SPAM

Utter Frustration | 7/15/03 | self

[pabianice]

Well, it's finally happened. Spam email now outnumbers my real email, on both my personal and business email accounts. I use both Giant Spam Blocker and Norton Firewall/Spam Blocker. Nothing seems to work any longer. Spam is apparently now sent to every conceivable email address using computer random address generators. ISPs either cannot or will not take steps to solve this problem. I just read that at least $ 10 billion a year is now lost by US businesses because of spam email.

If any other Freepers have found a solution, please post here.

[bicycle thug]

They feel a .1 percent response rate is a good one. Those spamming for Viagra get half of the hefty fee for the drug, so this is easy money for those folks.

None the less, I am very very tired of these mailings. And something must be done to get rid of this curse of a clutter that is distroying my use of E mail in general.

[Coleus]

I use outlook express and use the "block sender" function. Once I get a spam e mail, I block the address ASAP.

I get maybe 2 spams a week, if that. I never put my e mail address in a website where it says "Do you want to send this page to a friend, put their e mails here" and I don't allow my friends to do that either, they can just send the page using outlook express.

I also use 3rd party e mails namely: Yahoo.com and excite.com NO spam at all. I've had Excite.com for about 5 yrs. now and nothing gets through them, when I used hotmail maybe about 50 spams a day, hotmail.com stinks and I've refused to use it. Seems everyone is lured to hotmail, why? I do not know.

[el_chupacabra]

I'm glad you posted this. Maybe I could "threadjack" this for a moment and tap the brainpower around here about a particularly nasty "spam"-like issue I have been grappling with.

I'm a relatively-idiotic computer novice. I recently have acquired a cable modem and a new computer. Often times when I log on to my computer, before I even open a browser, I will have a grey "pop up" window inviting me to visit some offensive webcam or another.

Fortunately, my children cannot read, yet. But I'm very desperate to try any solution you folks might have to offer.

thanks.

[NYS_Eric]

I second your praise of Cloudmark's product. Simply awesome. There are 2 downsides, however:

1. Currently only works with Outlook (not even Outlook Express as of this writing, although they're working on it)
2. Still downloads the spam (and consumes your bandwidth) before dropping the spam in a special spam filter. If you use dial-up, this could be leave you less than satisfied.

The best spam defense has to be a combination of efforts. Use Cloudmark, use an ISP that filters some of the worst spam for you (Earthlink subscribers can use Brightmail's filtering as a service, for instance), use hotmail or yahoo accounts when required to supply an e-mail address with online ordering, newsgroups, etc.

[discostu]

Turn off Windows messaging, it's in Control Panel specific instructions depend on the version of Windows, Windows help should actually direct you to it with screen shots and maybe even hotlinks. Or you can hope I remember how to do it when I get home.

[gogov]

SPAM only now out numbers you regular email. SPAM to my mail account is running 20 to 1 and I have four "dead" accounts, so loaded up with spam they are unusable.

[Trampled by Lambs]

SAProxy works well for me.. (Google it.) Works with most email clients. My incomming spam was up to 20+ per day.. Since I installed SAProxy, its down to 2 or 3 per week if that. (I have no stake in the program, I'm just amazed at how well it works..)

Oh and it only works for Pop3 servers.

[NYS_Eric]

As discostu said, you've entered the brave new world of instant message spam. Turn the messaging off. (How you do it depends on your version of Windows.)

[Lazamataz]

If any other Freepers have found a solution, please post here.

I have had a lot of success with murder.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Bump for later read

[discostu]

Here, better than Windows help:
http://www.itc.virginia.edu/desktop/docs/messagepopup/

Note you'll probably also want to install firewall software, I'm not too up on that but I'm sure there's plenty of alphageeks here that can steer you right.

[mlmr]

That's interesting becasue I was told today by a wife of a management type that Verizon is going on strike this fall and that management is taking over and the plan is to break the strike. How could Ted K align with union busters?

[gogov]

What is "blackhole"-ing and how do you do it?

blackholing is where you eliminate 95% of the email you don't want and also block about 5% of the email your really, really need and would like to see.

You save yourself the aggrevation of wading through junk email but have the addtional frustration of friends, business associates and customers calling you on the phone asking why you did not reply to their email.

[Principled]

I run spybot and ZoneAlarm. I get one spam a month, maybe.

[DannyTN]

HOLD MUH SPAM BUMP

[Principled]

You owe me a keyboard!

[el_chupacabra]

I cannot thank you enough for your help. That IM Spam was really freaking me out.

[Principled]

Get ZONEALARM, it's free. If you're on cable modem, get it now.

Get SPYBOT, it's free. It will zap anything getting past ZONEALARM.

Get ADAWARE, it's free. It will zap anything getting past ZONEALARM.

Don't wait. You'll be shocked when you see what's been put on your machine after the first time you run spybot or adaware. They'll clean you up. Do it fast, and install ZONEALARM to keep yourself clean.

[AppyPappy]

Do a google search on your email address. Get it removed whereever you find it.

Never use USENET.

[NYS_Eric]

It's actually pretty safe (if you run your own mail server) to subscribe to one of the major black hole lists. Spamhaus.org runs a really good one. Don't think I've had any legit e-mails get bounced because of that subscription. Face it-- to end up on one of those spammer lists, you've really got to "earn it". The only innocents who might end up blacklisted are those who unknowingly run open relay mail servers. And it's easy to get off a black list once you prove that you've turned off the open relay.