Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to stop spam?
- 10/11/07 12:57 PM
SPAM help...
by blaxjac - 9/29/07 8:48 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In Outlook or most e-mail clients press CTRL and click on each of those pesky messages, Then drag them to your spam folder. Your e-mail client will process these spam message and begin to block them. If you're using any of the free web mail sites your can choose unread messages and then mark them as spam. To avoid this is the future I recommend having two e-mail addresses. One will be your public e-mail, which means, you will use when forms require an e-mail. the second will be private and only used between friends and family. After awhile you won't care about the spam on your public folder as much since the messages that are important to you won't be surrounded by unwanted messages. Good luck
Reading spam
by jock a - 9/29/07 8:56 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Open spam mail? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!!! It's an obvious way for all manner of electronic contamination to get right in to your computer, and you may never fully delete it, if it allows you to do so. So Jo B, delete it without even thinking of opening any of it. Happy computing!!
Solution depends on the email program you have
by krs99 - 9/29/07 9:02 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
In general - if the email program has identified the messages as spam in your inbox, you can just sort on the subject which will place all the spam messages together in one group, click on the first one once only to select (not open!); scroll down to the last one, hold down the shift button and click once on the last message in the group.
That should select all the spam messages - the just hit delete; maybe check your trash to make sure no "good" message was caught and moved to the trash, and then delete to whole mess.
I never ever reply or do an "unsubscribe" on any spa, since this just tells the spammer your email address is not only valid, but it's also active and being read.
I understand your concern about changing email addresses, I have had mine for over ten years and certainly don't want to change it.
If you just ignore spam. it should die down again over time - did with me - the other suggestion is to give out the email address you want to keep sparingly and use a throw-away address for most things.
Email junk
by amora76 - 9/29/07 9:09 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First of all, NEVER open one of those emails. Many contain invisible pictures that tag your email as valid when the picture is retrieved from the web. The sender can now sell your email as 'validated' leading to even more email junk.
You don't say what provider, but most ISPs have spam filtering available. You could check with them to see what you have to do to turn it on. WARNING: Make sure you white list any senders you want getting through. Specifically, special offers from stores or any email groups you may belong to. I have had CompUSA, HomeDepot, GM and several other big names get caught in the filter service I use. Thankfully they use a quarantine system for borderline cases so I can deliver from there.
Again, you don't say what program you use to pick up your email. Almost any program has the ability to create rules to filter your email. Since the junk senders are numerous and vary everything specifically to escape the filters, I filter the good mail into folders and leave the junk in the inbox to delete in bulk. (Since I get about 150 pieces of legitimate mail per DAY, this is important to me!) Your good mail isn't going to vary in sender, so you can use rules to filter mail from your friends and stores into a "read" folder and quickly skim the inbox for anything that was missed before deleting the remaining junk.
Outlook (full version, not express) has a built in junk mail filter that sends suspected junk to a special folder for deletion or retrieval.
Another alternative (my least favorite) is to use a separate program to filter spam. While they can work fine, they are extra overhead that most people just don't need.
The absolute last thing I would want to do is change my email address. In the long run, the new one is going to get junk too since spammers use computer generated lists of random letters to send their junk as well as purchased lists. (I run a mail server for four domains with over 250 users. Because the domains are for business, I can't set the server to reject mis-spellings because customers don't always spell their salesperson's name correctly. All 'unknown' emails land in my box, so until we started using an outside filter service I would see literally thousands of the same email - sent to everything from aabdw@... to zxewqdd@...)
The best thing you can do to avoid the junk is NEVER use your primary email to sign up for free offers or respond to ads on the web. Get a free email (Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc) and use that for such things. If/when you decide you want to keep receiving mail from a sender, you can subscribe with your main address and unsubscribe with the free one. An added advantage is that most have spam filters that send junk to a quarantine area.
Stopping Spam
by madmumbler - 9/29/07 9:10 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
1) Check with your ISP. If you have a provider like Comcast, Verizon, etc. they have some spam tools you can take advantage of. These require going to their online access portal to set usually.
