RANT: Spam is out of control

from WinCustomize Forums
Alright, I've had it. I am not a violent person but each day I get literally (no joking) over 300 spam messages per day. I know I'm not alone and yet very few realistic solutions seem to exist for combating it.

I really do think that some really basic laws could be in place to protect people against it. There are different types of spam out there and I'd be happy if the hard core definitive spam could just be stopped. When I send out Stardock Magazine, a magazine that users have to specifically subscribe to, we get emails from spam cop that claim that we're spam. Spam assassin has sent us notes claiming that the email verification that is sent when a user creates an account is spam. (Of course, based on their definition of spam, Spam Cop and Spam Assasin are sending out spam - unsolicted email!). Those things are definitely solution.

That leads me to the next thing I've tried, Spamnet. It sounds good in theory but in practice it has made me feel like some privacy freak has hijacked my email. All the things I've subscribed to get marked as spam and while I can unmark it as spam, it gets tedious having to do that on every thing I subscribe to, especially when you get as much spam as I do.

The spammers themselves though are of course the problem. They have no decency. In my book they're borderline criminals.

In an email I received today from: FLORETTA RODRIGUE it had a subject line in it of "This is the stuff I mentioned" and what do I see when I click on it? Porn with an ad for herbal viagra. This got marked as spam so but because I end up having to go through my spam folder looking for legitimate email now and then, it still annoys the heck out of me to see these. What if I was a kid? They don't know. I don't subscribe to any adult sites or anything else that would put me on a mailing list for pornographic material. This email came from Lima Peru (trace routed it).

Of course, getting to companies or people located in Hong Kong or Albania or whatever may be difficult. But something needs to be done.

I'm frustrated enough that I am really starting to think this is an area we should get into. I don't know how much money can be made on this sort of thing but I'm starting not to care. I do know that I don't like "collaborative" systems like spamnet. I don't systems like Mccaffee's where you're having to filter it on the server. I don't want to mess around with something being installed on the mail server. I want a program that is good enough to simply stop the definitive spam. It doesn't have to be 100% but enough where things that are almost certainly spam are stopped. Spam based on what they are, not because some privacy freak who thinks that email from ZDNet that they subscribed to but are too lazy to unsubscribe to is now spam (ironically, an anchordesk article that drooled all over spamnet was marked as spam).

What are your thoughts? What do you think can realistically be done about spam?
13,403 views 24 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
hey there...
You are sooo right. I get about 200 spam mails a day! a thought: Would anybody on this world read a mail, that has the subject "Get your penis enlarged" send by "Lucky dude"???

What i do is simple:
I use Outlook and every spam i receive I add to the junk mail rule and regulary i back it up by exporting, so everytime i re install windoze i import it back...

by now i have about 150 adresses in my rule! And I am sooo tired of this.

Martin
Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I thankfully get very little email spam, the ones I do get are 'bounced' back to the sender. In thoery it makes it look like my email doesn't exist (so I've read )
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I agree completely - Spam has been and is completely out of control.

This might just be in my head but It seems that everytime that I unsubsribe from one spam list I seem to be back on 3 new ones. It is like they watch the unsuscribers and then resale that list as well.
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I completely agree, I only get 45-60 spam mails per day. I would be really pissed if I got 300. I had changed my email to another company for about 6 months, because my old ISP sold off their residential accounts to another company. Well when they decided to go back into business, they had a great offer, so I reactivated my account. BAM! all of the old span I was getting came flooding in. These guys do not care if it is a valid address or nt.
Anyways, I get the breast enlargement and the penis enlargement almost every day, usually the same day. Just what I need!
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i can't imagine what it's like to get 300 spam mails a day. i luckily only get about 15 but still, it's just annoying as crap to know that people do this, and while we have to go to great lengths to stop it, they're getting paid to piss people off. it's screwed up.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
There is another important point regarding "Spam" and it's effect on email. Email was supposed to be a benefit to business. Unfortunately, because of "Spam" email has not been able to live up to it's potential as a time saving business tool.

