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Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to stop spam?
- 10/11/07 12:57 PM
Options to avoid SPAM
by lloyd1981 - 9/29/07 6:12 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
No matter how many SPAM filters you set, you’re on the hook now.
NEVER unsubscribe - all that does is to let the spammer know your address is valid. I have three major email suppliers: Verio, the host of a major web site; Earthlink, my former DSL supplier (I now have cable but would never use their mail offering); and another web hosting company that hardly anyone knows exists (and that’s the way I want it).
Earthlink has the best filtering on the net. They even allow you to add up to 500 “@” addresses and will outright reject mail from those addresses and hold all suspected SPAM in a file that cleans itself every 14 days... and sends you a mail listing all the SPAM-blocker mail for the day.
Verio used to be great, but after Hurricane Wilma (my server is in Boca Raton, FL, ), they loosened the filters and all sorts of trash started to show up. (Explained too many subscribers were compalining about blocked mail from vendors and the subscribers apparently were too lazy to use the White List.)
The best (and free) solution is to establish a gmail account and have all of your mail FORWARDED to your gmail account (don’t give out that new, safer address). Mail will not show that it came from gamail - the original mail-to is preserved. Then, add the gmail account to your POP account list so that your mail will be downloaded AND remain on their servers so you can access it from anywhere in the world - I use my Q phone - and check your inbox and spam box. Spam can be marked as spam and gmail will learn. Non-spam mail that ended up in the spam box can be marked as “not spam” and gmail will learn.
You will have 2 gig of storage for free and by inviting yourself to open an account, you can actually have more than one free account. Personally, Googls’s gmail beats everything out there for protection and convenience, while the best pure filter in use is Eartjlink’s BrightMail... but you have to pay for an account.
Good luck... and DO NOT unsubscribe. Oh yes... you might set a filter that will do something like turn HTML mail red, so you can read that mail offline. And never have your mail client have a preview window that is open so you can read mail when you click on it.
lloyd1981
miami
Get a SPAM filter
by tbayit - 9/29/07 6:36 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I typically receive 100-300 SPAM messages daily and will not change my email addresses. I purchased a SPAM filter called CloudMark. It catches 99% of the SPAM and puts it into a distinct folder which I review weekly and usually I just delete it all as I have found virtually no false positives in the past.
Check to see if your ISP or web host offers SPAM protection. Often you can adjust the levels to minimize SPAM.
Dealing with Spam
by Frank Hall - 9/29/07 6:36 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I use Yahoo email. It is free and does a great job of filtering out spam. Check it out!
Yahoo Plus = Disposable Emails!
by rmonroe041 - 10/5/07 9:06 PM In reply to: Dealing with Spam by Frank HallUnfortunately this does not apply to Yahoo's free version. You will have to upgrade to their yearly "Plus" plan in order to reap the awesome benefits you're about to read.
Yahoo PLUS has the added option of users having the ability of creating...., ready for this...., DISPOSABLE EMAIL ADDRESSES! Yes, you read right, DISPOSABLE (aka. you can delete/discard). Yep, with Yahoo Plus, you'll have your initial MAIN email address (which I recommend all NEW registered Yahoo users to NOT share or give out to anyone or any site WHATSOEVER), and after setting up your disposable account, you're able to create as many disposable emails as your heart desires!!!
As an example, if I want to register to a site which I'm not sure about, I create disposable email "myname-questionablesite@yahoo.com"
and use this AND ONLY THIS email to this site, and this site only!
What happens? If I receive even ONE single spam email directed to that email address, I'll know exactly which site it came from, and I simply DELETE that email address (avoiding me from receiving any more spam) and I'll make a note to NEVER visit that site again! (A little homework doesn't hurt to save your sanity.)
BELIEVE ME, this works like a charm!!!! The second I get a spam email to any of my disposable emails, I kill them at the source!
I know, you'll have to spend (I believe) $30 a year, but people, IT WILL BE WORTH E-V-E-R-Y PENNY!!!
Consequently, you can also create a disposable email for your friends & family that you trust not to send you spam emails...., or if they do..., you know what to do!
GOOD LUCK with your fight on spam!
Spam Solution
by willt - 9/29/07 6:40 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Dear Jo,
Don't worry, your not the only one that gets spam. Millions of people get spam everyday. Its annoying and time wasting and can be very dangerous.
Spam comes from all different places. If you have a website which has your email address on it, then spam bots can track your email address and add them to there mailing lists. Also when you sign up to companies, or websites they can sell you email address to other people so they send you there advertisements.
To prevent this from happening in the future, make sure you read privacy statements on websites. These will tell you what the company will do with your information you give to them. If you don't like what they say, don't sign up. Also some websites will give you check boxes to choose whether you want information sent to you by them or not.
