Need Help - Came to the best

[Azure]

I have recently been recieving e-mails from someone I don't know, always just attachments. I sent them an e-mail saying that I do not know them and they should delete my address from their address book. They kindly replied that I am not in their address book and they also have been recieving e-mails from people they don't know.

I think if people would just warn all us that we're sending stuff that (we really aren't) it's a wake up call.

Anyway, I also have the problem of these stupid "Casino" e-mails.
Is there anyway possible to get rid of them? If not, can I spam them back? How can I get back at these evil spamists?

[fobotcso]

Bad Luck! You've just joined the thousands of us who's e-mail addresses have been harvested and distributed amongst the brainless low-life that create spam e-mails.

We've had lots of threads on this topic and there are too many to reference them all for you but there are some simple rules.

1. The sender may not be who the e-mail says. It could have been send using a proxy address so there is no point in relying.

2. Never open attachments from somone you don't know. Even if you know the sender, be suspicious. (See Rule 1).

3. Never reply. That only proves to the sender that the e-mail address is live. You'll only get more.

4. Make sure your Anti-virus software is up-to-date.

5. If you are in Outlood Express, disable the preview pane.

6. Never join in with chain e-mails. You give away others' e-mail addresses as well as helping to clog the system.

7. Get used to deleting without reading. Remember what curiosity did to the cat!

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

fobotcso,

Never reply. That only proves to the sender that the e-mail address is live. You'll only get more.

Very good point and I would like to expand on the never reply to include, never click on the un-Subscribe button at the bottom of the spam emails. Doing that only lets the spammers know that your email address works and you will get even more spam mail.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. Azure I use Firetrust's Mailwasher Pro (http://www.firetrust.com/products/mailwasherpro/). It is a great program for the fight against spam.

[Front_Seat_Dreamer]

Good advice as usual from the guys above and I also use Mailwasher as it saves me bandwidth not having to download the mountainous pile of spam I get daily.

My best suggestion to anyone these days is just to be extremely careful who you give your email address to, and if possible do not give it our unless you have to

Another good tip is, if you have the facility, be it your own domain or an email account with freeserve or similar, change the name before the @ eg pprune @ mydomaindotfreeservedotcom then if any mail comes in using that prefix you will know who sold you out.

P.S. I am not for one minute suggesting they do that here but you get the idea before I get jumped on.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Not jumping on you FSD but those uncomfortable with computers I'd like to reassure our readers.

The forum experts will be able to confirm by looking at the source code for each page the simple, yet still effective, trick we use to encode ppruners e-mail addresses.

So far it has proved to be very successful against address strippers.

Regards
Rob

[Azure]

Thanks all for the advice, I guess it's time to change my e-mail address. :ugh: Maybe I'll give that Mail Washer a try first.

I have always been careful, had the same address for many many years, and was spamless until recently....but I guess it was only a matter of time before before they got me.

PS: They haven't found my PPrune e-mail yet!
:ok:

[Timothy]

Azure

When you do get your new eMail address, try to avoid it being published on a website. The harvesters love to have automated processes that read through every website in the world extracting strings that look like addresses.

W

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

The harvesters love to have automated processes that read through every website in the world extracting strings that look like addresses.

Not only that, but they now try to "brute force" the plausible name space, i.e. they try alan, andrew, bob, charlie, dave, etc. and combinations and permutations thereof at each domain, in the vain hope that they will "get lucky". Thus people with popular names (or rather mailnames with combinations of popular words in them) are more likely to get hit even if their address isn't published anywhere. Of course that doesn't mean that if your mailname is [email protected] you're going to be immune... :rolleyes:

[and yes, it is safe for me to publish that made up address above: example.com is reserved precisely for published, well, examples :) ]

[Front_Seat_Dreamer]

PPrune Towers

True I should have been a little more reassuring with my praise for this place, there are however too many sites that freely publish your address and searching for my real name finds published addresses these are the ones I use some trickery on.

Just discovered that when browsing with IE and asking to view source it just doesn't work but does fine with Opera, strange but liveable with nonetheless.

[goates]

It sounds like the first problem Azure is having is that someone has a virus on their computer. Many of the new email viruses will scan the infected computer for email addresses, including the address book and any email messages on the computer. It will then send an email to you from that computer, but will use a third, random, email address as the return address. Even if you don't know the person, all it takes is a friend of yours to forward the email on to them, and now they have your address somewhere in the message.

Something like this is happening to me right now, but the only thing I can do is make sure my anti-virus software is up to date. People with broadband internet connections should also use a good firewall (ie. not the one built in to Windows XP) as these can stop many of these viruses from sending out the emails if the computer does become infected. As viruses can spread too fast for the anti-virus software makers to update their software in time for everyone, a firewall will help alleviate the problem.

If you know the email address of the spammer you could just sign them up for catalogues, mailing lists and anything else you can think of. This has happened to some of the bigger spammers in the US. People got a hold of the spammers address and went to town with the subscriptions. Unfortunately it won't stop the spam.

[Memetic]

I was reading on slashdot the other day the suggestion that we should all keep a spare email address to attract spam and just reply to one offer a day - with fake details.

The idea being that Spam works on getting a response rate of a fraction of one percent, if that becomes one or two percent with most of those being junk, then the spam industry is no longer economic.

Intersting idea, but it takes time and you have to read the crap!

[brownstar]

Azure

An Hotmail was recommended to me as being free from spam. You can get it for free. Maybe worth a try?

[PPRuNe Towers]

Is there an icon for an admin falling over in a faint?? Hotmail!!!

Rob

[fobotcso]

brownstar, someone may have been pulling your leg.

My hotmail address was getting about 100 spams a day until I set the filter to "Exclusive". Now I don't get any. But it does need you to know the e-mail addresses of all those who are likely to send you e-mails. And you have to add them to your "Exclusive" list in advance.

[fobotcso]

A late thought came to me as I checked for spams this morning before using Outlook Express.

The are several sites such as:

mail2web (http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/login.asp?lid=0&il=0)

where you can see your emails as web-mail before they get anywhere near your computer.

It is my habit, particularly on week-end mornings to go there first to delete the junk before downloading.

Bit like Hotmail but you use your normal e-mail addresses and you have to know the name(s) of your server(s).