There was a article in the Toronto based newspaper "The Globe and Mail" http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&encoded_keywords=e-mail&option=&start_row=26¤t_row=26&start_row_offset1=0&num_rows=1&search_results_start=21 that indicates that email, mostly due to spam, has fallen way short of it's potential.
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I really love the organizations like www.ordb.org

What a pain in the ass those are... Good initiative, poor judgement...
Reply #8 from WinCustomize Forums Top
The best solution I found is Mailshell (http://www.mailshell.com). In addition to providing a mail account, you can create disposable addresses, and do lots more. It's best feature is that you can add up to three other e-mail accounts, and they'll be passed through Mailshell's "cleaning" process and delivered to your preferred inbox. I currently have two of my most heavily spammed accounts processed that way, and I haven't looked back. They claim something like 99% accuracy in filtering, and I'd say that's about right. If you get nervous that you might lose an e-mail, have the stuff filtered to your junk folder. POP access, and lot's more features. It's the best $30 (or so) I spent in a long time. And no, I don't work for them or anything like that.
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've used SpamWeasel before (from www.mailgate.com, I believe). It had some really strong points, like the ability to "write" or "code" rules. It had a language not unlike VB so you could do things like UCASE() RIGHT(), etc. That allowed you to filter out mail addresses that had more than 4 numbers in a row, for example. I'd need something like this at a minimum, and regular expressions would be incredible.

On the downside, it made mail retrieval slow (but only after I upgraded from what seemed like a better version). Most egregiously perhaps, it always thought you hadn't registered if WindowBlinds was running!! Go figure...
Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My first task of the day is to scan the spam & delete. Only then do I actually begin to read stuff. The worst of it goes to my work account! The postmaster can only suggest we request to be taken off the list. AFAIK, that only confirms a working address.

I agree with the frog, somethings got to be done but . . .

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Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I am getting a shedload of spam too and it gets right up my nose.

What makes it worse most of this crud do not have anyway to unsubscribe from it (forgetting you did not subscribe to it in the first place).

I had to smile lately though i have seen this trash subject added an ( RE: ) expecting you'll open them... not that i care, If i do not know them i delete em!.

I do not go by subject line.

I think there should be laws to deal with this type of pests (hey it's mild way of explaining them.

I also think there should be a way of enforcing the laws so we can get the little suckers (I mean people/groups that do this).
Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Here are some ways to help stop spam.

1. Do not repeat DO NOT ask to be off their list. That just lets most spammers know they have a live person at that address.

2. Do not give out your email address when you sign up for things. What works well is to have one spam address and one real one. For when you register freeware or enter a contest use the spam addy. Many contests are just to collect names.

3. You can use an server based email filter. Praetor works well (used to do tech support for it). There are also Mail Warden and a few others. They sit on the mail server, and either recieve the mail or check it once it is in the mail store the way a virus checker works. The disadvantage of these is somebody needs to work with the rules to make sure what you want to get blocked is and what is real gets through. One nice thing is Praetor can block some viruses before the virus update happens.

4. Some email clients have email filters built in. They tend to be very uneven in my experience. Your milage may vary.

5. Don't have a company address list on a web page. They are like hidden gold for spammers.

6. Don't have your profile list your email address when your in a game or chat room. Spammers use bots to search for those.

7. When you are trying to block an address make sure you are using the right address. There is a hidden one known as the 821. This is the real address it came from. This can be spoofed but most don't bother since most users have no idea this is there. This is differant from the 822 or friendly address you see in your email client. Think of this as being able to send from your home computer but having it show up at the recieving computer looking like you sent it from work. Some spammers will change the address with each message making it harder to block. but some filters can work using just the domain name.

8. Do your part to stop spam. Make sure your email server is not an open relay. An open relay can spead spam by a factor of 10. It also eats up your bandwidth.


Check out www.mail-abuse.org. They maintain the real time black hole list of know spammers and open relays. Some email filters use the list to block spam. Be warned that it does sometimes block real mail from people that don't realize they have an open relay (even though they get warning messages).

Hope this helps.