To deal with your junk emails, there are many ways to delete them. Hot mail filters out millions of spam emails a day. You should be able to configure spam filters on there. AOL also has advanced spam filters in there email client. If you use other email messaging programs, check whether they give you a spam filter. If not try one of these free tools: http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0-1-0.html?qt=spam+filters&author=&titlename=&desc=&dlcount=&daysback=&swlink=&gfiletype=&os=&li=49&dlsize=&ca=
Some newsletters give you an un-subscribe link right at the bottom of the messages, or links to stop these messages from being sent to you again. See if the emails have any messages like that. If you are sure you that it is a spam email though and not a email from a site you trust, never click links like these. It confirms that it is your email address and its active. Some spam companies can even track when you have read there messages.
Spam is illegal, and often very difficult to determine which company may have sold your address on. However if you feel you know which company has sold your email address or to even report spam, you can do so by this link: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/spam/index.html
Just remember though never buy products advertised by spam emails, download attachments or reply to spam messages. They can be dangerous and lead to phishing attacks. I had an email from a phishing attacker which the email was automatically sent to my spam folder. It was from pay pal supposedly. It had a mask link and Norton detected it as a phishing attack. The funny thing is, I don't have a paypal account in the first place. So I went a bit crazy since it kept sending me this message, I reported it to pay pal, ebay and hundreds of other phishing report sites! I haven't received an email from them again!
Hope this answers your question!
Good luck!
Will.
Spam!
by boris010666 - 9/29/07 6:43 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One of the best ways i've found is to click the "spam" button(for my yahoo mail). You may also manually configure the addresses and domains where these emails are generated from, if needed. Outlook, as well as many other email programs has a sender blocking list in the tool menu that is quite efficient.
What worked for me (and continues to work!)
by Shron62 - 9/29/07 6:57 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Jo, the last thing you want to do is go to one of those spam emails and click on "unsubscribe." What that will do is let the spammers know they've got a "hot" address, and not only will they continue to use it, they will *sell* it to other spammers... I''m a published author, and I have an email address published for readers, editors, publishers, etc. to contact me -- so I did *not* want to lose that address. I ended up downloading MailWasher, which shows you your email, the sender, the email address it claims to be sent from, and all those goodies. You can blacklist senders, and the program remembers it, as well as marking "known" spammer domains as "possible spam." You can delete the garbage emails right then and there, before they ever get near your email client! And my favorite part? You can bounce the things right back to them! That is, if they've provided a real email address. If not, MailWasher will let you know. Enough bounces and their ISP gets very annoyed, so they will eventually leave you alone! You'll have "calm" periods of practically no spam, and then you'll have a brand new flurry every now and then (that's when someone has sold their lists), but be patient and keep deleting and bouncing. It pays off! I wouldn't part with my MailWasher for love nor money! Hope this helps!
CounselorBeep
Nashville
GETTING TO MUCH SPAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
by dagoboy - 9/29/07 6:59 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Jo B. just go to cnet downloads.com and download a program called spamfighter. It is free and works very well getting rid of alot of spam.
Bill G.
Getting Rid Of Spam
by MilesKirkham - 9/29/07 7:04 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My 1001 reception of spam commenced with looking at a live TV site. To enter it I had to enter my email address, but at the bottom of the site home page included the "fact" that the site does not share email addresses. Immediately I started receiving spam by the bucket load. After advice from CNET (which I ignored), I right clicked on an unopened email that was obviously spam, then on "reply to sender" which then opened a reply email. I then sent 100 batches of this email at a time. within a few hundred emails sent half my spams stopped. At random I chose another spam email and did the same with that one. I now only receive 2 / 3 per week. Two points: I have had a good spam filter (Cloudmark) from well before I started with the "problem", and also I have the time (retired) to send big batches of email.
Getting rid of spam
by issachar5 - 9/29/07 7:07 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Get Norton antivirus and run it. This will find all those cookies and other hidden programs that reside in your computer and remove them. These cookies help set you up for all that spam.
As for the spam you have, identify them as spam in your email program, and all future ones of this sort will be blocked, going directly to a spam folder.
Microsoft 1 live could also do the job. There are also free programs from downloads.com you could use to remove spyware and adware; from personal experience, be careful of some programs, like AVG (this program can prompt you to remove needed programs in your registry...killing your computer).
Most adware and spyware and virus and worm programs are free for 90 days; after that, you have to pay. If worst comes to worst, you can always format your drive and start all over again. I had to do that for one particularly malicious dialing program that was too difficult for me to remove otherwise.
