Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to stop spam?
- 10/11/07 12:57 PM
Junk Mail avoidance
by stozier - 9/30/07 5:25 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My first suggestion to anyone with this problem is to switch to an email service that does filtering for you. My preference is Earthlink, I've been with them for longer that I can remember, dail-up days before 28.8kbps. The have a lot of money invested in spam detection and prosecution. The best part of this is you can look at your email almost anywhere in the world.
The second suggestion is get a good, free email program. Eudora, Mozilla Thunderbird are two.
I hope this helps.
Never unsubscribe to spam
by GaryG7 - 9/30/07 6:46 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you really want to do something, go to www.spamcop.net and sign up for a free reporting account. You copy the entire e-mail, including headers, into a box. The web-based program analyzes the e-mail and sends an e-mail to the people in charge of the network where the e-mail originated. It's not perfect and there are some domains (especially in Asia and other non-English speaking countries) that don't have a way to contact them. (E-mails sent previously have bounced, etc.) I don't know how effective it really is, but the amount of spam I get today is much less than two years ago (August 2005: 368, August 2007: 72).
Spammers use botnets to distribute their garbage, so it's likely that the computer that sent the spam belongs to somebody who has no idea what happened.
If you do change e-mail addresses, be careful with the new one. Use a "throwaway" address for signing up for services, especially at sites you don't trust 100%. I get so much spam at my Yahoo address, I wouldn't be able to find a real one in that mess.
Good luck.
Excessive Spam
by jamaka - 9/30/07 6:58 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
My only solution to this problem was to purchase a program called
QURB. Any e-mail name that isn't in my address book gets thrown into the Qurb folder. Then I delete them.
I was gone for only 8 days last year and came home to over 1300 spam e-mails. Nothing for 200-300 a day to come in. I think a lot of the problem is the server. However, when they put 'filters' on, I don't even receive what I've subscribed to. Thus...QURB is my answer. The program is a one-time $29.95.
Junk Mail and Spam
by rwhodgkin - 9/30/07 8:14 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
What ever else you might do, NEVER open the email and look for an unsubscribe link. Just mark each one as JUNK for your email server to redirect. If you open the email and click on the unsubscribe link, yes you might cancel that one, but you also confirm that your address is valid and current, and open yourself up to receiving more of the same. Unfortunately, this will be a never ending process, as these spammers are always looking for ways around the safeguards. If you don't recognize the name of the sender, or believe the message in the subject line, then mark it as junk. For example, if you never use eBay, you can believe that any message saying that your account has been suspended, is a spoof. Same for PayPal. Also remember, check your junk email file before it is deleted, just in case a legitimate new contact, has been directed there. Most email servers should have a way of marking this address as safe, and future mailing will hit your inbox.
Spam: Don't be backward about putting your foot down...firm.
by gdmellott - 9/30/07 9:15 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Jo B.
Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) should have a way to report such stuff so they can keep it under raps. It is just that is likely generated by a hi-jacked computer, after someone downloaded something off a 'bad' web site, or the likes. Where it involves fraud and money (especially Banks and very deceptive money schemes the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) would even have an ear for it. They have a web site you can check into also. Often one quick way to tell if a message is being deceptive is to RIGHT click on the link they would have you use and copy the link and paste it onto a text editor. It will often be so much garbage near the front where the real website would have a clear name for themselves.
Best wishes in your endeavor,
Gregory D. MELLOTT
I only use Outlook Express
by TreknologyNet - 9/30/07 11:15 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
With Outlook as part of Office, you can set up "Spam Recognition" options and all such mail goes into a spam folder so that you can check it just in case something valuable slipped through.
My sister updates her email address once a year (K2006, K2007 etc.) and finds this moderately successful.
I only use Outlook Express, and use gmail for all my accounts, and they run a filter for you, so when I download my mail, I get a very limited number of xxXXX extension options, but still enough that I have to sling it over my shoulder, run it back down my trouser leg and tuck it into my shoe.
On the few occasions that I've gone directly into the gmail site and checked the junk folder, I have NEVER found anything that should have been sent to me.