Reply #13 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I've noticed that hotmail's junk filter actually works (except for a few addresses, like when my wife got her new imac and sent an email from her @mac.com address - it thought it was junk ).

Back in the 80s I used to complain about every single junkmail I got and flame the sender but now I've wised up and just delete them (like someone said, if you reply it shows that your address is active). I remember one case where the spammer actually had an auto reply if you emailed them and it stupidly used the reply-address you specified when you sent your email - so I set it to their own address. They got into a loop - sending themselves thousands of spam-messages. Ah, sweet revenge
Reply #14 from WinCustomize Forums Top
lol @ juni

i have to agree with everyone in the world, but since most of them don't know what i'm agreeing with them on, i'll just limit it to everyone that's been reading this thread.

spam is a pain in the ass.

hotmail has been getting more effective recently, but the other day, i got an email from a friend (with a hotmail adress, believe it or not) that got sent to my junk folder. then on the other hand, i'm getting bucketloads of spam from yahoo recently (dunno why) so i thought i'd be a smart ass and go to hotmails mail redirect feature, and filter every email i got from people emailing me from the adress @yahoo.com to my junk folder, which worked fine, untill one of my friends forgot his hotmail password and got a yahoo adress instead. so i took that filter off now i just block everything.


or if you are using outlook express (and maybe microsoft outlook, i dunno) there is a way to block the sender.

open the email (ugh), right click on the adress of the spammer, and click block sender.
Reply #15 from WinCustomize Forums Top
How about setting up some system which could filter out mail based on how many of your subscribers it was sent to. You could set up a 'bait' page on the web with a list of all the subscribers e-mail addresses, with the intention of these bots picking those addresses up, and then when an identical mail comes in to every mailbox on the subscriber list it gets treated as spam. This would allow actual subscription content like newsletters to get through okay, as theoretically those mails wouldn't get sent to every single mailbox, while those spam mails which are sent out to whole lists of people would never get through.

I know this plan has flaws both in logistics and execution, but something like this would go a long way to solving the problem. I'm not sure, but I would imagine it's a similar concept to the one that Hotmail uses.

(This idea is Copyright ©2002 grayhaze )
Reply #16 from WinCustomize Forums Top
A very good programm to get rid of spam is Mailwasher.

It is postcard ware and you can get it here:

http://www.mailwasher.net/

You can delete en bounce messages from your mailserver before you pick it up.
Reply #17 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Right on Kris!!! I get about 30 spams/day. I do lots of the things suggested here on how not to get spam. How do you filter e-mail when it's not in English It just keeps coming.

Griffenme...How do you find the 821 address. I'd love to turn over some of these folks to my ISP to block them.

I hate spam. Not even spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam & spam.

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Reply #18 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I use an e-mail program called Poco Mail http://www.pocomail.com

One of the many nice things about this program is that it has a great spam filter. It allows you to assign point values to words and phrases. If a message goes over a certain threshold (user defined) then the message automatically goes into the Junk Mail folder (which you can always look at). It also has the usual subject filters, domain filters, and address filters. You can also exclude subjects, domains, or addresses from the filters which is useful for newsletters and the like (which have a tendency to look like spam).

I'm in your class in that I get about 300 or so spams a day. Poco Mail gets about 90% of them and I don't spend a lot of time customizing my filters.

Dave
Reply #19 from WinCustomize Forums Top
In Outlook you open the message. Go to View, then Options, there should be a box that has the headers in it.

With Outlook Ex right click on the message. Selecting properties will show the headers with the option of seeing the message in the raw.

Yahoo Web mail has an option to show all headers in every message.

This should give you an idea where to find them in other enviroments.

If you are using POP3 you may not get to see the entire header, do to the nature of POP3.
Reply #20 from WinCustomize Forums Top
death to spam!

i have already had to dump a couple of email address's, since they get to much spam.

programs that work at the server level are no use to me, since i dont run an email server.

on my work machine i play around with rules in outlook2000, but having just reinstalled everything, outlook told me that my rules conflicted with the server rules, and it wanted to stick to the server rules only???

since this is a work machine they arent going to like me using different email programs.