Spam
by coureurd - 9/29/07 7:15 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've been using a program called "Mailwasher". It works great for me.
http://www.firetrust.com/
It gives you an opportunity to pre-screen your email, before you even download it. Not only can you delete it, if you don't want it, there is a setting to "bounce" it. If you use this, it will be returned to the sender, appearing that you address no longer exists. This will likely get you removed from their lists. I've heard and I believe that if you ask to be removed, they take it as a confirmation, and send you more.
And I never open any email if I don't know who it's from. The hackers are getting so sophisticated, you never know what might be in it.
Just a comment here, curious that when I opened a new Yahoo email account, I started getting bombed with spam. Doesn't happen with my other accounts. I wonder why???
Email Filters
by bjgrem - 9/29/07 7:24 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First of all, I wouldn't open them, since some (or most) of them could report your opening the email and make the situation worse. Most email clients have a filtering option that allows you to create customized email filters based on keywords and key phrases. Look at the subject lines of the emails and create these filters based on the most common spellings (especially since most of these emails use strange charictars like @ instead of a and 1 instead of i) of the keywords you want filtered. I myself have created filters in Outlook for exactly the same reason, and it works like a charm. They show up in my inbox for a brief second and then are automatically put in the trash. Also, you could report the situation to your ISP or whoever you have your email account with and see if they can update the spam filter on their end. Good luck.
Too much spam in E-Mail
by AUBIGJOE - 9/29/07 7:39 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Get a new E-mail server that allows you to block messages. I have one (Juno E-mail) that only costs $9.95 a YEAR and lets me block 750 addresses. I have had the same E-mail Address for about 12 years--have 745 blocked and get very little spam. It is a pain to unblock one however in case you make a mistake. You have to do it one at a time and they are in no particular order. Theoretically I could have to go through 744 addresses before I found the one I want to unblock. I tried this on my brother-in law's post (which I accidentally blocked) but gave up after 100.
Never - Ever Click Unsubscribe Unless...
by Uncle Buck - 9/29/07 8:00 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Jo B., Hating Spam is a very near and dear subject to me, I hope this is not too much of a read but I think you will find it enlightening. Before I start I give this advice: Never ever click on an unsubscribe link or respond to a spam message directly by email or web. All you do is tell the person that sent the spam that you have read their message and they will send you more of the stuff.
About 5 years ago I got so upset at my ever increasing problem and decided to wage war with the Spammers. My problem had grown into a 300 message per day problem telling me I was not big or hard enough; plus many of them were loaded with virus exploits and just viewing them to look for a way to get off the list was dangerous. After countless hours of running tracers on IP’s and filing complaints with ISP’s I was able to get the problem down to about 15 per day. I stopped filing complaints and it slowly grew back to about 100 per day. To tell the truth, if you have nothing better to do with your life and are willing to learn Chinese you can take this approach. What I am going to do is offer a 3 fold solution for you to put into practice based from my experience. The Spam will more than likely never go away without changing your address but you can reduce it and gain control.
Part 1: Understand how you got on the list in the first place.
To begin with you will never get control of the problem until you can get control of your own internet activities. My spam came from a combination of blind trust and public exposure of my email address. I had a website and on every page I had placed my email address for contact; later on I discovered that spammers have web crawlers going from site to site harvesting addresses. This was a big source of the spam.
Another time I was developing a website and we did a web promotion; I gave my email address to the promotion company which over night registered the website with 1000 search engines and link pages. The next morning I was greeted with over 3000 spam messages of which I had to setup filters to sort out the important ones from the junk. These messages continued on for several weeks and then declined to about 30 or so per day. After sorting out the messages I started to respond to them by clicking the links and registering passwords and stuff; this process identified several serious offenders of which I eventually put on a black list.
I never could figure out where I got the porn & enlargement spam and then discovered that while signing up for singles and social networking sites my email address was getting sold to the spammers. Some of these sites and especially any site that says “Adult” somewhere on their homepage are non-trustworthy. Even if you close your account the damage has been done. Never ever sign up for a website without fully examining the content and reading the privacy statement.
About 3 years ago I got a new job and a clean email address came with it. During the course of promoting my services by looking for specific business contacts via websites and emailing them a private message from the contact person on the site I discovered another way of getting on a spam list. That is the “Form Based Contact” type of systems you see on what should be a perfectly legitimate website, I emailed a site and suddenly started getting the “Hot Stock” type of spam! I examined my previous day’s activity and discovered which website started spamming me by putting 2 + 2 together. When I went back to the site looking for contact info I saw no email address anywhere on the site only and input form and a phone number. The phone number was my solution to solving the new problem since I had identified the source. I called them up and got in touch with the business owner and proceeded to crawl his case by threatening him with a lawsuit. He totally acted surprised and assured me he would discuss the matter with his webmaster. I felt really good after the call and even better when the spam stopped. So if you have a clean address, stop the spam at the source before it gets out of control. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, get a Skype account and start calling the websites sending you the mail when possible and really give them an earful.
