Community Newsletter: Q&A: What can I do to stop spam?
- 10/11/07 12:57 PM
SPAM is awful
by randysvh - 10/3/07 5:03 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You know this is a very common problem. What i have discovered, is that responding to the email in any way, including unsubscribing, only adds your name as a confirmation to their spam list which they sell. So deleting them is the only way. What i do though is set up filters to move them from the inbox to the trash or spam folders. It is not easy to filter out though the ways they modify the words so that you will not filter them out. Just keep adding all of the exceptions you can find and a little bit at a time you will find fewer you have to go through. I have a lot of email addresses, and the ones i use regularly receive these SPAM emails. I have thought about changing email addresses too, but this will not work except for a temporary period.
What happens from what i have found out is that everywhere you go and use or put in your email address, becomes a source for the SPAM. So my suggestion is to have two email addresses. One for personal emails only. The other for global emails. I also make sure that i put my name in a personal email or responding to an email. I usually put my name in parenthesis like (randy) so it will help the person to know who it is from.
I have reviewed some of the emails and actually sent informational emails to the source company administrators of that web domain name, that an employee belonged to and reported the event to them. It is though a lot of extra work for one email and may not change anything nor solve your problem.
Filter them and delete them.
Good LUCK,
randy
Potential winning answers
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 10/5/07 12:26 PM
In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Here are the selected submissions grouped in one post. Read through them and place your votes in the newsletter poll.
Answer:
Dealing with SPAM...
Jo,
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, UNDER PAIN OF DEATH, NEVER, EVER, EVER SEND A REPLY TO SPAM!!!!!!! Not even if you think your life depends on it.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I'll tell you why. Spammers sometimes send out an email with a destination that's "close" to your email address. For instance, your email might be job@somewhere.com. The spammer might send one out to jobS@somewhere.com - note the extra S. Many email servers, thinking they're doing you a favor, will automatically forward such emails your way, thinking the sender may have misspelled your email address by mistake. It happens.
So what happens when you open spam and worse yet, send a reply? You're doing something that puts a smile on the spammer's face. You're VALIDATING your email address. Even if that spammer is "honest" enough to not send anything your way, they WILL sell their list to others and now they can actually TARGET you for far more spam than you can shake a stick at.
And if you think that's bad enough, it gets worse. MANY bits of spam have nasty payloads attached to them in the form of viruses and other crapware that can infect and slow down your system. All you have to do is open them and due to vulnerabilities in Windows, IE, Firefox, etc..., you can get infected - even if your AV is up to date.
Third, they may also contain tracking elements - tiny 1 pixel x 1 pixel graphic images that log your opening and downloading of the email. More often than not, they log your IPA address.
Even if the email itself is "harmless", more often than not you won't find any "unsubscribe" links - just a link that WILL more often than not lead to very dangerous web sites that can infect your system with some sort of downloader or other nasty malware.
Changing your email address is not a long term solution either. Ok... You will, no doubt, in the short term, make your inbox seem quite empty. But as you pass out the new email address to the sites you normally visit, and if any of those sites are unscrupulous and desperate enough to SELL their email lists to other people, odds are, you'll be back to square ONE - namely the vast volume of spam in the inbox. This, btw, is more often than not how the whole spam cycle starts. You visit a site, you sign up for a newsletter, and they sell your email address as a part of their list to one of their "affiliates" who in turn may sell it to someone less scrupulous. And that person will sell it to even lower forms of human scum and so forth.
Sadly, there's no easy way to stop spam. As long as even 1 in a million people actually open and out of desperation, stupidity, or by way of some other brain fart, click on the link and god help them spend money on the spammer's sites, the spam will keep on multiplying.
As PT Barnum once wisely spake, "There's a sucker born every minute." Unfortunately, this is still true. If it weren't true, spam wouldn't be an issue. Spammers, like anyone else in business, do it because there's money in it for them.
