I'm Being Spammed

[Tosh McCaber]

I have had Pipex as my ISP for the last three years, and found them to be reliable and efficient, if not the cheapest. Absolutely no spam in my email inbox during this time- until now!

Over the last month or two, an increasing amount of mail -subject "Undelivered mail Retuned to Sender" or Delivery Status (Failure)" from "mailer-daemon @address.invalid" (or .other addresses) has been delivered. Over the last few days, these nasties have suddenly started pouring in- up to 150 at a time.

I downloaded Mailwasher, but after I tick off the boxes to delete the spam in Mailwasher, and press the process Mail button, it gives a message that it doesnt seem to recognise my ISP address. Also I only get adverts for Pro, if I click on the Friends and Blaclist tabs to add to them.

Anyone know of any other good, free spam blocking programmes?

[coodem]

I would say your problem has nothing to do with spam, but rather someone has spoofed your email/ or has opened up a port on your PC to enable them to send mail via your email gateway. Hence you are receiving a lot of undeliverable email. (Check the description on the undeliverable mail, you should be able to establish who the mail was intnded for and the subject, also the time it was sent) Now if you don't recognise it, you have a problem

The most likely cause is a trojan is resident on your PC. and is using your email gateway to send SPAM to other people, in form of advertising/the usual junk. You can get rid of this, by trying to install something like microsoft antispyware (it is free, I have had no problems using it. But I have had it installed since the PC was built) If that dont work I suggest using ad-aware

If someone is spoofing your email address from another terminal, you have no real control over this, apart from reporting it to your ISP or changing your email address

[Tosh McCaber]

Thanks Coodem,

I've AVG and MS Antispam set up to scan every night, and I regularly use Adaware and Spybot (not in the past couple of days, though- I'll try them now).

After an initial scan, MS Antispyware has shown nothing since on its nightly scan.

[BOAC]

A well-tried test is to make the first email address in your 'address book' something like '[email protected] ('[email protected])'. Then if you get a 'demon' bounce from that address you will know the problem is in your system.

[coodem]

Some trojans don't use your contacts. They often just open up ports to allow your pc to relay their email. So they won't be traceble when people complain. All the fingers will point at you. Usually if there is a high activity of mail, your ISP will send you an email and advise you, they usually give you a few days to sort out, then threaten to cut you off till problem has been resolved.

There are trojans out there, that stop these antispyware and anti virus from picking them up. They do this by setting up exclutions in your anti-virus/anti-spy tables. Might be an idea to check your exclutions. Also check your exclutions on the MS firewall.

Got to McAfee's website and download the latest STINGER.EXE. Its free. It is a stand alone program, that when excecuted will do a scan of your system and check for all sorts of crap and tell you about it, might not be able to fix it, but at least you know about it. (It should not install the program, just run when executed, they advise people to run it before installing one of their products)

[Globaliser]

If someone is spoofing your email address from another terminal, you have no real control over this, apart from reporting it to your ISP or changing your email addressI wonder whether the problem might be as simple as this: A contact of Tosh McCaber's has contracted a mass mailing virus. That virus is sending out spam and/or itself with a forged "from" line giving Tosh McCaber's address, even though the e-mail is actually coming from the victim's machine. When the spam is undeliverable as addressed, it gets bounced, but bounced back to Tosh McCaber as that is the "from" and/or "reply to" address.

Maybe I've missed something in the description which shows why this suggestion is a load of rubbish, but I make it FWIW.

[Tosh McCaber]

Returning to my original query, does anyone know of any good, free spam blocking programmes, other than Mailwasher? I'm also getting a steady trickle of regular offers for cheap software, financial services, etc., which I want to block.

[Avtrician]

Globaliser is probably correct about the source of the unwanted emails.

As for a solution to the problem, it can depend on your email program. One solution is to set up a rule that runs when you run your email. It will search the server for the parrameters you specify, like message headers that contain a phrase " Undelivered mail" , if its there delete it from the server. that way its gone before you see it.

Of course you could change your email address perhaps.

[BEagle]

Try Virgin.net. They have an extremely good spam-killer.

Occasionally (usually on Thursdays/Fridays - which should give a clue to the source...) a rash of viagra-peddlers or other such ar$eholes invade one's privacy, but Virgin usually manage to kill it all within a day or so...

Ba$tard spammers - they should be boiled alive in their own excrement.

[Keef]

It's probably spam sent by some outfit in China or South America (or even the USA) using your address. I've had plenty of such. The problem is, they then get you added to other spammers' lists.

The best fix I've found is to spend $30 a year on a Spamcop account. Mine filters all incoming mail against Spamcop's blacklist (and some other parameters); as a result I get two or three spams a day, and about 500 a day get caught in the Spamcop filter, where I can check them quickly and delete the lot in one go (occasionally a legit one gets caught because that ISP has been used by a spammer).

If I could, I'd ditch the various addresses I use and start again. Trouble is, even new addresses soon get hit. I registered a new domain, and before I used it I was getting spam to info@ accounting@ and mail@ it. You can't win.

[Speedpig]

Good ol' btinternet.com works for me. I have a "spam folder" which I can read if I wish, but usually just delete the 200 or so messages a day without opening.

[stickyb]

Globaliser is absolutley correct. Someone who has Tosh in their address book has contracted a virus which is spreading itself out from that person's machine but pretending to be Tosh (and usually everyone else in the address book) You should be able to track down the infected machine from the returned email.