SPAM 1

[SPYDERIX]

Can and will this ever stop? Every day I dread opening my email due to the growing number of spam emails in my junk mail folder. I have to open my junk mail folder because I have a forwarding account that sends mail to my hotmail, so if you aren't on my address book you will go into the junk mail folder. I have to sort out all the crap about: buy this, get this discount, you have won this - now fill out a million forms do this and that and enter to win. I thought you just said I won. What about those people who use an internet cafe or are still on dialup, or use a kiosk? they pay one dollar for 5 minutes, the computer is slow as hell, the mouse never works, and you have to sift through what seems like an endless continuation of crap before you can read relevant emails, by which time you've spent about $10.

Is there anything one can actually do to fight spam. Will you actually be able to go after an individual or organization that likes to play this annoying game. What actions can be taken?

There is a website that I have come across that talks about spam and what it is and what you can do, but will it actually help? The site is

http://www.cauce.org/

Who says that if you go after a spammer, he or she won't sell their master list to someone it attempts to keep spam alive.

It sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth to actually go after these people. An obvious solution is to just create a new email account and be very vary about when you use it online and if you should hyperlink it anywhere online. I don't want to have to continuously create new accounts. I shouldn't have to, no-one should! Spammers know that not everyone is going to come after them, which makes spamming so vicious.

It's comparable to major software companies and piracy. A major software company isn't going to come after John Doe 123 Easy St. for a pirated copy of X-program, it's not worth the time, money or effort, and it's the same with spam. Most of you probably just deleted the spam or filter it to the trash immidiately and never do anything about it.

Can this and will this ever stop? Will the world ever be rid of spam?

NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com

http://www.spyderix-designz.com

 

[Hildegoat15]

i just thought i'd put in my two cents. i just created a new free email addy because of all the spam i've been getting, and within two hours of me setting the addy up, i had over a dozen messages in my junk mail folder. i honestly really don't see any end in sight. -Matt

http://www.ranamedical.com

 

[Chopstik]

If I might hijack this thread just a little (well, it's a little related), has anyone had problems with spammers "borrowing" your email address to send spam from? I know of several people who have had their addresses borrowed by spammers to send email from, and recently suffered the same myself. There has been no resolution on the part of the ISP (or response, for that matter), but I personally find that disturbing.

Is there any sort of recourse for this type of action? If so, what? If not, is there a way to prevent it? Look forward to hearing any feedback. Insanity is merely a state of mind while crazy people have a mind of their own.

 

[Kjonnnn]

I find it odd. I rarely get spam on my home email or at work.

Im on AOL at home, and on my main ID I dont surf the net. Its just for email.

 

[garwain]

my hotmail account (that I set up only to use MSN Messanger, and never use for email purposes) was getting 20 messages a day the first week after I set it up (I made sure I chose the settings to not have my information published) I am now getting hundreds of messages a day on this account... all spam

 

[Zarcom]

Just wait they will come.

I think it also has partly to do with what your email address is. I am sure that some spammers merely email out brute force style. I base this on an expericience of mine.

I hooked up my brand new cable internet connection. I then proceeded to make a new email adress for myself. Once I had everthing setup I opened my email client. There in the inbox was a spam. Within 5 mins of making my account I was recieving porn in my email.

GRRRRRRR
I HATES
I HATES
I HATES SPAM That'l do donkey, that'l do
Mark

 

[williambishop]

Just to help you guys out with some homework. Create a hotmail account. Don't ever use it, don't give out the address. Within 4 weeks, you will generally receive a dozen spams a day. This assignment will force you to assess the value of hotmail. I use yahoo as my spam magnet, but it rarely gets any...I use my work email for anything else(never had spam in it). There are far too many email providers available to ever use hotmail for any reason.

 

[LastDance74]

In response to Chopstik:

I have had my email address "hijacked". It wasn't a Hotmail or other free account either, it was with my local, relatively small, ISP.

The first I knew about it was when I started receiving bounce messages about mail I hadn't sent - heaps of them. It was taking me forever to download my mail and then ages more to wade through all the rubbish to get to the real stuff.

Then the most disturbing part: my mailbox filled up with irate and abusive emails from those who received the Spam (it was for a pretty gross porn site). And they were seriously abusive. Some of those emails put the receivers no higher up the ladder than the original Spammers in my opinion.

Effectively my mailbox was pretty trashed and I had to move accounts. I got some help from friends on the net with trying to trace the origin of the mail but we didn't come up with anything. My ISP said there was nothing they could do.

The Spammers sure hit their mark.

Sam

 

[ANFPS26]

The KLEZ virus can do things similar to that. It can pick names out of your address book and make you think you are getting emails from them when in fact you are not. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....."

 

[RISTMO]

I have had my yahoo address for 4 years. I have never had any problems with spam untill last month. I signed up at a couple websites together (I can't remember which ones), now they are sending porn daily to my yahoo bulk folder. I'm now ready to join the fight! I usually just block addresses. I only have stuff coming from a couple of addresses so it's easy for me. I get on average 7 junk mail emails a week so it didn't bother me too much to delete them. Now that I am getting other stuff, I am mad. There's got to be a way...

Rick

 

[SPYDERIX]

Ok,

So a bunch of you agree with me in saying that this is a pain in the a$$ and we all hate it.

My question is: can we do anything about it? Is it even worth joining CUACE and will that help? Charging people $10/unsolicited email (SPAM) is definately a way to combat this nuisance but are all the ISP's going to go to the trouble of doing this. This is one hell of a task to even start let alone complete. How, without constantly creating new email accounts will this stop.