Here is my first real piece of advice: Open up a junk email account for testing the trust worthiness of the websites you give your address to or register with. After testing them, a legitimate list or site like “c|net” will have a place and truly honor your list subscriptions faithfully. After you know you can trust them you can always log in and then change your email account. If you never give them your private address to begin with you will never get junk back. Also if you have clicked on any links in the messages you will need to clean your computer of all viruses. Viruses are beyond the scope of my post and you should enlist the help of an expert.
Part 2: Get control of your inbox.
There are some absolutely wonderful products that will pre-read your email and help you clean up your inbox. Search Download.com and you will find anti-spam tools that are both pay and free. Personally I did not pay to get the spam and so I refuse to pay someone to get rid of it, there are good people out there who hate spam as much as I do but also have the ability of designing software. Take Robin Keir for example; he has produced a free anti-spam tool that pre-reads your email and tags it so you can setup one filter in your email client and automatically place all of your junk in a junk mail folder or trash bin where it belongs. The tool is called K9 and actually gets smarter the more you use it. It reads your Pop3 email and you tell it what is good and what is bad and it builds 2 dictionaries a spam dictionary and a good email dictionary. When it reads your mail it checks it against the dictionaries grades it and then tags the message so you can setup a filter to move it into the junk folder. This software also checks against a blacklist and you can build your own blacklist along with using a whitelist. K9 also has a safe reader so you can examine the spam safely and easily look at the html code underneath the message and see the real source then determine if you ever signed up for their list. This program is amazing as it will kill your spam at a 98% accuracy ratio and do it free. You can get it here:
http://keir.net/k9.html or on download.com with this link http://www.download.com/K9/3000-2382_4-10636520.html?tag=lst-0-4
Part 3: Unsubscribe and Complain 
This is where you can have some fun if you like to hear people squirm. Frankly I do not believe that spam would exist to the level it does if people paying for the mass email service would stop purchasing the service. As a large community I truly believe if we start calling the website owners and raise some H-E-Double-Toothpicks about the crap, collectively we can make a difference. If the website owners’ grief surpasses their profit they will surely quit paying for more of it. The Blue Frog Saga is a perfect example of this kind of effort. This is a really fun story to read up on in the c|net and ZDnet discussion groups. I know this much; it worked and a real bad spammer located in Russia had a temper tantrum and used his illegal botnet to bring down the Blue Frog website and product. I rode this saga through and granted when the spammer had his fit my spam rose to an all time high, but after his temper tantrum was over my spam level dropped to an all time low! This is proof that collectively we can make a difference and the source of the spam is actually 3 or 4 spammers with one of them more than likely in Russia.
I don’t want to forget about the one piece of spam that when dealt with properly will shut down a lot within a New York Heartbeat. Look for the spam selling the spam services. Call that phone number and really give them the business for sending you spam and demand they purge you from their list; along with this complain to their ISP as you will more than likely find a real email address in the message. Believe me, this will work but expect a temper tantrum and some very vindictive response. I have done this and what happens is they take your email off the list but then put your address in the To:, Cc: and Bcc: section of the mail. They will also then try to draw a complaint if you have a website by spamming with your email throughout the email message. Don’t’ worry this will eventually stop too.
I am going to summarize this with these points: 1) Protect your email address from exposure to anyone you do not know. 2) Never click on a link or try to use the unsubscribe method without first making sure you actually subscribe to the mail. 3) Get control of your inbox by using spam filtering software or white lists. 4) Complain to the real source of the spam, the person who has paid to have it sent and the actual spammer. They just might have a temper tantrum but that will go away and if you have proper filters running just let them scream and kick. Oh, don’t get bent out of shape and stressed over this; let’s have some fun and make these creeps squirm. That is Uncle Buck’s way of dealing with the issue.
Unwanted mail
by vicky464 - 9/29/07 8:13 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You need to get a spam blocker, at least one, perhaps more. If you are using AOL or another service, they have them available. I have one through my ISP - earthlink and it is great, usually catches most. Then I have Norton Anti-Virus with a spam blocker as a back up. Very little spam actually hits my email program (Outlook). Every so often I do need to go to Earthlink and check the Spam Folder because an occassional message I woudl like to read gets stuck in spam
If you are recently signing up with various services on the web your email address coudl have gotten sold or used to solicit. What some people do is they create a "free email account" such as gmail, for all their signups. This ensures that any mail from those sites end up in an email address you dont ever have to check.
Good luck!
Vicky
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