The bottom line - it's best to delete spam wholesale, sight unseen, punitively, without mercy or giving it a second thought. It's a fact of modern life like getting up in the morning and going to work. And done right, you never have to get past the sender's name and the subject of the email. Just highlight the whole batch, look through it and find and unmark those that are legit and send the rest of the spam where it belongs - oblivion.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=265952&messageID=2595024#2595024
Submitted by Wolfie2k5
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Answer:
Spam and Junk Mail
Unfortunately the only absolute, surefire way to stop spam is to change your email address and even that is only temporary until the spammers find you again. But don’t get discouraged, there are many things your can do to ease the situation and cut down on the junk mail hassle. There are many ways and reasons that you can start getting spam and junk mail. In many cases you have been getting them all along but your Internet Service Provider has been blocking them for you and thus you have not seen them. Somewhere along the way your email address has been harvested. You may have signed up for something on the internet, your email address may have been stolen or sold, picked up from a website, directory or forum, it may have even been nabbed by a virus or spyware from someone else who had you in their address book, it may have even been simply guessed. It just happens. There is a constant battle between the spammers and those trying to stop it. No sooner do the filters find a way to stop it and the spammers find a new way to beat the system and they start coming though again. The one thing you do NOT want to do is respond to any of these junk mails or click on the Unsubscribe section. This just confirms to them that your email address is valid. The ONLY time you should use the unsubscribe link is for legitimate emails that you just don’t want to receive anymore. This would include emails from WELL KNOWN companies such as Stores, Airlines, travel agencies, clubs and organizations that you once had dealings with. They will gladly remove you from their mailing list just for the asking, but expect it to take a few weeks.
There are two sides to dealing with spam and junk email. First is PREVENTING it in the first place and the second is the CURE or blocking, moving, deleting and dealing with what is actually coming in.
PREVENTION – Preventing junk mail from ever being sent to you is the best possible approach and there are a few things that you can do.
1. Change your email address – This will stop spam, but it is not usually a very practical approach for most people and is often only temporary until your new email address has been discovered. It can be a real pain having to inform family, friends and coworkers that you have changed your email address and then trying to change the email address that you used to sign up for various websites just adds to the headache.
2. Address Posting – Avoid posting your email address anywhere on the internet. Placing you email address on a website or in forums, directories or blogs only makes it easier for spammers to harvest your email address.
3. Get a second Email Address – A good way to keep your primary email address private and clear of junk mail is to get a second email address. Most internet providers will give you up to about 7 free email accounts. Use one address exclusively for communicating with family, friends or business associates and do not use it or give it out to anyone else. Use a second email address for all other things like online purchases, registering software, joining websites, chat rooms and forums. This will at least help keep the junk mail separated.
CURING – Once you start getting Junk and Spam mail it is virtually impossible to actually stop it from being sent to you. You will usually find that it comes in spurts and may go through heavy and light periods. Since you can not stop the emails from being sent you have to find a way block or at least make it easier to deal with.
1. Unsubscribe – For legitimate email solicitations that are coming from known companies that you simply just don’t want anymore, go ahead an click on the unsubscribe section in the email. If you are still getting emails from Monster.com from when you were looking for a new job 5 years ago, now is the time to unsubscribe to this. Again this will do you no good for Viagra emails or body part enlargement solicitations.
2. Software Spam/Junk Mail Filters - There are many ways to filter, block, delete and move junk email depending on how or what method you use to read your email.
3. Outlook and Outlook Express Users - If you are using older versions of Outlook or Outlook Express for reading email than you might want to consider upgrading. Starting with Outlook 2003, Microsoft started incorporating a built-in junk mail filter which will move much of the obvious spam to a separate folder for you. The new version of Outlook Express which is now called just MAIL in Windows Vista also has a built-in junk mail filter. NOTE: To keep these filters working correctly, you need to run Windows and office updates every once and awhile. Outlook and Outlook Express also offer you the ability to define rules and filters on your own to delete or move mail based on specific words or content within the emails or subject line. This may or may not be useful depending on the type of junk mail you are receiving. For example: I you set a rule to delete any email containing the word Viagra, it will not pick it up if the sender changes it to V*i*agr*A.
4. AntiSpam Software – Many of the Antivirus Software companies such as Norton and McAfee also produce Antispam software that you can either purchase separately or as a part of complete internet security suite. These programs can be set to delete or more often, move suspected junk mail to a separate folder. You still may have to take a quick look through this junk folder every once and awhile to make sure that there is nothing in there that you really need. The best way to do it is to download a free or trial version and if you like the way it works you can purchase it.