I thought that the point of creating an email account was so that people can contact you electronically. If we are all so worried about spam and figure that the only solution is to create new accounts and never tell anyone about them, then what's the point of email!

Is there a solution, will there ever be a solution? I don't think it will happen, not in my lifetime at least.

NATE
design@spyderix-designz.com

http://www.spyderix-designz.com

 

[SteveTheGeek]

CAUCE seems dedicated to a legal solution, and since I think any U.S. law will simply push the rest of the spammers offshore (and make corporate email servers more painful to administer for us civilized types) I'm actually against CAUCE as much as I'm against the spammers themselves. I think eventually that mail servers will do reverse DNS lookups on all inbound SMTP and that open relays will gradually close down, making spamming mail servers easier to identify and block. Another possibility is that the eight idiots worldwide that are actually buying spamvertized products will become eligible for Darwin awards and spam will become pointless.
-Steve

"The glass is 100% full of fluid of one sort or another"

 

[johnny99]

I little note from someone who has the most spammed email address on the internet.

Spam will never stop. The problem is basicly that the main part of the cost is on the receiving end. Spammers pay allmost nothing for sending the email (even when they use their own servers)
You can try to fight it using

http://www.ordb.org

and

http://spamcop.net

but it will only slow it down a little.

Spam will not stop before we all stop using internet email (like that will ever happen)

If we all switched from internet email to a system like x.400 from a single worldwide company that we all would use, spam will never stop (and had to pay 6 EUR per email).

The force of the internet is also it's biggest drawback. Nobody has control.

All UN states should sign a binding agreement on the laws that would handle spammers because as long as they can hide somewhere they will always be there.

I only know about the EU where they start to talk about making laws against spamming, but since most spammers are in the USA using servers in China this will not help at all.

/johnny

 

[petermeachem]

The eu are going to outlaw spam, but as you say others need to do it too. Would the US spammers start squeaking about free speech if they were stopped? Peter Meachem
peter @ accuflight.com

 

[Zarcom]

Free speech is just fine, as long as you don't infringe on other peoples rights.

I would say SPAM infringes upon peoples lifes. That'l do donkey, that'l do
Mark

 

[SteveTheGeek]

They certainly would, and of course they'd be wrong just as someone isn't allowed to yell diatribes two inches away from your face under 1st Amendment protections. However, as long as there is one or two significant nations that don't heavily prosecute spammers the effectiveness will be minimal, and many nations can't even agree on prosecuting genocidal maniacs. I favor employing computer skills and creativity to dissuade spammers - if one can take their mail server down, that's fine, and if one can only blackhole them or notify their ISP, that's fine too. Most of the fly-by-night spammers (the newcomers that really think they're making a million bucks) have zero security, so any script kiddie could repartition their server drives, I don't know why more don't.
-Steve

 

[petermeachem]

Which would mean that they were using their slightly dubious talents to do some good. Can't see anything wrong with that. Peter Meachem
peter @ accuflight.com

 

[Tezdread]

Hotmail might aswell be renamed to spammail as far as I'm concerned, I wont have anything to do with them and I would like to hear a good valid reason why anyone would open such an account.

I have my own domain/web site and do a little web design work, my email address has been captured from my web site and I get about 50 spam mails a day which isn't something I like but it could be worse. If I need to use an email address on a web site I will only use my Yahoo email address and I have used this address for about 4 years also and get very few emails and this address has been used to sign up for things on line.

Yahoo uses Spamgaurd and it looks like it works to me. What I tend to do now is use Yahoo as a primary email address for things like news letters and downloads, if it is a good news letter and I think the company that is delivering this is responsible (although you may never really know) I will change my email address so I have them downloaded to my comp.

About ISP's taking some responsibilty. Like I mentioned before I have my own .com site and pay a the ISP for this and they deliver my email. I sent an email to them asking about anti spam software, they say that they can't do anything about it! I don't think this entirely true.

Maybe I should download some software so I can view the emails on the server and leave all the emails that are spam so the ISP have to remove them. This might do something, but the chances are, they have limited the amount of data stored in my inbox and when it reaches a certain amount no more can be received and this would result in me missing emails and possible work.

I have spent a lot of time setting up rules in Outlook but the spammers have spent a lot more time getting around this as I still get them. I am looking into some software that might help. Like I mentioned in a different thread on the subject, I feel that what is needed is some software that will read the entire content including images names/subject/from fields/to fileds but then this software might cost more than i would save in time! Tezdread
"With every solution comes a new problem"

 

[johnny99]

You are very lucky.
I also have my own domain on my own small linux box.
I get more then 1.000 spam emails a day. (last 24 hours more then 4.500) but at least I can filter something like 90% out.

I filter it out using access.db in sendmail and ordb.org and others.

I normaly use Outlook, but I only read mail from my own domain using Eudora because there is not so many worms that go after Eudora.

Getting ISP's to handle the problem will be very difficult. The few ISP's that try to do something about the problem is also the ISP's that have the smallest problem.

At my domain I have cut out big parts of Korea and China and that helps, but the real big problem is mostly some of the large ISP's in the US.

/johnny

 

[Wullie]

Tezdread,

I sent an email to them asking about anti spam software, they say that they can't do anything about it! I don't think this entirely true.

What you see as valuable information may be seen as spam to another user on your ISP's server. This works both ways.

What would you do if there was a newsletter that you really wanted to receive and the ISP filtered it?

Hope this helps Wullie

sales@freshlookdesign.co.uk

http://www.freshlookdesign.com

http://www.searchit-now.co.uk

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails. - John Maxwell