Unsolicited E-mails

[Jump Complete]

I've recently been getting regular (3-5 times a week) E-Mails inviting me to 'Check out Saucy Teens at ...' etc. I haven't actually visited any sites (as I don't have my own computer and I have to go to the public library it would be a bit difficult if I did want to)
I'm not actually prudish but I'm fed up with getting these all the time. (Pretty much the same as salesmen who call univited at your door to sell something you don't want.)
If I use the standard SPAM blocks (I'm with yahoo) I'm worried I may actually miss an e-mail I want as I'm sending out C.V.s to the airlines. Some airlines (TNT for example) send out application forms by e-mail to multiple applicants so must look like spam to the filters.
I tried to bloke the address of the first one (eg Jerry@jano12345 etc) but the next one came from Jane@jano12345) Now coming from a variety of sources.
Is there any way to get rid of these? Why the sudden rash of them? Never had them before and have't visited any or let my e-mail address any where.
Any advice apprecieated. Its not a big deal but it is slightly annoying.

[sprocket]

The first thing I do, is to look at the message closely to see if there is an 'unsubscribe' link or address (usually near the bottom of the page).

If that fails you could have a 'spyware' program/file on your drive.

Try this link for a free download ....

Ad - aware (http://www.lavasoft.nu/index.html)

I have used it with much success.

Caution: some spyware files can be located in the registry [if idendified by Ad aware] so backing up the registry before you remove them, is recomended.

[Tinker]

Avoid unsubscribe links, by following them you only prove your e-mail address is active and you will generate even more unwanted mail. To limit spam in the future avoid registering anything with an e-mail address that is important to you (including your PC). As for your current situation, by using spam filters you can block out important e-mails. You are going to have to put up with cack from wankwank.com etc. Unfortunately even the abuse reporting services are useless as you'll find that the addresses you are being spammed by are registerd in some backwater country that doesn't have any form leagle agreement enabling anyone to prevent this problem. Adaware will help to a small extent but changing your e-mail address is the only real solution.

[sprocket]

Tinker/Flying Banana, I gotta know ……. You say that using the unsubscribe link will create more spam and confirm to the perpetrator that the current address is ‘open’.
Now I don’t doubt that possibility but I have not experienced extra spamming after unsubscribing. You are usually advised that it could take a week before the advertising mail stops.
If the advertiser already has your address then what have you got to lose?

The unsubscribe link has always worked for me and until I curtailed some of my kids activities on the net, the spam was regular occurrence and I have had no spamming since. [And my address is still the same.]
I used Ad-aware to sniff out and remove some spyware that appeared to be causing pop ups as well, whenever I was online.

[PaperTiger]

The don't unsubscribe caveat is a myth.
Most spam comes from bogus addresses anyway, and if it doesn't the sender's mailbox is usually full.

Very, very few spammers will have any software that 'verifies' unsubscribe addresses. The genuine (if there is such a thing) marketers will remove you if you reply. In most countries anyway.

The naughtybits.com sites just want you to visit. Perhaps enough people do :( to make it worthwhile, but I suspect the only people benefitting from this are the email list sellers.

[Hobo]

I use Hotmail ( www.hotmail.com ) and you can set the filter on that to accept e-mails from only those addresses in your address book.
The address book takes a while to set up but this works really well.

[msmorley]

It's worth checking the headers of any spam messages. Some ISPs filter incoming email against Realtime Blackhole Lists (RBLs) and add warnings to the headers. These lists are dynamically updated to keep track of the mail-relays these vermin use and are very effective - over the last month one of my accounts has received 237 spam messages - only 2 got through with no false identifications.

These are from a message promising "Britney" as I've never seen her before... which has attacted the attention of two such filters on its way to my inbox:

X-RBL-Warning: (rbl-plus.mail-abuse.ja.net)
X-RBL-Warning: (bl.spamcop.net) Blocked - see http://spamcop.net/bl.shtml?211.163.180.83


If you've got these then it's a simple matter to filter them out - if you haven't, maybe your ISP could do with a prod in the right direction...