2) DON'T use the unsubscribe link from "spammers" of various "products!" That just validates your email address to them! And since they're illegal spammers anyway, they won't stop even if the link IS "valid."
3) I use a software called MailWasher that has dropped my spam intake by over 75%. I've used it for a few years now. (I run over a dozen email lists, have several websites, and I'm a member of dozens more email lists, and I get an average of over 500 VALID emails a day, so I'm a spam-alicious target. *LOL*) You can bounce back email as if it wasn't delivered to a valid email address, set filters to delete obvious spam automagically (be careful, sometimes it tags real mail but not often). You can delete the email before it ever gets to your inbox off the server. (I've notices a drastic reduction in virus emails as well as a result of this.) You can also preview "real" email in it and delete if necessary -- a great time-saver for me.
4) Set your email filters with some of the most obvious "variations" of the spam email you're getting to deliver them automagically to your trash box. This takes some time to do and isn't perfect.
Hope some of these suggestions help.
Lesli.
Don't touch that button!
by AJLC - 9/29/07 10:48 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This is really unfortunate, but may be easier to deal with then you think.
(1) DO NOT TOUCH THAT 'UNSUBSCRIBE' BUTTON. There may may be legitimate unsubscribe buttons on e-commerce sites, but the ones on spam frequently just serve to confirm that your e-mail address is real and will bring on floods of new spam. This is probably how the onslaught of email started.
(2) GET A SPAM FILTER AND USE IT AS A DEFAULT. Many ISPs and hosts have free spam filters (Yahoo mail for example) that will filter out all but a handful of devious spammers. This is one service that is really better when run by someone else. These are typically either provided by your ISP or purchased as a annual service. Contact your ISP to see what they can do.
NOW THE BAD NEWS
Your email address is by now on thousands of lists of real e-mail addresses in the hands of the spammers, legitimate merchants, and directories. This is inevitable. These list makers 'mine' the internet usenet groups, forums, and public accessible web sites for e-mail addresses. Sooner or later they will find your email address.
Good luck
anti-spam
by Piercan - 9/29/07 11:21 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Get yourself anti-spam software -- usually free from aol, yahoo! road-runner and the like -- or subscribe to mcafee, norton, spyware doctor or anyone c|net members will recommend.
Pierre.
Blocking Spam
by MaxineKL - 9/29/07 11:35 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I used to have the same problem, but have had virtually no spam of this sort (maybe 2 or 3 messages in over a year) since switching to Shaw.ca, which seems to have excellent spam filters. Also, I switched from Outlook Express to Thunderbird, and the latter has a function where you mark stuff you receive that you consider spam, and it's supposed to remember the address. I suspect opening to "unsubscribe" is probably dangerous, at the very least confirming for these abusers of the internet that your address is active. Good Luck.
MaxineKL
spam toubles
by jjijonc - 9/29/07 11:59 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I wish you were the only one with this problem. It would be a wonderful world. But you are just part of 99.9% of the virtual population.
The only sure solution -at least for a while- is to change your email address. Until they find you again... If you only have a limited list of correspondents, by all means do that. But if you might expect messages from people you don't know, or if you need to have your address somehow published on the web, changing address might not be for you.
There are programs that help you prevent your inbox from downloading spam. I use (and recommend) "MailWasher" from FireTrust, but there are many others as well. Even if you don't open spam messages, neither open/run attachment files that come with them, your mail application actually brings those mails (and attachments) down to your computer. If you've received a 5MB mail, it actually takes some time to download it, doesn't it? And if you have been bombarded by 350 messages, 5 MB each, your computer will be busy for hours. The nice thing about programs such as MailWasher is that they don't download the messages, just the "headers". Then you can erase the unwanted mail ON THE SERVER, very fast, without your mail application ever getting them.
Of course you can create blacklists, filters and rules based on addresses, domains, subject or body-text keywords, but you always risk losing some legitimate mail.