5. 3rd Party Filtering Services – One of the best and most thorough methods of dealing with spam and junk mail is subscribing to a 3rd party internet based filtering service. These services specialize in filtering email and are very good at it. Some typically scan both your incoming and outgoing emails for spam, spyware and viruses so that you don’t have to worry about it. If you have ever had your account blacklisted because your computer was infected and was sending out spam, you know what headaches this can prevent. One such service that some of my business customers are using is www.messagelabs.com, but there are many others out there.
6. Whitelist Service – If you receive email from a very small group of people, then subscribing to a whitelist service could be a good choice. But for this to work you need to actually submit or approve all the email addresses of the people that you want to allow email to come in from. Not very effective if you receive tons of mail from all kinds of unknown sources.
7. ISP Filtering – Most Internet Service Providers have some form of spam filtering. Some are better than others but you must go into your account to make sure the settings are how you want them. In many cases you have control over things like the level of filtering, whether or not to keep filtered mail or automatically delete it or send it on to you but mark it with [SPAM] in the subject line. Even if you are using Outlook or Outlook express, you should still check your ISP account to see what service is being provided as well as what options you have.
FYI – Speed up the deleting of email. Depending on the exact program or method you use to read your email, you may be able to use the Ctrl and Shift keys to help select more than one item at a time to be deleted. Try selecting a message and then while holding down the shift key, select another message further down the page. In many cases this will allow you to select a whole group of messages to be deleted at one time.
Dana
Wayland Computer
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=265952&messageID=2595863#2595863
Submitted by waytron
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Answer:
Never - Ever Click Unsubscribe Unless...
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.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=265952&messageID=2595209#2595209
Submitted by Uncle Buck
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Answer:
Welcome to the Wonderful World of Spam
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.
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-10149_102-0.html?forumID=7&threadID=265952&messageID=2595445#2595445
Submitted by redking44
Additional means
by ZeusV99 - 10/7/07 7:13 AM In reply to: Potential winning answers by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Some of the SPAM that I receive is from US based companies that have purchased these previously mentioned evil mailing lists. These companies contribute to the problem by purchasing these lists or by buying the services of companies who specialize in volume emailing. These companies can be reported to: www.ftc.gov/spam/
The problem with this strategy is that there is no direct feedback and often times the SPAM continues. What I have done then is contact the Better Business Bureau in the region where the company is based (if you can figure this out). Most legitimate companies actually pay attention to this and will reply to notices sent to them by the BBB and if they do not resolve the complaint with you via the BBB, the complaint will remain open and will be available for public viewing. Hopefully, this can begin to affect the business's customer base as many customers will look to the BBB to evaluate the company's reputation.
This may seem like a lot of work, but if each of us went after the US based companies, I truly believe that we can make a dent in the volume of this problem.
Do your own Whitelisting with Outlook Express
by FalseToU - 10/30/07 12:11 PM In reply to: Potential winning answers by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
You do not need to pay anyone for a whitelist service. You can easily do it yourself in Outlook Express.
In Outlook Express, create a folder for "Family & Friends" "Business" "SPAM" or whatever folders you want to use in the procedure below.
In Outlook Express, select Tools, Message Rules, Mail..., and choose the "NEW" button at the right of the list of rules (if any). If you are white-listing, then you can ignore any rules already present by placing all of your rules at the top of the list.
Mark the box "Where The From Line Contains People"
Mark the box "Move it to the specified folder"
Scroll down and mark the box "Stop Processing More Rules"
Click the blue link "contains people" and enter an email address you wish to accept, and click the ADD button. Repeat for each address you wish to receive mail from.
Click the blue link "specified" and choose the email folder where you wish these emails to go.
Name the rule ("00 Family" "01 Business" for example - the numbers are to sort the folders in the list in the order you wish them to appear and to be processed. You will have to manually move each rule UP or DOWN until you get it in the right position, but the numbers will provide you with an easy reference). To move a rule, highlight the rule and click the "MOVE UP" or the "MOVE DOWN" button below the list of rules.
You can make separate rules for different groups of addresses. The ORDER in which the rules appear are important - if the first rule is NOT met, the second rule will be tested. The "Stop Processing More Rules" is ONLY active IF the email meets all the conditions of that rule. If the second rule IS met, and you have checked "Stop Processing More Rules" for it, then no more rules will be tested for this item. If the second rule is NOT met, then the third rule will be tested, etc.
