HELP SPAM PROBLEM

[IlluminatingBikr]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but if ISPs would only limit the number of email messages that an individual account can send out to something like 50 or 100 a day that would solve the spam problem. In order to send out more than that, I spammer would have to have (and pay for) multiple ISP accounts. This would quickly kill the economics of spamming.

It wouldn't be all that hard for the spammers to circumvent such a limit. They could send e-mails using web-based services, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail. Furthermore, there are many companies that legitimately need to do mass mailers - somethings to the order of thousands of e-mails in one day. How would you really be able to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys? Also, many of the spammers live in foreign countries where they go by different rules. Even if we were to restrict mass e-mailing here in the U.S., it would most likely only make things more difficult for us, and not change a thing for spammers around the world.

Paying for each email would probably solve the problem also.

Yes, it probably would, if it was implemented globally, but do we really want to do that?

Another thing I've heard is that a hard core group of maybe a few hundred people worldwide are responsible for 99% of the spam generated. Is it really so hard for law enforcement to find these people in order to prosecute, fine out of existence, and incarcerate them? Fact is spam has all but made email useless. It's time we took back the Internet from these cyberterrorists.

Again, these spammers live around the world, and in countries that have minimal laws and resources to be able to go after these sorts of people. I think calling them "cyberterrorists" might be going a bit too far. Are all of the advertisements on tv and the radio generated by "mediaterrorists"?

 

[3rd_shift]

-Oh, and don't ever use hotmail - it's the best spam magnet ever to be created.

Hmmmm.
I thought AOL was the worst.
Everyone I know who has AOL gets way more than I do. :thinking:

 

[Carpe Diem]

I use mailwasher pro which allows me to delete email off the server before downloading it to outlook.

I find it works well for this, since I don't need to open them at all.

Of course it doesn't stop the spam in the first place.

I`m with Nzgunnie on this one. I have had great success with the "MailWasher Pro" software program.

I`ve also found that after you use the program a while, it cuts way, way down on the spam you still receive...to the point that I now sometimes don`t even bother to run it before opening my email .

MailWasher Pro is the answer.
Try it...you`ll like it!

 

[Martin]

The 30..60 spam mails arriving in my inbox every day were driving me mad. I mean, it was not that easy to tell they are spam since the title, dummy-content and sender names are so inconspicuous. I often had to open and read such mails before I could safely delete them.

This was a lot of work and I decided I rather miss some valid e-mails but not see spam any more. So I installed filters. That is SpamPal + Thunderbird's internal filtering.
Now, no more than 5 spam mails per day get thru, these I identify and delete manually. In 2 months, I have not lost a single real mail. Now I can live with that.


If we only could convert spam into energy...

 

[Empath]

I think calling them "cyberterrorists" might be going a bit too far. Are all of the advertisements on tv and the radio generated by "mediaterrorists"?

Calling spammers terrorists is stretching it a lot, even though my regard for spammers is about as low as I could go for near-humans. Equating radio and TV advertisers with them, though, is way off the line. Radio and TV advertisers finance the medium. Spammers exploit the medium at the expense of the users.

Spammers don't pay for your connection; you do. Spammers don't finance your email box; you and/or the service provider does. Spammers exploit the medium at the user's expense with no regard for the damage it creates.

Incidentally, someone said that blocking port 25 would stop spam. No. Port 25 is only designated for smtp by common designated protocol. Nearly any port works. Many commercial email services permit the use of other ports in order to by-pass the deceptive blocking by an ISP. I say deceptive, because it's all show. Blocking port 25 only creates an illusion that the ISP is trying to combat spam. The only one it blocks are those that don't have enough experience to use a different port, and spammers have the experience and the know-how. You can even run your own smtp server on your computer and designate whatever port you wish.

Today's spammers aren't using smtp servers much nowadays anyway. They're hijacking your computer and using it to send their spam.

 

[HEY HEY ITS HENDO]

My Hotmail account never receives spam in my inbox, it goes straight where it should (junk mail folder). Even my AOL account receives more spam mail than my hotmail.com.

i`ve never had spam in my hotmail account either, but my ntlworld account is constantly being spammed ...........:thumbsdow
so i would advise you to open a hotmail account
.

 

[HEY HEY ITS HENDO]

Oh, and don't ever use hotmail - it's the best spam magnet ever to be created.

.................:lolsign: maybe from years past, but certainly not nowadays !!!

 

[St8kout]

You should have at least two email accounts. One for family, friends, banking, credit cards, business, etc. that you DO NOT EVER give out to anyone you don't know or trust. Use the other one for registering for contests, forums, surveys, whatever, that you don't care if it fills up with spam (and it will) as you will only use it when necessary.


My private email gets all the important mail and no spam. The other has soooooo much garbage it's hilarious. I ignore it for weeks at a time as nothing important will be sent there unless I'm expecting it.

I also discovered that my 'junk' email account that I use for ebay gets a lot of ebay/paypal spoofs just after I buy something on ebay. However, I use the private email address for Paypal and never get spoofs. It's as if the bad guys are hacked into ebay email accounts.

 

[tvodrd]

i`ve never had spam in my hotmail account either, but my ntlworld account is constantly being spammed ...........:thumbsdow
so i would advise you to open a hotmail account
.

I've had a Hotmail account since Jan '00 and its spam filter catches 9 outta 10 which means ~1-2/day. I have to check the "junk mail" daily, because it frequently tags legitimate mail! :shrug: Welcome to the 21st Century!