Or, as Bill Gates once suggested, you can advocate for a very cheap -but NOT free- email environment, which would eliminate 99% of the spam in the world.
I also use MailWasher
by rsimanski - 9/29/07 9:32 PM In reply to: spam toubles by jjijoncI also use MailWasher (the Pro version), and I fail to understand why it is never included in published reviews of antispam software. The ability to delete malicious messages directly from the mail servers, so that they neve reach your system in the first place, is a huge benefit. It's been about two years since my antivirus software has had to intercept a malicious message or file attachment.
Dealing with SPAM
by geofbrewer - 9/29/07 12:29 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First, your email address was linked up, possibly, through a visit to a Web site. Which one, doesn't matter. I've been tricked into going to a Web site by a legitimate looking button from a company I do business with on a regular basis. Another possiblity is you signed up for a seemingly legitimate offer. There are more possibilities, but, hey, live and learn. Don't waste any time worrying.
Second, check with your ISP or whoever handles your email account and see if they have SPAM filtering. Get it enabled. My ISP lets the SPAM through but tags it. I then hover the mouse pointer over the "From:" to see if something is suspicious. I have opened suspect email to check the real "Reply To:" address. I have a "Message Source" option that let's me look at the whole package. I don't click anything within the suspect emal. My ISPs rational is pretty simple. They have lots of customers and the SPAM just bogs the system down if its blocked. They let it through, warn the customers, and we then trash it. The end result, hopefully, the SPAMMERS get the idea we're wise to them, and they give up and try somewhere else.
Third, get another email account or two. Give this out to the people you trust. Compartmentalize. Use strong passwords. I lost an important email account because of a weak password. It didn't help I was dealing with a company more interested in their bottom line, than customer service.
Lastly, educate yourself. In an "open system", the user has to stand up for themselves. This forum is an excellant source of valuable information.
Dealing with a junk filled inbox
by faolan1 - 9/29/07 12:51 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Jo,
First of all, it's good that you never open any of the spam messages that you get. While most are probably nothing more than run of the mill junk mail, there is a chance that some may have malicious software packaged with them so better safe than sorry.
Second, security risks aside, attempting to "unsubscribe" from spam is generally hopeless. While companies that have reputations they care about, such a newegg, Amazon, or major department stores, will respect requests to be removed from their direct marketing lists, the spammers touting such things as mortgage refinancing and medications only care about volume. Attempting to unsubscribe from those kinds of emails only confirms that your email address is valid and that you will open the spam, which makes your address more valuable to the spammers because they can sell it to other spammers as a "confirmed" valid email address.
If this is an email address that you access through a mail program such as Outlook or Thunderbird, you can cut down on the amount of spam that reaches you with spam filtering software. A lot of security suites such as McAfee and Norton offer spam filtering, or you could go with another third party application like SpamAssassin. While any of these will cut way back on the amount of spam that you see, you will still want to periodically check the messages that are being filtered to make sure it isn't mistakenly labeling legitimate emails as spam.
Finally, if the amount of spam is getting overwhelming, you can just change your email address and start over. If you do decide to go this route, I suggest trying the method that has been working extremely well for me. I currently have multiple email addresses, each with a specific purpose. My main email address is only for friends and family and has the filter set to only accept emails from people in my address book. My second email address is only used for finances and shopping, so any email claiming to be from my bank, credit cards, PayPal, or any other financial institution that arrives at any of my other addresses is guaranteed to be a scam and is automatically forwarded to the abuse department of whatever institution it claims to have come from. My third email address is used for any forums and/or mailing lists I choose to sign up for, so anything that is not not from one of those is automatically deleted. Also, I still have my old email address that was replaced when the amount of spam I was receiving there got out of control. I still sign into it once a week and simply delete everything, but I keep the address just to have an email address I don't care about that I can give to websites I don't want to give my real email address to.
The process I use sounds more complicated than it is, and it actually makes checking my email faster and easier because I know exactly what goes to which email address. Anything unexpected for the particular address it is sent to can be safely deleted without a second thought because it is guaranteed to be nothing but spam.
