How One Spam Leads to Another

One filter that catches a great deal of spam is: Any Header does NOT contain MyName.

Check out this map of the relationships among spammers.

Looks just like the chart depicting the Office of Homeland Security.

Not to be repetitive, but you should try Mail Washer. It's a free download and you can find it with a google search. It lets you see your list of mail before it's downloaded to your computer. It remembers who you designate as blacklisted. The blacklisted messages still are shown to you, but you can get rid of them very easily.

For instance, let's say you get 100 messages. Two of them are from people that you designated as friends, 97 are from people you've previously blacklisted, and one is from someone who has not sent you a message before. The 97 already blacklisted are already marked for deletion. You then decide how to designate the one new sender -- either friend or blacklist.

Then you click on "process mail." The system then deletes all of the blacklisted mail, leaving only the friendly messages that you want.

At this point you haven't downloaded any messages at all onto your computer yet. Now you can have your e-mail software download the two messages that you want.

For the technologically challenged, what is a sequential file, what is its significance, and how does one clean it up?

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If you go into your system with something like old Norton Commander or even a wordprocessor, you can find your mail files. You will see some fascinating things. First off, there is an enormous amount of overhead in your mail that is not seen. It's much like looking at a HTML file in HTML for rather than text form. When you receive email the mail is added to one long file in something similar to a single word processor text file which may run megabytes long. Because of the format of the file and the continuing nature, it is a sequential file. In the old days using Netscape three I would collect email files as much as six megabytes long on the disk. Also, unless you telly your browser to erase received emails, the same file will be saved in your ISP computer. I ran up over ten megs at my ISP until they notified me and I had them erase it. We then adjusted my Netscape system to erase files at the ISP as I received them.

There is some provision for deleting deleted email files on your disk. What I have also done is rename my email files, then go into them with a word processor and delete all the deleted messages. Netscape email will start a new email file. It's rather complicated. I have email archives saved as word processor text files.

This is part of what an email file looks like. Also, the final content of the message, itself, is explanatory. Let's see if this posts:

From - Fri Sep 07 17:05:55 2001 Return-Path: Received: from riker.mountain.net (smtp.mountain.net [66.118.64.15]) by pop.mountain.net (8.12.0.Beta19/8.12.0.Beta19) with ESMTP id f87I4trR020619; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 14:11:18 -0400 Received: from brokenarrow.mountain.net ([66.118.64.21]) by riker.mountain.net (Post.Office MTA Undefined release Undefined ID# 0-0U10L2S100V35) with ESMTP id net; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 14:01:42 -0400 Message-Id: <5.0.2.1.0.20010907133759.00ba8a58@pop.mountain.net> X-Sender: tdomico@pop.mountain.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2 Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 13:48:24 -0400 To: inhouse@mountain.net From: MountainNet tech support Subject: Mail and Virus alert. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="=====================_109662956==_.ALT" X-Folder: Mailing List X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: 9IN!![DM"!'1"#!MRm"! --=====================_109662956==_.ALT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Dear Mountain Net Customer, We would like to inform you of a situation that has arisen concerning email. Many of you may have noticed a delay in receiving email. This is due to the fact that mail servers world wide are being hit with billions of "spam" or unsolicited E-mails, many of them contain viruses. Mountain Net itself has been inundated with 20 million "spam E-mails" per day, of these 1000's contained the "sircam" virus, as well as other viruses. We are sure of this because of our filtering process to prevent viruses from reaching our users. Our system engineers are working tirelessly to prevent viruses from reaching our users. However, despite all our efforts, some viruses may still get through. At this time we urge all users to install an up-to-date anti-virus program. If you already have an anti-virus program, please check with the program vendor to ensure you have the latest updates for your program. Thank you, The MountainNet Tech Support Team. --=====================_109662956==_.ALT Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" Dear Mountain Net Customer,

We would like to inform you of a situation that has arisen concerning email. Many of you may have noticed a delay in receiving email. This is due to the fact that mail servers world wide are being hit with billions of "spam" or unsolicited E-mails, many of them contain viruses. Mountain Net itself has been inundated with 20 million "spam E-mails" per day, of these 1000's contained the "sircam" virus, as well as other viruses. We are sure of this because of our filtering process to prevent viruses from reaching our users.

Our system engineers are working tirelessly to prevent viruses from reaching our users. However, despite all our efforts, some viruses may still get through. At this time we urge all users to install an up-to-date anti-virus program. If you already have an anti-virus program, please check with the program vendor to ensure you have the latest updates for your program.

Thank you,
The MountainNet Tech Support Team.
--=====================_109662956==_.ALT--

Here's what I do Bob.

I save the Spam senders email address, and then I use it to reply to whatever sort of porn purveyor happens to end up in my mail box next. Substitute your real email address with the folks who sent you the "Regrow Your Hair Instantly" email.

With any luck, you'll get the bastards spamming themselves. At any rate, it's a pretty cheap chuckle.

I have also sent a few of these folks the most up to date version of Back Orifice as well as a couple of other nasty viruses I've managed to capture.

One finds fun where one can these days.....

Regards,

L

Notice the actual email message you receive may be seen only once, but is contained several times in the disk syorage file. Also, the list of commands generating the email message is longer than the message itself. When you get the typical spam message, is stored, it takes about four or five times as much space as you see or realize. The message you read above has been deleted, but still exists on your disk files.

In Netscape the files are called "inbox." After just checkng my inbox files with Norton Commander I find my inbox file is presently about 7,000,000 bytes long, most of it being felled with deleted messages offering Viagra or offering to mortgage my house. I deleted an inbox with about 8,000,000 bytes a while back. When jackasses send you messages they are filling your disk with megabytes, even if you delete the messages, but you don't know it. In my case my ISP has a filter, but I'm still getting jammed.

Substitute your real email address with the folks who sent you the "Regrow Your Hair Instantly" email

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I like it. However, if they know how to get into email files the way I do, they can get your real email address. It's listed where you can't see it in the sequential files.

OK. Netscape has an email file feature called delete trash. I just used it. It reduced my file size from 7,ooo,ooo bytes to 2,600,000 by flushing out many of the deleted files.

I save the Spam senders email address, and then I use it to reply to whatever sort of porn purveyor happens to end up in my mail box next. Substitute your real email address with the folks who sent you the "Regrow Your Hair Instantly" email.

Please don't do that, for two reasons. 99.8 percent of the email addresses in the "From" line in spam do not belong to the spammer. Spammers routinely use bogus addresses in the "From" line or even forge the email addresses of innocent bystanders there to misdirect complaints. It is trivially easy to forge the "From" line of an email header.

Also, every time you reply to a spam, the spammer knows your email address is a live one, and they will sell it to other spammers.

Want to reduce your spam load? NEVER reply to a spam and always trace the point of origin of the spam and the URL (if any) they are advertising, then complain to the abuse coordinator or postmaster at those domains. Spamcop.net provides a great free service that does just that.

Thank you dear lady. I will be more circumspect in the future.

BTW, how did that cornstarch thing work out for you?

Regards,

L

That's it my friend. Delete the files and then defrag your hard drive.

If you have one, run a wipe program.

I really need to learn how to read those sequential files. It seems like I could have some real fun getting those spamming bas***** chasing their own tails...LOL.

Have a safe 4th my friend.

Regards,

L