Larry

 

[jtr1962]

It wouldn't be all that hard for the spammers to circumvent such a limit. They could send e-mails using web-based services, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, and Gmail.

OK, so those services could have a limit as well. I would think it would be in their own interests to do so.

Furthermore, there are many companies that legitimately need to do mass mailers - somethings to the order of thousands of e-mails in one day. How would you really be able to differentiate between the good guys and the bad guys? Also, many of the spammers live in foreign countries where they go by different rules. Even if we were to restrict mass e-mailing here in the U.S., it would most likely only make things more difficult for us, and not change a thing for spammers around the world.

Maybe check out an organization thoroughly before giving them mass-mailing abilities, and revoke that privilege if it's found they're sending unsolicited messages. And block mass mailings from countries which don't have similar rules.

Yes, it probably would, if it was implemented globally, but do we really want to do that?

Pay per email would be quite palatable if you have some reasonable number of "free" messages per month. I'd be all for it. We're indirectly paying for all the spam crap anyway.

Again, these spammers live around the world, and in countries that have minimal laws and resources to be able to go after these sorts of people.

Well, then let the countries with the resources to do so go after and extradite them. Since spam crosses international boundaries spammers should be subject to the laws of whatever countries they're spamming.

I think calling them "cyberterrorists" might be going a bit too far. Are all of the advertisements on tv and the radio generated by "mediaterrorists"?

They are terrorists in that they effectively cripple part of the Internet, rendering it all but useless. The economic drain from spam is enormous. So is the emotional toll of finding dozens to hundreds of crap messages every single day. The cumulative effect is probably far worse than a real terrorist act like blowing up a building.

TV and radio advertisers run their ads to pay for programming. While I don't like them either I at least realize that they reduce what I pay for TV service. Spam actually increases the cost of Internet service while providing absolutely nothing of value.

 

[TinderBox (UK)]

Hi.

I have tried a few programs, without much success.

but this free program appears to work quite well

SPAM SHREDDER

At first everything will go into the spam directory, and you have to manually select which mails or not-spam so the program can learn the difference.

the only problem i cannot seem to minimize it to the system tray, as it has a function to check for mail at selected duration.

thanks for the help

John.

 

[Empath]

An interesting site that demonstrates what the spammer learns when his email is opened can be found here:

http://www.nthelp.com/OEtest/oe.htm

It shows that using a mail client in html mode, instead of text, keeps your email address at the top of the spammers list.

 

[Aloft]

An interesting site that demonstrates what the spammer learns when his email is opened can be found here:

http://www.nthelp.com/OEtest/oe.htm

It shows that using a mail client in html mode, instead of text, keeps your email address at the top of the spammers list.

Empath is quite right. I run both a mailserver and webserver for a small group of my college classmates, so I'm familiar with how the logging works for TCP/IP connections. When you visit a website with a browser and thus access the server, that server's log file will list your IP address (not quite the same as your email address). By keeping good records, a spammer could conceivably know which addresses are 'active' by doing a little research.

Running a mail program like Outlook or Thunderbird that shows mail as HTML is just like visiting the spammer's website! Turn this feature off, or use Thunderbird's other features to protect your privacy. I use Thunderbird and it blocks any images that would cause the spammer's logs to show my IP address. It also shows a button to 'View Images' if you know the email is legitimate, so you can still see coupons, pictures, etc. It's under 'Tools > Options > Privacy > Block Images ...'. Thunderbird also has a great junk mail filter, though that doesn't stop the actual downloading of the mail itself. Thunderbird is also immune to VB script viruses. Oh yeah, it's FREE!

And pay no attention to the 'From' field in spam ... it's almost invariably fake. I take great delight in emailing my friends and spoofing the 'From' field to lampoon some celebrity or politician ... it's ridiculously easy using Linux and not much harder using windoze. A better indicator is the "IP Originating Address" which I don't know how to spoof, but many spammers probably do, though it is apparently much more difficult.

 

[gregw]

I know all about webbugs since I do use them if my clients want my company to provide a tracking record of who has actually read their broadcast email... In addition to an IP address, my webbugs record the email address of the person that actually opens the email. This is absolutely trivial to do, so everyone needs to be aware of this.

If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express, you really need to upgrade to the latest version since it is automatically configured to block images from websites in the preview pane, and you need to actually click on a button to allow the downloading of images to the viewing pane if you want the images to show. This will prevent webbugs from working since no images are downloaded.

 

[ChopperCFI]

Another possibility is to set up a brand new email account somewhere, but never give out the new address, except to set up a disposable email address service. Spamex was my first choice, but it had an annual fee. I chose the free e4ward service.

With e4ward for example, register with the username tinderbox. You then login and create any email address you want to the left of the @. To the right of the @ will be tinderbox.e4ward.com. Let's say you want to create a new email to be used at amazon. Create the new email address something like "[email protected]" and then give that email out. You can create several different addresses and have them all forwarded to a single guarded account.

If you ever get spam, you know know exactly who sold your address. Most importantly, you can disable just that address and the spammer will get the 550 User Unknown code for an invalid email address.

These forwarding services also take care of fixing the reply address so your real email address is never divulged (except to the forwarding service). Creating a new email an email can also be done without divulging the real address, but it requires an extra step or two. Just make sure your email content or signature line does not contain your protected email address. If you forward an email from your real account, the real address will be divulged.

The final step is to start giving out disposable addresses to your valid users and eventually shut down the original email account. Good luck

 

[fasuto]

best antispam program, free:
http://popfile.sourceforge.net/