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Spam
by redking44 - 9/29/07 12:57 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Spam - emails which cost next to nothing to send out (often because it is done using hijacked computers) advertising anything... are the bane of many an online life. Most are deleted but a tiny few respond and make it worthwhile. If no one responded, spam would be unprofitable and cease, so even if you do want something advertised in spam, find somewhere else to get it (though I have no idea where else I'd find xxxxx enlargement pills if I felt the need).
Somewhere you may have signed up for something. Or put your email on a forum post. You may have agreed to receive emails from "partners." You may have put your email on a web site. It's even possible one of the kajillion viruses that spreads by email found your address on someone's computer and sent it back to head office for further exploitation (as well as trying to send you a virus). Whatever the source, your email gets added to a list of "hot prospects," sold to spammers (and list vendors) and then the flood starts.
Sometimes it does get so bad an email address becomes useless, but there are ways to handle it. And also it seems spam tends to wane. A fresh email (to spammers) quickly becomes an old one. Once the address has been harvested, the spam will never stop, but eventually the flood will ease, unless you keep becoming a fresh name.
Now you have to recognize there are (at least) 2 types of commercial mail. Some is (more or less) legitimate, run responsibly and they will honor an unsubscribe request. These emails look polished ... you might see something like it in your kerbside mailbox.
Much is illegitimate, and this is the real problem. These are the scruffy ads. a couple of lines, with bizarre punctuation and misspellings or a picture to bypass spam filters.
You asked if you should unsubscribe. DO NOT REPEAT NOT UNDERLINE NOT try to unsubscribe from this type of spam. It tells them your read our email and the spam will increase tenfold. I tried it. It did.
What can you do about it? There is no perfect solution, but lots of things help.
First, i have a free junk mail account I use when signing up for lists of various sorts. I only go to it when there should be something there I actually want - and a search will find it. This keeps my real email relatively free. And most mail there is deleted unread, unscanned, unloved, unwanted.
Now you didn't tell us which email you use. If it is a web-based email they mostly provide spam filters which you can configure and do a fair job of sorting wheat from chaff. You might need to go to an email settings page and turn it on and set the sensitivity of the filters. With the filter sensitivity set high, quite a few spam mails still get to my in box, and the occasional good email get spam canned, so I still have to check.
On a side note - I'd suggest you don't use email provided by your ISP. gofster@earthlilnk.net, phonezombie@sbcglobal.net and so on. You said you didn't want to change your email to avoid spam because it's inconvenient... If you change your ISP you lose your email. That's why I use one of the free services for my main email - it's always there however i get online. If you want more credibility than a yahoo mail offers, you can always get your own domain for email - himself@johndoe.com.
Back to spam. If you're not using web-based email, you are probably using an email client (outlook, outlook express, thunderbird, etc) to download mail from a server. Thee are several things you can do here.
Microsoft has outlook filters you can install to sort your mail according to what Microsoft considers spam. These seem to be updated periodically and tend to get less effective as time for the next update approaches. I've heard they work fairly well.
You can set up a white list (allowed) or black list (banned) of email addresses or domains. Neither approach works very well. Since spam comes from so many addresses, often fake, it takes too long to ban them all - and then even if you did - new ones appear. White list also is almost useless. You friends can't say "here's his email - drop him a line" because it won't get through (unless they warn you and you can add the new address...). You can set filters (if subject contains viagra, send to spam) but spammers don't spell check very well and v1agr@ slips through. These may be good for organizing legitimate mail, but not spam.
This leaves spam filters - programs you can install to work with your email client and sort spam from real mail. There are dozens out there. I use Cactus Spam Filter, available from Download.com. It has to be trained (told what is spam and what isn't) and then does a pretty good job. As spam fashions change, you just need to open the training window and identify the new spam. It is a fast learner, and you do not have to wait for "them" to create a new spam definition file before it can catch the new stuff.
