E-mail, chat, & VoIP : Spam & Read Receipt?
Spam & Read Receipt?
by SciFi007 - 4/11/09 3:43 PMHello,
I found a spam email in my verizon account to other day. I signed onto my account from a my computer at work and saw it. Subject line was something about lottery winnings. I opened the email to forward it to verizon tech support. During the time that the email was opening, a box popped up stating the sender requests a read receipt. With option of "Yes" or "no" I clicked "No", then just deleted the email, before it was fully displayed. This wasn't a read receipt from verizon I ran McAfee right after and it came back clean nothing found In fact a ran it again a hour later nothing found (McAfee was all that was on the cumputer as security software). My concern is although, it wasn't a link in the spam email that I clicked. Does clicking the read receipt box count as link when dealing with spam?
Thanks
It is likely.
by MarkFlax
- 4/12/09 6:07 AM
In reply to: Spam & Read Receipt? by SciFi007
That Read receipt is probably a ploy to make the email look more official of course, but if you saw images when you opened that email then the receipt may not have been required.
In emails that are displayed in web format, ie, html format, or if the email displays images, then the message could have been cleverly crafted to send back to the sender telling them that your email address is 'active'.
If the message was just plain text and nothing else, then that is probably OK.
I no longer open any emails that I think is spam. I delete them, without even previewing them. That way the sender never knows.
I use Thunderbird software to manage my emails as opposed to web based email pages. With Thunderbird I can turn off the Preview Pane, highlight the message and then View > Message Source for those I am not sure about. Then if I see it is spam, I delete the message before turning the Preview Pane back on.
I wouldn't worry about it too much though. If a message did get sent back, and you get more, just set up a filter to remove all "Lottery" emails. They will all be scams.
Mark
I can't exclude everything!
by Yeoville - 4/18/09 5:27 AM In reply to: It is likely. by MarkFlax
The problem I have is that I have such a lot of spam, scam, Nigerian 419 emails (and I suspect viruses too) that I cannot exclude them all. Those amateur enough to provide a contact email I can report to Hotmail or Yahoo or wherever they are hosted. The cunning ones send each spam with a different subject line, different email addresses, different domain names, etc., so it is hard to exclude them all.
Examples from the first 10 days of this month:
This Month Winner!
Dr (Mrs) Mercy Martins
Predict Who Will Pay You
********WINNING NOTIFICATION********
Mayan Riviera 50% OFF Real Estate a buyer’s Market
MADAM/SIR
Promotion Winning Number
Method of payment
Serious business offer --- clean funds at your disposal
Just look at the Income Growth
Solutions to al your back tax problems
Confirmation for your Pockect Ace Number
Dear Executive
Magically Orgasmic Vibrator
I look forward to hear from you
(No subject) [some of my friends forget to put in a subject line, so I can’t even exclude these]
The only good thing is that they all go to my "junk" mailbox (I mainly use Hotmail). I welcome any other suggestions.
You're right.
by MarkFlax - 4/18/09 1:28 PM
In reply to: I can't exclude everything! by Yeoville
You're absolutely right, you cannot exclude them all. The only thing we can do is to manage the problem. But we can help ourselves with some rules of our own, eg;
1] NEVER open suspect emails. DO NOT EVEN preview them. I don't know how Hotmail works. If you highlight an email does it preview it straight away, or do you have to do something else to read them?
I don't use web based email but use Thunderbird software, part of the Mozilla Firefox family. it's basically the same as Outlook Express. In this, my emails list in date/time order and if I highlight an email it previews in a window below the list. If I have a suspect email in the list, I turn off the Preview Pane, highlight the email, then delete it. Only then do I turn the Preview Pane back on.
Suspect emails include "No Subject", "No Sender". My friends, relatives and work colleagues do not understand why I don't read their "No Subject" emails.
Opening or Previewing emails is just as good as telling the sender that your email address is active.
2] Don't bother to report email scams, or spam emails. The ISP, (your internet service provider or your email service provider), know more about scams and spammers than we ever will do, and they are already blocking hundreds of emails from getting through to you. We will never be able to match what they are doing in tracking the scammers and spammers down.
3] If you do happen to open such an email by accident, DO NOT REPLY to it. Do not tell them off. Do not demand to "Unscubscribe". They will take no notice.
4] NEVER open email attachments direct from the email itself. If there is an attachment from a suspect email, delete the whole email. If you receive an attachment from a trusted source, DO NOT TRUST them. Find a way to save the attachment to your hard drive, (the Desktop is a good, temporary, location), and scan the attachment with your anti-virus utility first. Make sure the anti-virus is always kept fully up to date. If the scan comes up clean, then you can open the attachment.
Why do I say "don't trust trusted sources"? Trusted sources are usually relatives or friends, or work colleagues, etc. But how do you know that they take the same care about anti-virus and anti-spyware that you do? How do you know that their computer system is not riddled with malware?
5] Use Junk Controls. I cannot talk about web mail, but my Thunderbird has Junk Controls. Not just a Junk folder, Junk Controls. With that turned on Thunderbird 'learns' what I mark as Junk and then knows what type of emails to remove to the Delete folder immediately without action from me. it takes time to learn, but it is now very effective. I may lose a few emails from known sources, but I can check the Junk or Delete folder before I close down Thunderbird. When I close down Thunderbird, it automatically empties the Deleted folder.
6] Check your server settings. Do not leave emails on the server. There may be a use for that in, for example, business cases, but for the normal everyday Joe like you and me, it is not necessary to leave emails on the server.
7] Make sure your anti-virus is active in your chosen email client.