Your LAST rule could move ALL remaining mail to a "SPAM" folder (which you created), or it could "Delete" it (moves it to the Deleted Folder), or you could check the box beside "Delete From Server" and it will be gone forever. For this last rule, instead of putting a check in the "Where From Line Contains People" box, scroll down to the end of the first list and put the check instead in the "For ALL Messages" box. You can name this rule "50 Spam" for instance.
If you have set the last rule to "Stop Processing More Rules" then any tests beyond this point will be ignored so you could save unused rules there that you don't wish to use currently, but wish to keep in case you want to reactivate them later, without having to reconstruct them. You would just need to MOVE them back up into an executable position , above the final SPAM rule.
If you do NOT check the box "Stop Processing More Rules" for each rule, then the rule will be processed (the email will be moved to the specified folder), BUT the remaining rules will be tested ALSO and if any of them are ALSO met (if you are testing for words in the body of the email, or subjects for example), then the email will be moved AGAIN according to the last rule that it met. If NO additional rules are met then the email will fall through and be treated as spam.
You can later select a rule and choose the "MODIFY" button at the right of the list to make changes to the rule.
Anna Summers
My trick to junk mail.
by gilligan888 - 10/5/07 7:58 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi,
I have had my hotmail email address for about 5 years now and I’m lucky if I get 2 junk mail a month. At one point I was getting about 50 a day. This method seems to have saved it:
What I have been doing seems to work. I am just very selective about what I do when I encounter a junky email. First off what I do is open it to see if there is a unsubscribe button or link (I know even opening them can send a message to the sender that would confirm my address, but it’s a chance I take and it seems to work).
1. If there is no unsubscribe link/button, I just delete it, if I get another one; I just delete it without opening it.
2. If there IS a unsubscribe link then I click it, if it says you have been unsubscribed then I leave it at that and delete the message.
3. If when I click it, it asks for my email address then I don’t go any further!!!(They should know your email already). And I delete any similar messages as soon as I get them without opening them.
Note: I have taken a chance with a couple that I kept getting a lot and it was apparently a good choice, I stopped getting them. Like I said you have to be selective, this process takes time.
4. If I’m ever unsure about what I should do, (which doesn’t happen much with this) I just delete it!
This seems to have worked for me not only with my hotmail account but with all my other ones too. As I said, I went from about 50 junk mail a day to about 2 a month. It saved my hotmail account. It would be worth a try.
A more advanced solution
by jaysee999 - 10/5/07 8:16 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Most of the replies quite logically dealt with what a 'basic user' can do about spam they receive. Before offering a more advance comment, let me mention that NOBODY said to use the Pegasus Mail email software!
Pegasus Mail is FREE and has been around, and updated, for over ten years. It doesn't have a lot of the fancy dancy graphic stuff that Microsoft and some others hang on their email software, but it is visually nice and easy to use. The big advantage is that it will NOT ever run any program triggered by an email or linked website unless you positively tell it to do so. It also has a very good 'custom filter' setup that, depending on your expertise, can do all sorts of things from delete the message to move it to a specific folder, etc. Too much to tout here, but suffice to say I have NEVER had a problem caused by spam while using Pegasus Mail (just google it, you'll find it fast).
Now, to the more advanced comments.
Every email has at the beginning of it a set of "routing headers" that tell where it started from and every relay that has passed it on until you get it -- most email software make it very hard to see these (Pegasus shows with one click of a tab).
The 'professional' spammers have found many ways to 'spoof' some of these headers and make it a bit more difficult to figure where they started, but eventually the email HAS to enter a valid mail-relay server; and that server has both a name and an IP internet address, which are REGISTERED internationally.
When you learn to read these routing headers, and how to look up the IP addresses, it's then possible to determine which major internet provider was suckered into sending out this spam -- and sending their 'abuse' address the entire spam email usually (about 90% in my experience) results in them tracking down how the spam got into their server and disposing of the user who did it. [It is a big advantage to all of these providers, worldwide, to get your report of the spam -- because thousands, or tens of thousands, of email spam are being pushed through the provider's mail servers and if they can stop it their servers work faster and dont crash).