HTH :cool:

m.

[BRL]

Interesting subject spamming. I have a few e-mail addresses and the only one that never gets spammed is the pprune e-mail address...!! I have hotmail(for messenger purposes) and yahoo(for on-line gaming clan that best mate runs) and a few others too. Everyone of them gets spammed to death, except as i say, the pprune addy.
I would seriously consider it and also if you do get a hotmail account, they automaticly 'tick' the two boxes that gives them permisson to give your addy to other people then they have the nerve to charge you $19 a year for a bigger mail box.....!!!!!!!!
Go for the pprune one, you wont regret it. Just click the link on the menu bar on the left. Good luck. :)

[Jump Complete]

Thanks for the advice there. Next time I get some (just deleted two more) I'll look at points made here. Unfortuntely blocking to unknown addresses isn't an option as I may miss an e-mail from a potential employer. The PPPRUNE option sounds best. (I have actually got one but I haven't been using it as the yahoo address was already in use.)
I assume that spammers are the computing versions of those people that sit in call centres with lists of numbers and phone them up asking them to consider 'Rip Off Windows PLC' (A job I did for 2 days before walking out of.)
Purely out of interest, those E-Mails that say "Come and check out my FREE site .... Whats the catch? If you visit just for a quick look do you end up with an huge bill on your account or do you not get to see anything anyway until you've entered your card number (would anyone be that stupid?)

[msmorley]

...do you end up with an huge bill on your account or do you not get to see anything anyway until you've entered your card number (would anyone be that stupid?)

I'm guessing (no, really...) that they do - a bit like the 'try Which? for free for three months" and "AOL free trial" things where you sign-up and later cancel if you don't want to continue.

Stupid people on the internet? :confused: Given the prevalence of these things, they've got to be financially viable - a better investment than that ATPL, perhaps? ;) There would probably be few comebacks either - how many people are going to complain to their CC company that they were ripped off by a porn site? :(

m.

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

The problem with spam is that (1) it's easy to get email addresses; and (2) the recipient pays most of the cost of receiving the message.

(1) People leave their email addresses all over the place, they sign up to things, they proudly quote them on web-pages they've setup, etc. It's even not that difficult to guess plausible email addresses (as you can see if you run even a moderately large mail system -- it can easily get clogged up with all the incorrect guesses -- but that's my day job... ) Lists of millions of email addresses which have been trawled in this way are openly on sale for a few dollars each.

(2) With email, unlike most other forms of communication, the receiver pays most of the cost of receiving the message (in terms of phone cost of download time, space used up on your local disk, space and resources that your ISP has to provide to keep your mail flowing -- which gets passed on to to you the customer, etc.) It takes the spammer little longer to send the message to 100,000 recipients than it does for each one of the recipients to download the message.

Combine cheaply and easily available lists of addresses with low sending costs and you have a situation where you can easily spam 100,000 or even a million addresses and it only takes 1 or 2 recipients to buy your product (or sign up to your p0rn site or whatever) and you've covered your mailshot costs :eek:. A few more than that pay up and you're into pure profit. Now you can see why it's so attractive to the would-be spammers :mad:

The good news is that there are some quite clever statistical anti-spam techniques being devloped which promise to be much more effective than the present crude word-list based ones (you know, the ones which won't allow to you to send emails with the word "cockup" or "s****horpe" in [think about it ;)].

HTH,

As if to illustrate my point... :)

I didn't put the asterisks in the last line of my message above -- the BB software thought I was using a naughty word and censored it :D

This is why simple (or even allegedly sophisticated word-list based systems aren't terribly useful in spam blocking -- the chances of getting a flase positive (blocking a legitimate message are too high. The statistically-based techniques now in development seem to be much better at not generating false positives than the present word-list based ones.