8] NEVER, EVER, post email addresses in forums like these, or in blogs, or anywhere else on the internet unless you know the site is safe. If the site url, the web address, starts with https, then that should be safe. Any site with http as the start of the address is not a secure place to post an email address. Some sites require an email address if you wish to sign up or register. Check their Privacy Policy first.
All this will take time to show results, but with this and with my ISP preventing spam, I now only get one or two spam emails a week on my main email account.
Sorry for all the shouting, (Capital letters), but these things need emphasizing.
One more thing. If you do open a suspect email, remember the well known maxim, "If it looks to good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true".
Mark
try this
by porsche10x - 4/20/09 3:45 PM In reply to: You're right. by MarkFlax
While it was a while ago, I have used Mailwasher (available at www.mailwasher.net). You can set up all sorts of rule-based filtering, but the really cool thing is that it allows you to preview your mail as text-only without actually downloading it from your email server (no risk of infection and nothing sent to the spammers). You can also send a fake mailer-daemon reply as if your email address is invalid (actually, this feature isn't as useful as it seems, since the reply-to address in most spam is fake anyway, but still pretty neat). Mailwasher is available in both free-ware and paid "pro" version with more features and tech support. I have no affiliation with them, just thought it was interesting. I only tried the free version, and it was a while ago, but it's certainly worth a look.
REPORT THEM if the domain is a common one
by pcahan - 10/17/09 10:50 AM In reply to: You're right. by MarkFlax
I have to disagree with Mark about not reporting spam. I don't know where he thinks those massive lists of known spammers comes from, but if nobody reports it, then the spammer never becomes known.
If the domain is something common, like hotmail, msn, yahoo, juno, ymail, aol, or any other easily recognizable one, by all means send a report to their security team at their abuse mailbox. (For example: abuse@yahoo.com) Be sure to include the full message headers and attach the original. It is the surest way for the owners of the domain to shut down the account and to prosecute the spammer.
That may be right,
by MarkFlax - 10/18/09 4:42 AM
In reply to: REPORT THEM if the domain is a common one by pcahan
but here's the difficulty.
Suppose you have your email options set to HTML mode, so that images display, or links to images display, or suppose the email contains an image that you look at. There is a known procedure where an image is held on some server somewhere. Your email account has to access that server to display that image. Since the server needs an IP address to download the image to, that server then knows your IP address. Match that up with the email that was sent, and hey presto! the spammer knows your email address is active.
If you open that email to be able to send a report to some 'abuse@email_server.com', then the spammer knows your email address is active. By the time anyone has closed down the spammer, you have received more spam.
How many spammers have you known to be shut down? There's been a few, but how quickly do they or other spammers start up again?
The ISPs and Web-Mail administrators block far more spam then we will ever know, and the amount of spam that gets through is minor compared to that. A quick Google of Incoming Email spam blocked by the ISP shows some of what they do.
Mark
Here is how I do it - safely
by pcahan - 10/20/09 9:36 PM In reply to: That may be right, by MarkFlax
If I know a piece of email is spam, and it has ALREADY gotten through the filters put in place by MY ISP, then I assume that the spammer is not yet known. This makes it all the more important to report. Here is how I do it:
1. I make note of the senders domain without opening the email. (The domain is the part of the address after the @ sign.) This can be done by just looking at the header information in your inbox.
2. I compose a BLANK email to 'abuse@email_server.com' and ATTACH the spam to it.
3. This is then sent. It will go to the security department for that domain, and they will have the full headers they need to handle it. They will usually send a note back indicating receipt.
I know that this works well when the sender is using hotmail, yahoo, gmail, live, msn, ymail, and many other ISPs.
Pete
As to no subject no sender
by don3605 - 4/21/09 4:10 PM In reply to: I can't exclude everything! by YeovilleI delete them both. No preview, no investigation, nothing GONE. I view it as extremely rude to not tell me what they are contacting me for. Since every email client I have used has, as part of the setup procedure, a line to identify the sender anyone who does not tell you who they are is not your friend. If your friends are really that inconsiderate or that clueless that they do not identify themselves or their subject, I would be very careful of anything they send.
Many worms send a copy of themselves to everybody on the infected computers contact list. So an email sent by a friend may not have come from that friend if they got a little sloppy with their antivirus or surfing habits. I really do not mean to rag on your friends but people who think it is "funny" to jack you around or be inconsiderate torque me off (practical jokers fall into this category as well).
beating another related drum
by mittens - 5/16/09 3:11 AM In reply to: As to no subject no sender by don3605if you have a personal email account (not an extensive business one), one of the surest ways to ease the problem of spam is to delete your address book. You truly don't need it to send emails, and it becomes a repository for all your friends' old addresses, all your friends' NEW addresses, and every email addy from everyone who ever sent you anything, at any time. You dont need it. It also is the first place viruses go, to send their message to everyone in the address book, so that your friends can thank you later.
When you answer your email, reply in the body of the email you just received. That's easy. And you know the address is current. If you want to send something to someone, find one of their recent emails, open it, clean out the old message, and use that. That's easy. It also eliminates the dreaded "oops" when you send the wrong email to the wrong person.
It also means, if you get spam, or god forbid a virus that your AV program missed, no one else will.
One way to find out if that email is 'safe' is to right click on it with your mouse (Outlook permits this, maybe other email packages do too) and select "properties". You can then enlarge the email itself and see if it's from a friend or a spammer. The beauty of this is, it's not a preview, and the email has been read without being considered opened. Any email I'm unsure of is viewed with properties first, find out if it's junk or not, and if it is, dump it.
and don't bother with those unsubscribe tags at the bottom. Those are there because they have to be, but most of them are dummies. They just let the company know you opened the email.
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