View Full Version : Spam Again
Unwell_Raptor
22nd Oct 2006, 11:02
I am getting a flood of spam from pump-and-dump share pluggers. The swine are evading filters by putting their rubbish in .gif form. I am quite happy to block .gifs - how can I do this? I use IncrediMail.
Rainboe
14th Nov 2006, 16:25
I must be getting 15 of these things a day. Any idea how to block them without blocking emails with gifs that you want to receive?
This will not stop Spam but enables you to report it to the appropriate place.
http://banspam.javawoman.com/report3.html
This has similiar info but a bit of help in tracing the stuff http://spamlinks.net/track-report-addresses.htm#isp-general and if you ignore the 'sales pitch', here is how to decode the email header http://www.visualware.com/resources/tutorials/email.html.
Try Mailwasher. This lets you see what has arrived at your email address on the server then you can let through what you want to see. You can also tick the boxes on there to blacklist the spammers. It will delete and bounce the spam back to them at the same time.
frostbite
3rd Dec 2006, 14:31
You might also like POP Preview at http://www.volny.cz/iisivak/eng
In addition to preview, it allows you to download within itself and leaves the message on the server.
Tolsti
3rd Dec 2006, 17:26
You might also like POP Preview at http://www.volny.cz/iisivak/eng
In addition to preview, it allows you to download within itself and leaves the message on the server.
Getting a 404 message on that link... in Czech of course!!!
frostbite
3rd Dec 2006, 19:52
Sorry about that, try this one
http://www.topshareware.com/POP3-preview-LITE-download-37505.htm
Gertrude the Wombat
3rd Dec 2006, 20:06
I'm now only getting a couple of dozen of these per day, down from several hundred per day last week.
What fixed it? - my ISP started using greylisting on the server. This is very effective at the moment, but of course only gives a temporary window of relief as when enough people start using greylisting the criminals will fix their mail clients to cope with it.
I would suggest looking up some threads on here on how to manage spam and, more to the point, on how to manage/protect one's email addresses. THAT is the key.
I've used Mailwasher, in a business situation where we were getting up to 1000 spams per day and all I can say for it is that yes it will delete perhaps 99% of spam (if you put in the time to download and install about 50 filters of variously bizzare complexity, e.g. for detecting emails that contain font specifications within the Subject header) but it will also delete a load of real emails.
This kind of anti-spam technique is responsible for a lot of missing emails. In fact, email reliability is so poor nowadays as a result of this technique that it is heading for being useless for important communications - especially with organisations which have a plonker of an IT manager.
Mailwasher is OK for identifying obvious p0rno emails but those emails stopped being obvious about 1 year ago. The share tip emails are much less obvious still.
I can easily write an email which Mailwasher will chuck out - you could try this very message :) - on the basis of some word frequency rule.
The other day, I found some spam which was loaded with keywords that had obviously been harvested from my company's website. Now, that is really clever!!! We had to do a few changes...
Gertrude - presumably your ISP is now running mails past Spamcop or similar. This is OK but will also lose a load of emails. Loads of ISPs, especially certain foreign ones, get blacklisted en bloc.
I've used Spamcop for many years, and it has an excellent success rate.
Any of my e-mail addresses that starts getting spammed is then filtered through Spamcop (there's no limit to the number you can do this with). The "clean" messages are forwarded on to a clean address, and the Spam stays on the server till I visit and delete it.
The clever bit is a feature called "SpamAssassin" which looks for key trigger words and scores the e-mail accordingly. A score of 1 is not a spam, a score of 20 certainly is. You decide the threshold you want to use - I chose 3.
There are other filters (I use them all, but SpamAssassin is what catches the great majority). There is also a "whitelist" for those folks who choose to use hotmail and such mailboxes - and for the blueyonder subscribers (BY seems to be blacklisted more than it's not, these days).
I get about one spam a day leaking through, and anywhere between 200 and 500 a day trapped. False positives (genuine messages caught in the filter) are less than one a month.
All for $30 a year. Excellent value, I say.
bacardi walla
5th Dec 2006, 04:46
I don't get any spam :ok:
I use Windows XP
Full McAfee Security Suite
Lavasoft Professional
Am I just lucky :confused:
Saab Dastard
5th Dec 2006, 10:05
Am I just lucky
Nah, just not enough friends! :p
SD
Keef
Do you really mean Spamcop ? Spamcop.net is a database of IPs of "known" spammers, against which the sender can be checked. Just about every ISP (yes, a whole ISP, e.g. Yahoo) has ended up on Spamcop at one time or another. Obviously they moan like hell and SC then removes them, if it doesn't do it automatically after a few hours.
Spamcop is responsible for a lot of missing emails.
Out of the ~ 4000 spams a day I get at work, spamcop removes about 3000. The remainder is still too much to check manually, or to process with Mailwasher (which also requires a manual check).
Spamcop is also a part of the problem. They are blacklisting ISPs that implement a challenge mechanism - the only really good way to handle large amounts of spam.
Bacardi
It means your email address has not got "out" yet. Just wait until a few of your non-computer-literate friends get infected with address book harvesting trojans. Then you will have loads of friends :)
Yes, Spamcop. I've tweaked the settings and the specific lists I use, and particularly SpamAssassin, and I get the performance mentioned above.
You may be misinterpreting what Spamcop do. Yes,they produce a blacklist which some ISPs use, incorrectly, to block e-mail. That's not Spamcop's mistake. Spamcop also offer a mail filtering service, which is what I use and am delighted with.
Some major ISPs have ended up on Spamcop blacklists - but precisely because customers of theirs had been spamming to the extent that they hit the trigger level. I forget what the trigger is, but it's not going to happen with one or two spams from a misguided customer.
I came close to suing a well-known UK (now defunct) ISP a few years ago, because I was getting thousands of "return" messages to one of my e-mail addresses, which were spam sent by a youknowwho.co.uk customer. I was on dial-up in those days, and it was costing me a LOT of money to download all this stuff.
Spamcop's only flaw is that once an ISP is blacklisted, any spam reported is blamed on that ISP even if it only passed via their system. So if my ISP gets blacklisted, every spam I report is my ISP's fault. They are well aware of the problems this causes, and I've screamed at Spamcop quite a few times about it. Nevertheless, I'd rather put up with that than the barrage of spam I'd otherwise get.
bacardi walla
6th Dec 2006, 04:52
Bacardi
It means your email address has not got "out" yet. Just wait until a few of your non-computer-literate friends get infected with address book harvesting trojans. Then you will have loads of friends :)
I have lots of friends around the world, some non computer-literate too, some who have only recently bought pc's.
I've had my email address now for well over 4 years and I've been in this situation for as long, no spam gets through. I think Lavasoft professional must be doing the job of defending me :D