/me feels stuck between a rock and a hard place
Reply #22 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'am down to a couple a day now. I keep blocking them. But those porn site keep changing their email addresses.

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Reply #23 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Although it isn't foolproof, what I do is this:

Create a hotmail/excite/etc account for use on the web. Anytime you register on any website, enter an e-mail for anything in a program (like Kazaa or whatever), or whatever it is - use this e-mail. Only check it when a password is being sent to you using it or something.

Your actual e-mail (whether it is hotmail, etc) you keep private and only give it to your close friends and business colleagues.

Most of the spam you'll recieve will go to your web e-mail, because 90% of the time it's the bastard websites you register with who are giving it out / selling it etc. And who cares if the website itself sends you it's trash.. i could care less about new products at xyz.com..

VERY IMPORTANT: If you do get spam to your primary e-mail, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT EVER, EVER hit the unsubscribe link!!! Do you know what they REALLY put that in for? It's a way to verify your e-mail address! Although they remove your e-mail from their mailing list, they move your e-mail to a "hotlist" which is recently validated, working e-mail addresses - and they sell the lists for even more cash to 20 other mother****'in ***holes on the net so you get twice as much spam. All you do is (A) Get more spam (B) Make the ****suckers more money.

Now sometimes, you can't help using your real e-mail (such as when making an online purchase), and if you have a website that you want people to contact you, it is possible for the SPAM scrapers to nail you.

But overall I might get about 5-10 spams a day in my real mailbox, which is annoying still but at least it's manageable. I really feel sorry for you 300 a day'ers.

I do agree though, if there's an equivalent to excorcist-spin-my-head-road-rage towards spam, I have it. The thoughts I have about what I would do to the bastards who manage and execute the lists are far more than morbid, something out of a Cannibal Corpse or Mortician song..

May they pray for their dear souls that I do not ever find one of them.. because it will be a long 1000 hours of straight praying for dear death the end the agony..
Reply #24 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You may under appreciate Spamcop. I know I did before I understood how to use it effectively and efficiently.

Use the unique spam-forwarding address Spamcop generates for you as the target for a filter in your email program. I recommend PMMail2000 from Blueprint Software. (You may remember PMMail and Blueprint). Great filter writing side to that proggy.

You can have my filters to get started.

1. All mail from folks in my addressbook is passed off to the inbox.
2. Any mail from lists I subscribe to (this could be done as part of 1, but I do it in a filter) is passed off to a list inbox.
3. Any mail containing certain classic spam-identifying 'triggers' is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address (see above) and deleted locally. I have Sent Mail saved, so I know what I sent (and deal with the occasional errors this way, see last point).
4. Any HTML mail is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address. Yes, ALL HTML mail. Ruthless? Maybe.
5. Any base64 mail is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address.
6. Any mail with no "To" entry is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address.
7. Any mail with "undisclosed addressee" is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address.
8. Any mail with "undisclosed sender" is forwarded to my Spamcop reporting address.
9. Then once a day I go to Spamcop and am greeted with a hotlink labelled Report Now. I click, it brings up the first report it's prepared. At the bottom is the send button and just above it, a clip from the spam. Here I spot the occasional piece of non-spam that has been caught up in my net of filters (like someone who's not in my addy book sends me a message). I click cancel to drop them from the Spamcop machine.

You could skip the Spamcop part of this and just do the deletes and never see the spam; I have a young child and some older kids who are grown or away at school. The young one likes to have email from his sisters. His email is protected in the "if you're not his sisters, you're deleted" style.

I agree that spam is a dreadful problem. After ten years of internet experience, I now believe the RBL solution is the only way, and I think everyone is WAY too timid about slapping spam-generating ISPs with the RBL hammer.

There's even an Anaxian Law to describe how spam happens (you ready for this?): You're Sure To Get Whatever You'll Put Up With.

Stardock's got a product opportunity here: spam filter/rule writer needed. You and I can write filter rules in PMMail, but my wife can't. But come to think of it, even if you made a super easy to use product, she'd STILL expect me to do it for her, lol.