spam

Ennia · Post by **Ennia** » May 22, 2003, 1:58 pm

without getting into who and why here's a quick question for you all

once an e-mail address starts getting spammed with junk mail is all hope lost and it's better to get new mailbox or is there anything else that can be done?

this is about company's e-mail listed on all business related materials and documents, websites etc.

Sionistic · Post by **Sionistic** » May 22, 2003, 2:01 pm

not too sure, ive gotten some spam on my personal email before but i blocked it and havent heard anything else since

Kyria · Post by **Kyria** » May 22, 2003, 2:18 pm

I started getting spam mail and for days I was clicking 'unsubscribe' on every single one, but it still hasn't stopped. Personally, I think it's hopeless. At least it was for me.

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » May 22, 2003, 2:20 pm

clicking unsubscribe does nothing more then tell the person sending the e-mail that it is a valid e-mail address that someone uses.. AND that the someone opened and read their e-mail..

clicking unsubscribe is about the WORST thing you can do..

Kyria · Post by **Kyria** » May 22, 2003, 2:22 pm

Eww I never even thought of that. *sigh*

Deward · Post by **Deward** » May 22, 2003, 3:07 pm

I know many people say not to unsubscribe but I have two accounts. On one account I have been unsubscribing everything that comes to me. On the other, I just delete it or junk mail it. Want to guess which one gets more spam? The second one by far. I get maybe 1 spam mail a day at the first account and at leat 50 a day from the second account.

You may end up with more spam if you unsubscribe but if you don't unsubscribe then you are going to be getting the same spam anyway. When the spam companies send out a mailing it is commonly several million at a time. Once I have unsubscribed, then very rarely do I ever see the same company again. The only one I can't seem to get rid of is that stupid Nigerian scam.

I have been performing the above experiment for over a year now.

Deward

Post by **Sylvus** » May 22, 2003, 3:18 pm

I think you should print out every spam message in triplicate and store the copies in separate file cabinets. That way, you'll be sure to have more than enough proof to join any class-action lawsuits against people who send out spam. It's the American way!

Offer not valid in Canada, Sweden, Denmark or Ohio.

Kyria · Post by **Kyria** » May 22, 2003, 3:25 pm

Or you could make a group in your address book of all the addresses that you receive spam mail from, and then forward every piece to that group. Spam the bastards right back.

Post by **Sylvus** » May 22, 2003, 3:29 pm

Ooh, that's a good idea. Beat them at their own game!

btw, 500th post. grats me.

Post by **pyrella** » May 22, 2003, 3:34 pm

99% of those emails are bounces/relays, or just plain fake

have to dig through the MTA path to get the real thing, and usually you still only end up at an unauthorized relay.

Been working on a spam solution for work, I'll compile some stuff we've gotten together so far and post it. OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of it can be used for free in a single user solution, and usually works very well.

Kyria · Post by **Kyria** » May 22, 2003, 3:36 pm

Woo grats Sylvus! And grats me on using you to snag me another post!

<--crafty!

masteen · Post by **masteen** » May 22, 2003, 3:42 pm

A lot of spammers use one shot addys, so spamming them back isn't always possible. I wish there was a way to track them down, and annihliate every fucking mail server that passed them along.

CalandraWindrose · Post by **CalandraWindrose** » May 22, 2003, 4:12 pm

using my email's own spam prevention program (I use hotmail) and some blocking it seems to work not too badly and I've been able to have the same email a while

OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of stuff gets dumped in the "junk" folder - I take a quick look to mark anything good and empty the rest - very few things get through to the inbox - if it does I block it - and I don't get it again - and not much "good" stuff gets into the junk - so I'm pretty happy

I think most email programs are set up to do things like this now - if not you could set up some rules for the common words you get like umm...viagra and umm other "terms" to auto delete

I never answer to unsubscribe unless I know its a legit thing I subscribed to - on the theory it validates the address - just my personal thing

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » May 22, 2003, 4:14 pm

my ISP has a spam filter that just prepends a **SPAM** in the subject line of any spam e-mail it detects.. i can customize how much it should scrutinize each e-mail and assign a point ranking at which it determines its spam.. i then just made a rule to dump anything with spam in the subject line to my deleted folder.. in the future my isp will be offering an option to just delete those e-mails from their server so i don;t even have to do that..

Ennia · Post by **Ennia** » May 22, 2003, 4:40 pm

thanks for replies guy, so far I'm not very optimistic
personally at home I just change my address every couple of years but at work it's different
I tried to fiddle with Eudora's filters but either im doing something wrong or this shit doesn't work
my boss spend an entire day once looking thru his trash box and unsubscribing where he could lol nope didn't work, it seems even worse since then

miir · Post by **miir** » May 22, 2003, 4:53 pm

Or you could make a group in your address book of all the addresses that you receive spam mail from, and then forward every piece to that group. Spam the bastards right back.

You can't.
99% of the return addresses on bulk spam are spoofed.
If you collected the addresses of 100 spam reply addresses and sent them spam, it would just get bounced right back to you 100 times worse.

my boss spend an entire day once looking thru his trash box and unsubscribing

Never click an 'unsubscribe' link... they are email address verifiers.

I know many people say not to unsubscribe but I have two accounts. On one account I have been unsubscribing everything that comes to me. On the other, I just delete it or junk mail it. Want to guess which one gets more spam?

The one that is on the most lists.

I have one email account that I have given to nobody. It's a personal account that I use to email stuff to myself. I have a fliter on it that will trash anything that is not coming from me. The other day I looked into the trash folder and noticed over 1k messages. I was getting over 30 spam messages a day on a 'secret' account... my hotmail account doesn't even get that many.

Colal · Post by **Colal** » May 22, 2003, 5:11 pm

Well its a fedral crime to not remove someone from your list if they notify you to unsubsribe. That doesn't mean its a guarantee that its safe, and if they don't operate in the US, then it doesn't matter anyways. But saying that all unsubscribe options are "traps" simply isn't true, and they often work well. The trick to using them is to not wait, as soon as you start seeing spam, you need to unsubscribe because at anytime, they might sell your email address to another listserv. If you unsubscribe before that happens, they won't have your email address to sell.

I used to work for a company that did bulk email to golf customers, we periodically sent out 2 and 3 million emails in a cycle. If we got responses to unsubscribe people, they were unsubscribed. If not, we sold those addresses to new companies every few months. I don't work their anymore.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » May 22, 2003, 5:17 pm

download mailwasher. It lets you check your emails before you download them off the server and you can delete the ones you don't want. you can even set it to fool the server into thinking that the mail was undeliverable and send it back to the spammer as that. most spamming programs are set to automatically delete email addresses off their list if they come back as undeliverable because it costs them bandwidth money to send the spam out.

http://www.mailwasher.net/

Mak · Post by **Mak** » May 22, 2003, 5:47 pm

One of the things I use is to create a hotmail account for the sole purpose of using that addy for the internet. If I ever need to use an email address to register for a site, or put in some online form, I always use that instead of my regular addresses. It's not foolproof but it helps.

Also, if you have retarded friends that love sending you a "cute" email that's been forward 57,000 times, make them stop. They're putting your email address on a ton of databases.

Ajran · Post by **Ajran** » May 22, 2003, 5:48 pm

Thanks for the link Kyo thats perfect..

Ennia · Post by **Ennia** » May 22, 2003, 5:56 pm

that mailwasher looks interesting, we'll give it a try
thanks Kyo