What prompted me to start doing these reports is another BIG problem with spam that is rarely discussed in these forums. The professional spammers collect 'domain names' from every website and from every name registering database (whois databases) and then their spams trick enough people into opening them and thus installing virus programs on PCs worldwide that 'phone home' to the spammer's server and get their list of domain names. The virus then fabricates phoney user names for the From: in the spam... if you own a domain name, yours could well be used.. so the spam looks like it came from JJones@yourdomain.com and when people complain they will often complain to, or about, YOU and your domain. This happens to me all the time because I own several domain names. (just today, I have received about 300 BOUNCE messages telling me the 'my' spam had a bad address -- that's the only way I know when my addresses are being hijakked).
It takes a lot of time, and some understanding of how the worldwide email system works, to decode the real culprits and file reports -- but when I was doing it regularly the spam level went WAY down. Some ISPs even replied with thank you for telling us about this.
So... in addition to filtering your own spam and not opening anything you are not sure of, be very very alert to not letting any virus or trojan programs get into your computer -- and also be aware when your computer is sending data OUT and you dont think it should be. And use email software that the spam virus cannot easily find and use your address books!
my mistake
by zeb2u - 10/10/07 12:47 PM In reply to: A more advanced solution by jaysee999I made the mistake of using the same name for different emails,
for example johndoe@hotmail, johndoe@gmail, and etc.
If spammers get hold of one email address it is easy
to guess the rest.
Thanks jaysee999 for a great post. I will learn more about
headers and do the same.
It's really very simple......
by alidickson - 10/17/07 6:43 PM In reply to: A more advanced solution by jaysee999Jo, Unfortunately, you're going to have to change your email address. The rest is simple and easy.
Two and a half years ago, I opened a new email acct. At the very same time I opened a Hotmail acct. Every time I visit a website that I SUSPECT may spam me, they get the Hotmail address. Only people and sites I trust IMPLICITLY get my other email address.
In 2 1/2 years I have not received ONE SINGLE PIECE OF SPAM in my regular email acct - every single bit of it goes to my Hotmail.
When I have time to waste, I go to Hotmail. For a long long time I believed that hype to "never ever click on an email and unsubscribe. that merely tells them you saw the message". That's a crock. I spent the first year following that rule, just deleting without opening them. The flow never slowed down.
So for 3 or 4 months, I clicked unsubscribe links. IT DOES WORK. I cut down the spammers significantly by doing that. At least 80%.
Today, sure I still get spam in my Hotmail acct - after all, that's what it was set up for. But VERY LITTLE. Certainly a manageable amount. And I NEVER EVER get ANY in my other email acct.
My method works. Without writing a page of "do this" and "do that". Quite simple.
Only one big change to make
by victork1 - 10/5/07 8:56 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Without being ironic, you only have one big step to take and then you are good to go: open a Yahoo account. I have had my email account with Yahoo for some 10 years and spam always goes to the Bulk folder. I participate in forums, make purchases online, the whole nine yards. Spam is not a problem.
Yahoo spam
by JoannN1095 - 10/6/07 8:58 PM In reply to: Only one big change to make by victork1I have had a yahoo account for several years and MOST times the spam does end up in my BULK folder. Recently though for some reason, some spam has ended up in my Inbox and until I actually have already opened it, I find out that it is spam. Now Yahoo does have a place for marking such e-mails as spam but I seem to continuously get the same ones. Any suggestions?
JoAnn N.
Spam
by Derek R - 10/11/07 3:26 AM In reply to: Yahoo spam by JoannN1095Just block the sender. With your inbox open -go to Messages, Block sender and select delete all. There has been reams written on this subject but the afore mentioned is all I ever do, and now I only get one spam ever couple of weeks which I then immediately block.
Same Old Same Old
by mijcar - 10/5/07 9:03 PM In reply to: What can I do to stop spam? by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I was hoping someone of the many, many insightful posters here would take this opportunity for a reality check. Instead, we are getting the same old same old.
First fallacy: Never unsubscribe.
----Fifty percent ridiculous.
----There are two forms of spam. One form is from the penile enlarger family of hustlers. Yes, you should avoid the unsubscribe option when it comes to these, because all you are doing is confirming your existence.
----However, the other form of spam are from legitimate businesses who want your attention because they really have a product to sell you; and they don't want you angry at them. These include retailers, charities, CNET, etc. And they mean it when they offer you a chance to unsubscribe. They know that many people have two or more email addresses and realize that if they don't give the target a chance to opt out, they will lose that customer, period.
