Sick of Spam!

N/A | 10/21/03 | Mark A Sity

[steve-b]

I have tried creating mail rules, but they keep changing the spellings and punctuation, or use on and off caps to defeat this

The law needs to recognize the deliberate circumvention of anti-spam filters as a form of computer cracking, and apply the existing laws against this form of trespass.

As I recall, Kevin Mitnick got five years for this offense, even though Mitnick did far less actual damage than a typical spammer.

[Republican Red]

Haven't tried this myself but a techie on tv the other day suggested the best way to beat spammers was to create an email name with a combination of numbers and letters i.e. "12ABC3". These type of email names are harder to get on lists.

[bwteim]

Hint #1: do NOT use "unsubscribe" links. All that does is tell the sender that there's a human at your IP address who'll answer e-mails, and you'll never get off that particular list. Delete without opening. -- Xenalyte

Another Hint #2: turn off or disable features in your email prefs that "allow network access" in case you have enabled "display complex HTML" option your email.
If you don't - the sender(s) still can get notified even if you are only scrolling through your messages.

[gcruse]

Mailwasher works pretty well for a free utility, especially with heuristics set to "strong" and a good list of DNS Blacklist servers.

I've been using Mailwasher for several months.

1. The volume of spam has not abated.
2.  Many 'bounce' notifications come back because there is no legitimate email account being addressed.
      The bounce strategy is a waste of time on those who refer you to a website from a phony email account.
3.  Too often, I have failed to recognize a legitimate email, inadvertently blacklisting the sender and missing
     out on further emails.
4.  Mailwasher ties up your system while it does its thing.  Depending on how many bounces are being
     generated, this can take quite some time.
5.  I still use Mailwasher, but more from inertia than benefit.

[RS]

"Clicking on the link may automatically disclose a code to the spammer, the code effectively confirming to the spammer that your email address is valid and received the spam."

You're right - always view source first - you might be able to add their email in after something like ***.asp?email=

[RS]

"Also, quite often, the 'unsubscribe' link doesn't work at all - thats why I use Spam Cop to track them to their source and report their sorry a$$es to THEIR server."


But sometimes it does and it makes me feel good...:-)

... and if you can track it to a weird domain add support@*** to your unsubscribe list....

[hunter112]

1. The volume of spam has not abated.

Who's to say what it would have been had you NOT used MailWasher? I think there is just so much more of it coming, surely, the telemarketers must have seen the DoNotCall list coming, and have moved into spam.

2. Many 'bounce' notifications come back because there is no legitimate email account being addressed.

You get your bounces back? I don't seem to get too many. Yet. Anyway, what else can you do but attempt to bounce them, as if your email address were not valid?

3. Too often, I have failed to recognize a legitimate email, inadvertently blacklisting the sender and missing out on further emails.

I scan the Subject: line, I don't miss any legit emails that way. About all the false positives I get are from eBay sellers contacting me about winning an auction. Those are easy to pick up if you're looking at the subject line.

4. Mailwasher ties up your system while it does its thing. Depending on how many bounces are being generated, this can take quite some time

So does downloading spam into your email client. I usually begin an Internet session by opening MailWasher, then browsing a site while it works. The only nasty interruption I get is when Outlook Express loads up, that's because I've chosen to let MW automatically start OE after its done.

5. I still use Mailwasher, but more from inertia than benefit.

If someone came along with something markedly better, I might be persuaded to switch, but I haven't seen any such thing. All solutions are asked to deal with a steadily rising tide of spam, it's difficult to evaluate one product vs. another over time. I've been quite happy with MW, have used it for over a year, and it does what it says it will do, without messing up my computer in some other way, pretty good for a product that only wants a donation to pay for it.

The real solution to spam will come when ISPs all figure out a way to charge for email, since they bear the cost of bandwidth for all of this trash.

[js1138]

I use a two-step approach. First I use Outlook Express's built in filter to delete all messages with sexual content or references to loans.

Then I get the header information (usually in the message properties) and forward that plus the message to abuse@ (my IP domain plus the ,usually faked, sender domain).

[BillF]

I have tried creating mail rules, but they keep changing the spellings and punctuation

Here is way that blocks upwards of 95% of spam in Outlook by setting up the rules below.

Rule 1 checks if a sender's address is in your address book. (Make sure that relatives, friends, and others who send email that you want to receive are in your address book.) If sender's email address is in your address book, rule 1 stops processing further rules.

Rule 2 checks for the real nasty words that are common in most porno spam or words or phrases that will never be in an email that you want to receive. (Some spam may evade this rule by the spelling tricks, but rule 4 will catch most.) It permanently deletes the email and stops processing more rules.

Rule 3 checks for sender's whose email address may change, but whose email you want to receive (i.e., sent from Amazon, your state Republican Party). Rule 3 just stops processing more rules.

Rule 4 checks message headers for "html or text/html or multipart/alternative or multipart/mixed." If the email does have such headers, it is most likely spam and you can set the rule to move it to your deleted files folder and stop processing further rules. This is the rule that should get 95 percent of the spam that use spelling tricks, etc. to get through rule 2.

Most spam will have at least one of the message headers and will be moved to your deleted file folders.

A stronger version of rule 4 can permanently delete all email with the listed headers, but might inadvertantly permanently delete email that you want to receive. By moving it to the deleted folder, you can quickly scan the sender's name of email in the deleted folder and "rescue" any email that you wanted to receive.

Importantly, you must have the rules work in order from 1 to 4 by moving rules up or down so that rules 1 to 4 are in order from top to bottom.

Rules 2 and 3 especially may require updating every now and again when a significant amount of spam is getting through.

It takes some effort, but above should help at least substantially reduce the problem.

[Grit]

Mailwasher Bump.

[Grit]

Oh. Now you've done it! The Feds will be here any minute.

[BillF]

One of the best pieces of advice in the thread is to get a private email address that is only given to relatives and friends and a separate disposable email address such as hotmail, excite, or yahoo to use with companies.

Another idea: If you do post to newsgroups or put your email address on a website, use the form "userid@SHIELDyourdomain.com (delete SHIELD to send email)." Humans will know to delete "SHIELD" and can email you. Spammer's email address harvesting programs will send email to the phony domain.

Here is a tip for selecting an email address. Select an email address that spammers' email address guessing programs are less likely to guess. The spammers have programs that guess email addresses using first names, last names, and common words. Use uncommon words and numbers to reduce the chances that they will randomly guess your email address.

For example, suppose your name is Bill Clinton and you want to select an email address at your new domain "pardonsRus.com".

Selecting "bill.clinton," "bclinton," "billc" would increase the chances of getting the email spam promoting the enlargement of your favorite, albeit inadequate, part of your anatomy.

If you select "DIRTXPOTUS@pardonsRus.com" instead, you are less likely to have your email address guessed by spammers.

[RS]

"Ñäåëaòü çàÿâêó ía y÷àcòèå â ceìuíàpe âû ìoæeòe ïo òeëåôoíaì
(095) 930-6032-, 500-7864-, 930-4252-, 930-3172-. "

the 095 country code is Myanmar (Burma) if that helps any.

you may try an Indian or Hindu font on it, but that's not going to help you get rid of it....

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

Thank you for the info. I am still getting these emails. It makes no sense and clogs up my box.

[Aussiemate]

That stuff is most likely RUSSIAN text . . I get it all the time too . . get a SPAMCOP account, and foward the entire message as an attachment to SPAMCOP.

I have a website, http://antispam.aussiemate.com where you can get some email address where to report spam, and to report phishing (spoofing) emails.

GO GET EM CHAMP!