Perhaps in the future there will be a secure email system where the headers can't be faked. Where you can always tell exactly who sent it to you and knock on their door if you want to register your displeasure. Until then, you need to protect your email address as much as possible, use spam tools to control the flood, and be prepared to use that delete key.
Keep the account...
by fjord_fox - 9/29/07 1:02 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
and use it whenever you buy something online. Open a new account for all of your correspondence with all of your friends, and do not let any business know about it. Unfortunately, whenever you buy something, or even register as a user on a website, you are giving away your e-mail address, and many businesses make money by selling it to mailing list handlers. It’s big money for them, but more clutter for you.
Many of the e-mail handlers have an option to click on all of the junkmail and then click on a “Junkmail” button. I have a HotMail account and I use this button all the time. They claim that when you use that button, it creates a report for Microsoft about this e-mail sender. I don’t what—if anything—they do from there, but it seems like a good idea.
Another thing you could do is to click on the “Options” button, and you will probably find an option to configure your Junk E-mail folder. Sometimes, you can even put in the e-mail address, so they will be directed to your Junk folder. I used to do that many years ago, but it doesn’t seem to work now, because the e-mail senders are now clever and change the e-mail address with each sending.
You will also probably have a control of high, medium, and low protection. With low, it identifies most (but not all of the e-mail that is junk, and automatically puts it in the Junk folder. Medium catches more, and of course high, sends anything that is not in your contact list into the Junk folder. I would not recommend the option for it to automatically delete junk mail for you, because a new friend, who is not on your contact list yet, may send you an e-mail and you might lose it without even the chance of seeing it, because may have been deleted by that filter. I personally have mine set on Medium, and that works fine for me.
After you have made these settings, check both your Inbox and Junk Mail folder everyday and delete what you don’t want to keep. For those that you do want to keep, you can make life easier by making and using folders. For example, if you get a lot of e-mail from a guy named John, make a folder called John, and put each e-mail to and from him in that folder.
Above all, don’t open an e-mail that was sent to you by someone you don’t know, and if you do, then never download anything from them. These both—and especially downloading—can put some bad “Malware” on your computer. One day, when I was working for a major company, a lady got an e-mail that said it was from Microsoft, telling her that she needed to click on the e-mail to download a security patch on her computer to protect her from a bad virus. (Microsoft never sends out e-mails asking you to download something from an e-mail. If you are signed up for their “Notifications E-mails” they do, rather, direct you to their secure “Windows Update” or “Microsoft Update” website.) This lady clicked on the link in the e-mail and downloaded the “protection patch against viruses” and downloaded the MS-Blaster virus. It was a very nasty virus that infected her computer and within a day or two, every computer on that worldwide network was down for 48 hours before they figured it out. Unfortunately, the problem was not limited to the company, because, not knowing her computer was infected, she received and sent personal e-mails, so this spread the virus each time the e-mail was passed on from her, from her friend, and so on.
waytron - redking44 - fjord_fox
by yasinghMD - 10/5/07 10:47 PM In reply to: Keep the account... by fjord_foxThey all have some good points that everyone should understand and follow.
When you make your address public (post it on the Internet) you are guaranteed to get spammed. There is not much you can do.
This is what I do to avoid junk:
I suspect that ISP email account is probably, already sold to spammers by the ISP and it is already public.
Keep a public email address. Open only the email from the merchants I know and simply delete others after marking them as junk.
Use a third party mail, Google, Yahoo or hotmail. This way, all messages are pre-scanned for viruses, and most spam is already sorted into the junk folder.
My private account is mostly clean. I use it for family and friends or subscription to groups or professional societies.
Do not open spam. Do not reply to it and do not click on any links in the spam email – not even the unsubscribe link.
By the way:
Since I do not open attachments that I do not trust, and do not open junk mail and, as you know, we image the boot partition. Recovery from a virus attack is only a few clicks away. I see no need for an anti-virus. I do not recommend this to the faint hearted, though.
My personal opinion is that no email accounts should be free. The host should require a credit card payment to register the account, even if it was just a dime, so that a verifiable identity is established. Eventually, we will simply have to do so.
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