----So, if your spam is from someone offering you cheap meds, delete it and forget it. If your spam is from Sports Illustrated, choose the unsubscribe.
Second fallacy: Strong filters are good for you.
----Fifty percent nonsense.
----The problem here is why someone is using email. I am assuming that fifty percent of people who use email do it as a serious means of communication; the rest still think of email as some sort of twenty-second century technology meant to have fun with by all us twenty-first century geeks.
----For the serious among us, we cannot afford to miss a valuable email because of some overly aggressive filter. I recently had an extremely valuable email from my attorney filtered because he had changed his email provider and I hadn't been notified to add him to my white list. Which wouldn't have been a problem except that the nature of his subject and the message text "alerted" the program to filter him. I discovered the problem at the last minute, barely in time to keep the error from becoming costly.
----There are those who will tell you that this will not be a problem because your correspondent will call you up if they don't hear back from you in a timely fashion. Yeah, right, and if he doesn't, the Easter Bunny will. People are busy and they forget things particularly if the thing in question is of more importance to you than them.
----The solution: Forget filters or forget being serious about your email. Better deleting one hundred spam messages than losing that one email changing the court appearance, or inviting you to the job interview, or telling you about the unavailable product you ordered from Amazon.com. If you really want a solution and can afford one, do what all professionals do: get a secretary.
Third Fallacy: Third party validaters will provide a workable wall.
----10% wrong.
----Of all the proffered solutions, this at least has a lot of merit. A stranger emails you. The third party sees it is from a stranger, sends the stranger a "prove yourself" email which then gets him/her added to the white list, and everything is hunky-dory.
----This will work ... if getting the email to you is as important to the sender as your getting the email is important to you. Imagine that you are the sender, sending interview invitations to 25 likely candidates for a single scholarship. Two or three of these come back with the "validate your legitimacy" email. You think, "hey, I like the other 23 candidates just as much as these two; just forget the extra work." Unless you're a saint, and that species appears to be endangered.
So, is there a solution?
----Sure there is. And it's not a new one.
----Charge for email.
----Charge so little that no private correspondent would even notify the difference in his monthly account.
----Charge fairly enough that any legitimate business would recover the cost from the large base of customers that will respond.
----But charge enough so that random senders sending out a million emails will find that it costs them more than it is worth.
----And if a service provider refuses to do this to their users, filter them out of the internet. OR: create a difference internet strand for those who wish to take the internet seriously and who will charge. See how many serious users start using that strand and leave the freebie to those who still think the whole world should be free except, of course, for their own services.
----The solution: It's time for the world of technology to grow up.
P.S. It's also time for CNET to recognize that the English language has taken the form it has over a couple of thousand years because it is viable form. Paragraph indentations allow clarity of expression. So does multiple line breaks. Please stop removing extra spaces, both at the start of the a paragraph and between sentences.
I apologize upfront, I'm going off topic here
by RMANTHEY56 - 10/8/07 11:14 AM In reply to: Same Old Same Old by mijcarOkay, I'm sure someone is going to flip their lid over this because it really isn't about SPAM any longer but I just had to reply to a couple of comments that you made.
First of all, I'll be fighting you tooth and nail on your "solution" to SPAM. I'm NOT paying to send email. I paid and still pay for snail mail and they never came up with a way to prevent all the junk mail that is still delivered...and in Chicago, left as litter in your hallway because the Postal workers are too lazy to put the mail in the boxes at the houses that the addresses on the mail belong to but all too frequently don't get to...sorry, I went off there. Bottom line, I'm not paying to send or receive email. I speak only as just the little guy who likes to sit in front of his computer and do what I'm doing right now. If SPAM is really that bad of a curse on businesses, then let them pay for their business email. That said and out of my system, what really made it impossible for me to not respond was a comment you made about the English language. I'm not sure what you're referring to when you talk about CNET taking away spaces at the beginning and the end of paragraphs. However, if you are referring to the Modified Semi-Block Style Business letter, spaces have been reduced. No longer is it the 5 space indentation for each paragraph, three will do. Also, no longer is it two spaces after the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next, one is correct also. Regardless, what I really didn't understand was what you meant by this and if you could explain it would probably help this headache..."the English language has taken the form it has over a couple of thousand years because it is viable form."
