Stopping Spam

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 03 Nov 2006, 00:18

Toby,

Like yourself and CB, the stocks/shares spam is the frequent spam at the moment, getting through BTInternet's filter. But the filter is stopping about 100 spam per day. Don't know if it serves any useful purpose but I send them off to SpamCop in the hope the source (usually an open proxy) gets closed down.

I am intrigued how spam is targeted. I know there is the theory of random name generation, but I have two e-mail accounts that get no spam. OK so they have not been used yet, just reserved for the future (and not dissimilar to active account names).

Hence the names of my two active accounts must have been harvested - although I have been careful (obviously not enough) with the use of one of them.

Never mind I now have a 3 foot member, which the Viagra and Cialis

help with, know all the local swappers or should that be slappers, wear a Rolex, have 20 PhDs and am a Nigerian millionaire. If only Barclays would let me manage my own money.

Post by **MALTBY D** » 03 Nov 2006, 01:06

I'm getting the finance tips as well at the moment.
Also a few Viagra & dong extension offers which I never ever used to get. Thought I must have been on some 'super studs' list so they didn't bother sending them to me.

Also getting several highly descriptive and very badly spelt pervy ones these days.
I have a long list of pervy words in my e-mail rules & if any of them are in the message subject it goes direct to the deleted folder.
It's amazing how many pervy words you can forget to check for.

DM

Post by **Garry Russell** » 03 Nov 2006, 01:26

I getting loads of pervy ones as well and dating things

Another today told be I had already earned a load of dosh.

The ones offering a foot long dong could be tempting..........the convenience of having something a bit smaller :roll:

Garry

Tom Clayton · Post by **Tom Clayton** » 03 Nov 2006, 05:23

Put this pic, including the embedded link, onto the home page. Click on the pic to have a look at the page - quite interesting!

thehappyotter · Post by **thehappyotter** » 05 Nov 2006, 02:15

Thanks guys, i'll try some of your suggestions out.

Toby, it is on one of my pages. I'll remove it and stop any more capturing it.

I too am getting loads of the stocks emails, they are usually pictures advertising the stock with loads of random text to get through filters.

Rob.

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 05 Nov 2006, 09:35

Rob,

What email client are you using? If you are using M$ Outlook [Express], I'd recommend switching to Mozilla Thunderbird. Often with spam mail that contains pictures, it is the action of the email client contacting the spammer's server to download the pictures that "validates" your email address. Much of the spam they send bounces back but of course if it can 'phone home' and associate your IP and the email address it was sent to, then it will continue to send more sh1te. In Thunderbird, by default emails are plain text and without images being displayed. Only if you choose to view as HTML and choose to download images will this occur.

Toby

Post by **MALTBY D** » 05 Nov 2006, 13:00

I tried Thunderbird for a while ages ago & couldn't get on with it at all.
And while they make sure it's easy to move all your messages from Outlook Express into Thunderbird, they don't provide a similar route back if you decide that it's not for you.
Can't remember my exact gripe now, but I didn't seem to have control over sending my messages when I wanted to send them.
Probably my fault, but it shouldn't really require any brain power should it.

To balance it out, I was also mystified by the full Outlook product the one time I tried to use it.

Outlook Express does stop on-line pictures from being collected, so the spam people can't trace you like that.
I assume this came about with SP2.

DM

TobyV · Post by **TobyV** » 05 Nov 2006, 13:41

I have been using it and Firefox for a couple of years now on the advice of an old uni freind who studied computer science and I am much happier with both of theem than with the MS products. I intend to move over to Linux for my next PC and of course then I'll be using both of those and Open Office.

Tom Clayton · Post by **Tom Clayton** » 06 Nov 2006, 06:09

MALTBY D wrote:Outlook Express does stop on-line pictures from being collected, so the spam people can't trace you like that.
I assume this came about with SP2.

DM

You're exactly right about that, it is XPSP2 that incorporated that feature.

Most of the spam I get with images has the image imbedded, not linked. I used to use the Block Sender feature of OE's meager filtering engine, but spammers use a new address every time they send out a new batch, so these days that's useless. As long as I've been on the 'net, I've been with Earthlink. Their email servers have the ability to hold any email that comes from and address that's not in your address book. You can exoprt your OE addresses to a CSV file that can be uploaded to Earthlink. All email settings are controlled through their Webmail interface - think Yahoo Mail with the Earthlink name. I get a daily summary of spam from all of my addresses (if any is intercepted) and can log into the Webmail interface to accept it for local download. Earthlink also sends an auto-response to those senders giving them the opportunity to send an "Allowed User" request to my inbox, but I go over the summary every night anyway.

ianhind · Post by **ianhind** » 06 Nov 2006, 10:44

Tom,

That summary of supposed spam sounds useful. I guess it saves having to check all the spam in the web interface which is the only option for BTInternet. But for around 100 per day, I usually just do an "empty" since it would take too much time to check.

Overall sounds a bit more sophisticated than what I have with BT (=Yahoo)

Ian