Yes, technically, you should only have to open one of these emails and respond with "unsubscribe", but some unscrupulous email churning houses use this as recognition that you read their crap so they send you more! Another problem with "unscubscribe" is that you get a server message telling you that the original sender's account doesn't exist.
Never openly publish an email address on a forum. If, say, you wanted to send me your email adress, do it through a private message.
Create at least a second email account for fora and subscriptions. That way your personal account remains with your friends and your junk account can be closed if it ever becomes unmanageable. You just then have to go to your usual sites (like this one) and update to your replacement "junk" account.
My last resort against popups and spam was to use "whois.com" to find an email that belonged to the owner of the site being promoted, and then through PayPal, invoice them for my bandwidth and time. I never got any money, but some of the junk has definitely dried up.
Spam for everyone in the WWW!
by sendjoe100 - 10/1/07 12:29 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
It's rather simple. Check all the spam mail(s) and click on the 'Report Spam' Button on top of the inbox. It might still persist on for some time, but it really help slow down the spam mail entry. Yours is still very less, so do not fret. Be PATIENT and keep on reporting for atleast one month and you will have a 98% spam mail free in your Inbox. It works well for me.
Good Luck.
Get an email with a good mail filter
by daleisfflchamp - 10/1/07 4:10 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've used gmail and guess what, I've received hundreds of spams weekly but all of them are seperated into a seperate spam folder. Gmail's spam filter has little false positive (when it does, the emails are suspicious in the first place) and it misses only few mails, which is in the range of one mails per several months.
I'm not specifically recommending gmail, just that you need an email with a good spam filter. If the server doesn't provide you with one, there are many softwares out there that handles the spam filtering on your local email program (Outlook or similar, if you used one to access your email).
There is also a need to be precaution on who you give away your email address to. Make sure you don't give away email to just anybody you meet on the street, make sure you know that the one you entrust your email address is reliable and trustworthy. Tell your friends not to give away your email address to anyone without your consent, tell them not to do be tempted to press the Send This to a Friend button on sites that aren't trustyworthy, or if unsure not to press such kind of button at all.
Best answer is to tell my story...
by peterCIS - 10/1/07 5:35 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
A few years ago I went from 130 emails a day to my domain name to 3500. I attribute the increase to the use of a challenge system for receiving e-mails, every e-mail got a response asking the sender to type a number so that the e-mail passed.
I immediately shut down the challenge system but e-mail numbers kept climbing. After a few months of this I turned to MailWasher (www.mailwasher.net) and my e-mails dropped 90% the first month and my e-mail count quickly went back to normal and remains normal to this day. MailWasher will send a fake bounce to the sender notifying them that the address used is not a good one. It works well, either bouncing automatically or you could do it manually. I have since turned off the bounce feature and continue to use the program to filter my e-mails using an automatic delete as well as being able to look into an e-mail before I actually get it.
One word of warning. Your ISP may not be too happy about you sending so many e-mails a day. It is possible you get flagged as a spammer, if it is someone like Comcast they may actually call you, or send an e-mail telling you that “port 25 has been shut down”, but by that time you should have reduced your e-mails and a simple call to the ISP should smooth any ruffled feathers.
Don’t open e-mails you don’t want and unsubscribing only tells spammers that your address is a good one. Try using throw away e-mail addresses for one-time needs like rebates or anywhere you think your address could get sold and you would be surprised who sells them. If your e-mail address appears on a blog or web page get it off. Addresses are easily stolen from those sites.
The Joy's of the Digital Age
by Crimson_Tears - 10/1/07 5:51 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This is one of the biggest problems out there in my opinion. You could open each one and look for an unsubscribe button if you wish, but in my experience that rarely does anything to help the problem. The main reason for this is because when you click unsubscribe you are taken to the site that sent you the email. When companies that put these emails out see that you in fact visited that site they will send you more emails from a different site. At first I was getting maybe 3-5 spam emails a day, but once I clicked on the link and "unsubscribed" I started getting more and more. I'm up to about 20-35 a day now. So it is best to just keep mass-deleting them. This problem seems to be worse with email address from sites like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and some other free sites. But you will run into this issue no matter which provider you use.