I'm not sure what form you're referring to, I don't quite understand what you mean by it's viability so I have to ask what was not viable about the previous form, and just what was the previous form. One last comment, though. The English language that began about 1500 years ago, Old English, the one that we wouldn't recognize as English because, well, it was a bit heavy on the German side, not to mention that writing styles of the Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, or Renaissance English, even todays Modern English which itself is over 350 years old, well the writing styles would have absolutely nothing to do with English and it's viability. It would certainly have a lot to do with that old Smith-Corona I learned to type on some almost 40 years ago.
I mean no harm or disrespect, I really just couldn't figure out what the whole "couple of thousand years" and the 'viability of English' meant.
I apologize, too, for continuing the off topic discussion
by mijcar - 10/8/07 11:41 AM In reply to: I apologize upfront, I'm going off topic here by RMANTHEY56The time period I mentioned was rhetorical, meant only to establish a development that ended up where we are today.
I use indentation, blocking, spacing, every visual aid possible to make a point. I speak in paragraphs (which is difficult on listeners, I know) and I write in pages and asides (see above parenthetical commment for an example, or this one). This is not actually to be cute (I have it on good authority that I will never quality for "cute") but for handling the inherent sprawl of related information and ideas necessary to making a point. Points are seldom linear in nature (i.e., a implies b which implies c which implies d, etc). Valid points (aka "logical conclusions" are often the result of parallel constructs, interactive, and culminating in the conclusion to be shown. I find the block construction limited in the ability to contain subconstructs, making it difficult for the reader to see what the writing is relating to what. I like using blocks with internal indentations to organize complicated and co-related ideas.
(And, hey, imagine e. e. cummings trying to write with the constraints imposed here.)
FWIW, if you are interested in seeing what I mean, c&p my original post into word and replace the dashes with spaces. I think the text becomes more readable.
You Get What You Pay For
by mijcar - 10/8/07 12:08 PM In reply to: I apologize upfront, I'm going off topic here by RMANTHEY56First of all, I'll be fighting you tooth and nail on your "solution" to SPAM. I'm NOT paying to send email.
============================
Well, actually, you are. Email requires internet access; and, at the very least, you are getting access to the internet, either by begging, borrowing, stealing, or paying for that access.
I paid and still pay for snail mail and they never came up with a way to prevent all the junk mail that is still delivered
=============================
The problem here is that the U. S. Government is owned by business interests. The postal system subsidizes corporations by something called "bulk mailing rates." As long as most businesses can mail fliers for almost nothing, you will get junk mail.
- - - But notice that you get less than you do online.
- - - And notice that you don't get the penile enhancers, lottery ticket winners, cheap drugs, and all the other truly obnoxious mail you do get through the internet.
Bottom line, I'm not paying to send or receive email. I speak only as just the little guy who likes to sit in front of his computer and do what I'm doing right now. If SPAM is really that bad of a curse on businesses, then let them pay for their business email.
================================
Sorry, you've missed the point. I am not worried about businesses. I am worried about myself. I deal with businesses. You know, I call my doctor for an appointment; I talk to an attorney about a legal problem; I call Walmart to see if they have something in stock; I call a retailer to see what kind of RAM and how much my computer can hold; I apply for jobs; I sent out manuscripts; I pay for a web site; I check the hours at Best Buy; I call the newspaper about the missed delivery. When I use email to communicate with a business, I want to make sure they get my email and that I don't miss their reply.
- - - What I hear you saying is that you don't care whether of not your email reaches its destination or whether or not you receive the non-spam email that is sent to you. Now, I doubt that is what you meant to say, but that is the gist of your statement. To me, if it's worth the time writing the email, it's worth a tenth of a penny to get it to its destination without having it get lost among a million pieces of spam. And if it's important enough to send, then the reply to it is probably important enough to not risk blocking it with a spam filter of any kind.
- - - But if you don't feel that way about your email, then nothing is keeping you from not writing email, which will save you a couple of pennies a month; or from blocking email to you, since the email isn't important enough to worry about anyway.
Seriously, I have read or glanced at about 300 responses now. And so far no once has dealt with the following:
- - - What can the serious user do about spam if he or she is not willing to miss an important email?
- - - [And, no, it is not fair to dodge the question with such silly responses as "there is no important email" or "if it really is important, you will find out if you missed it"]
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