace), and get fined a very large sum?

I guess what's really sad, is that statistically this scam is working for the idiots . . . someone's falling for it, somewhere.

 

[thomasrau]

First check if your ISP or Webhost (wherever your email is coming from) have any sort of spam filters you can activate. I can't help you with a free anti-spam program but I can tell you that Giant's Spam Inspector works very well, sadly Giant was bought out by microsoft and only their anti-spyware product is still available. I have it installed on my system and the majority of spam from my ISP mail accounts gets caught. My other accounts are on a server that has spam and virus checking and very little gets through that. I have the server configured to just add [SPAM] to the subject then my email client just dumps it into a spam folder which I check from time to time to make sure no legitimate email got snagged.

 

[sandman]

The spam-guard on my Yahoo account has been working very well and does stop "most" spam.

The occational Viagra ad does get through but I can usually spot them right away.

I average about 25 a day.

My record so far has been 683 "Bulk Mail" messages.

Unfortunately it won't save them forever and it does occasionally delete them all...well, almost all of them.

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by flying_silverad
Okay...which one of you guys contacted the Spam Foundation of America and told them I should get at least 75 spam e-mails a day?

This is getting rediculous!
Anybody got any recommendations for some free downloadable software for blocking this stuff.
I spend more more time every day adding names and e-mail addresses to the block list but I think these guys just turn around and change their name every day!

Any ideas?

You have your email address on your web site.
Bad idea. Whether as an active link, or text buried in HTML, it's a bad practice.

Spammers scan for these, just as Google scans for everything. They filter out email addresses, collect and share them. There's no hope for it -- that address is polluted. The father of one of our regulars is head of security at Nortel. He regularly checks an email address he hasn't used for many years. It's still getting spam (which compimises 80% of the traffic coming into his company, as he testified before the FTC). In fact we met while spam fighting many years ago (the Canter & Siegel "green card" spam).

If you want people to see your email address, create a graphic with it. It won't be an active link. They'll have to type it in. Explain why, and they'll understand.

If you use usenet (R.M.R., etc.) your address can get harvested from there from both active/recent messages and from archives.

Yahoo tells people to send all spam to [email protected]
That does nothing to stop the spam. That address is for reporting spam for statistical purposes. Do it, but don't expect it to help in the short run.

You can also do what Brent McNeely does on ROL. Use a feedback form on your web page instead. I would do that, and then put an autoresponder on the email and send a reply to everything that comes in saying that due to spam load, people need to use the reply form on your web page (and provide a link to same). Explain that the alternative is taking a long time to sift through and respond. Since this will go out to everything you get, and some will be bogus addresses on spam, put a bogus return address on it or you'll get bombarded with bounce messages. And make the domain name on the return address bogus so your ISP doesn't get bombarded with bounce messages it can't deliver to you.

You can also create a new address, and when you respond to people who use the web form, give it to them. That way you know you're giving it to people who aren't spammers. Just be very careful who you allow to see your address and it should be safe.

I've never used any spam trapping programs for very long because they were all taking too much time to get working and tuned, and keeping tuned as spammers adjusted their tactics. About the same amount of time as scanning and deleting the spam. Now I'm just very careful about where I use my real email address and who gets to see it.


As far as the "Nigerian" scam spammers, they're loads of fun to troll. See 419eater.com for info, see https://www.419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm and https://www.ebolamonkeyman.com/ for big fun.