Spamarrest Works for Me
by dshelman - 10/1/07 6:29 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I just got spamarrest ( http://www.spamarrest.com ) and I'm very happy with it. It allows you to specify which .com's or which specific e-mail addresses are authorized to e-mail you. If someone e-mail's you who you didn't setup, it sends them an e-mail and asks them to go through a procedure that cannot yet be automated. And spammers rarely will attempt this kind of validation just to get you to read their e-mail.
I used to get literally hundreds of spam e-mails a day.
Now, I get zero.
Hope this helps,
Don
Let me add to that....
by don-shelman - 10/3/07 2:14 PM In reply to: Spamarrest Works for Me by dshelmanI talked about what's working now, but I didn't talk about what I tried before.
I tried "I Hate Spam" -- pretty good, but "good" e-mails ended up in my quarantine folder, so I had to look at it everyday. Automatic "bounce" almost never resulted in turning off the spam sender, and ran the risk that my ISP would burn me for too much outgoing activity. Big time waster.
I tried turning on my ISP's (DSLExtreme) spam filter. Better, because I didn't download the spam first, but worse because I had to go to the webmail everyday to check the spam folder (for the same reason -- it was getting some of my "good" emails. Again, time waster.
I tried TrendMicro's spam protection -- almost nonexistant.
I tried alternate Gmail and Yahoo accounts for junk, but that didn't solve the issue that my primary e-mail address was still in the hands of hundreds or thousands of spammers.
With the SpamArrest challenge-response system, I only log in when I subscribe to a newsletter and want to add it to my whitelist. I didn't have to change my e-mail address. Since the challenge-response goes out through my spamarrest account, I don't have to worry about my ISP shutting me down for excessive e-mail usage.
I also echo the responses by others to NOT open or otherwise click on any spam links to unsuscribe as that's just proof to them that you're address was a good one and it'll go on a higher priced e-mail list for them to sell.
I hope these added comments have been helpful.
Don
One more thing -- the original cause of my spam problem (ME)
by dshelman - 10/7/07 10:55 AM In reply to: Let me add to that.... by don-shelmanI will confess here and now this is how I got to be such a spam target: I fell for the "get a (insert coveted item) for free!" scam.
In this one, you are promised that if you go all the way through their series of polls and questions and offers that you will be guaranteed to receive the (coveted item) for free.
So, you say to yourself -- I can do that. Cool. And you start. And one page leads to another, and another, and another ad infinitum. Finally, they start asking for credit card info. This is when even the greediest of us think "whoa, Nellie - I'm not doing THAT!" and then we quit. And we've just wasted maybe 20 minutes that we'll never get back.
Except they had you in the first minute when you divulged your e-mail address and showed a willingness to go after free stuff.
For me, I think it was a laptop or an iPod or something. Anyway, the very next day, I was inundated with spam mail. As you can see from my above comments, I'm no longer troubled.
But, as in (almost?) ALL cases, it was my own fault and no other.
Hope this helps.
Don
Spam messages
by mpho.ms - 10/1/07 7:04 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Dear Jo B.
I did get a lot of those e-mails but for your solution, you could try to filter the type of e-mail you want to receive or by unsubscring from all the services you don't like and then you'll be able to see the deference.
Regards
Mpho
Disgusting e-mail garbage!
by rwhpi - 10/1/07 9:12 AM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Jo B.-
I sympathize with you because I have been getting the same identical garbage in my e-mails. I have ran virus scans(McAfee),spyware searches(Xsoft)and results was nada! On one occasion, I took a chance and clicked on unsubscribe and my antivirus program immediately prompted me that an incoming virus was detected and blocked - so don't even go there. The only solution that has seemed to work for me is: Open the message and look for block sender/domain section on your menu. Click block sender and also domain (be careful on the domain though, as if it is legitimate, other senders on that domain will not be able to e-mail you -- but usually it's an off-the-wall domain) If your e-mail program does not have that option, go to your e-mail account and click "options" or "help" or whatever it takes to access block senders/domains. In my e-mail program (verizon) there's a section with a list of previously blockings which can be deleted or added to at any time. I have found this to be successful and the garbage has stopped from the previous senders. After a month, I go back to the list, delete all and start over again. There may be another solution, but I also am stumped! Good Luck.
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