Span and threatening email. 2

[wannabie2]

Hi. we all have someone we don't like.

Take for example my situation. Someone I know from a while back got a hold of my email and sent me a threatening mail saying that they are going to send a lot of spam my way. It looks like they are making good with it because now my mailbox is full of it.
any way I can report them? if so where do I start?

isn't things like these illegal?

 

[DrB0b]

Change your email address is the quickest and easiest way to deal with this situation. If all the email is coming from them, you could blacklist them but odds are they are signing up to random sites using your email addy which there really isnt much you can do about. You could file a report but it would take way more time and effort to correct this issue and prove it was them doing it than it would be feasibly worth.

If it is a business doing this to you, the BBB would be worth a call.

Or you obviously know their email address, so fight fire with fire. Tell them to stop or you will do the same, then blacklist the current sites sending your junk or unsubscribe to their emails.

Hope someone else has a better alternative for you but this is a bad situation for you without much recourse....

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[MakeItSo]

fight fire with fire. Tell them to stop or you will do the same

I strongly recommend NOT doing this.
I would suspect it all started after your responded to the threat in some way? That's an old trick you know: send a Mail and if you get a response you know that the address is both valid and monitored, hence SPAM worthy.

Check the sender address (not the displayed name) and check the mail header. Do the truly originate from the same address?

Cheers,
MakeItSo

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” (Kofi Annan)
Oppose SOPA, PIPA, ACTA; measures to curb freedom of information under whatever name whatsoever.

 

[DrB0b]

"I would suspect it all started after your responded to the threat in some way? That's an old trick you know: send a Mail and if you get a response you know that the address is both valid and monitored, hence SPAM worthy."

I would agree with this in general, I was under the assumption he knew the "spammer" personally, like an ex-GF or similar. But that is a very common way for spammers to gather known emails, true.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[wannabie2]

Changing my email address is not an option. Everything I have is linked to that address. I know the spammer's email. its' from a business transaction that I reported him for fraud.
he personally sent me a threatening email saying that he was going spam my address. now my spam box and partial inbox is filling up with junk email I never signed up for.

This guy is a nuisance is now a cyber terrorist. I know this sort of thing is illegal and already reported it to his isp. where else can I go? the police?

 

[DrB0b]

How do you receive your emails? Public email like Hotmail, Exchange Server in house, IPS email server? Can you not just set up stricter Spam policies if inhouse?

Bad business transactions lead to some misfortune but for them to do this, that is absurd. I would contact the BBB and if you are in a large city, the police may be able to help, especially with the incriminating email evidence you hopefully saved.

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[ChrisHirst]

Just publish the email address on a page that is open to all and sundry so it get picked up the harvesters, that's probably what the other person has done.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[goombawaho]

This guy is a nuisance is now a cyber terrorist.

Quite a bit of an over-stretch there!!! There are much bigger fish in the sea (bad people) other than spammers that authorities are after. Unless they are the type that send 6 million per day.

I also wouldn't call threatening to send you spam a REAL threat.

I'd just let it go. Nobody is really going to do anything about it to help you (police, etc). They have much bigger and more numerous fish to fry. Don't spam them or post their email. Man up. Just crank up your spam filter from your ISP or purchase one to work with your mail client as DrB0b suggested.

 

[wannabie2]

Hi. thing is this guy is sending my account info to spammers so my box is filled with email verification and gay porn stuff. it's getting through my spam filters.

I have an inhouse exchange server and it's getting though the spam filtering system. the spam filter is even set to high.

I don't understand what you meant by "Just publish the email address on a page that is open to all and sundry so it get picked up the harvesters"

can you explain?

 

[DrB0b]

If you have an in house exchange server, this should be no problem. After a couple days you should be able to eliminate most of them. It took me about 2 weeks to get our spam situation under control for most of our mailboxes. Just a pain for a bit, but once yo uget it running, all better.

Dont post the email, it will get taken down by mods anyway...

Learning - A never ending quest for knowledge usually attained by being thrown in a situation and told to fix it NOW.

 

[goombawaho]

I don't understand what you meant by "Just publish the email address on a page that is open to all and sundry so it get picked up the harvesters"

Posting an email address somewhere online will be "crawled" by bots and harvested for use by spammers. If you have your email on a web page, it's the surest way to get tons of spam.

Thus the suggestion to subject their email address to the same treatment. I wouldn't do it though.

The gay porn aspect IS troubling from a NSFW perspective. Off with his head.

 

[ChrisHirst]

I do it with all the spammer email adresses (~2,500 currently) that try, unsuccessfully, to sign up at my forum, all hidden from view but available for all the scrapers and harvesters there are roamin' 'round t'internet.

Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Time flies like an arrow, however, fruit flies like a banana.
Webmaster Forum

 

[wannabie2]

How do I find out where my email address is that is being harvest?

 

[58sniper]

You can't really. SMTP email is open to inspection as it traverses the Internet (for the most part). How they got it really isn't important. Seriously. There is no "taking it back".

Using the built in tools in your email client, as well as those on the server or provider, are your best bet. JunkMail filtering, reputation services, etc. all have a positive effect on spam. I've had the same email address for more than 15 years, and I can count on one hand the number of spam that make it to the inbox each week. And my email address is all over the place.

Changing email addresses is never an option, IMHO.

NEVER click UNSUBSCRIBE links on emails from senders you don't know and never signed up for. Clicking those links validates your email address to the spammer.

Do you have your Tek-Tips.com Swag? I've got mine!

Stop by the new Tek-Tips group at LinkedIn.

 

[goombawaho]

58sniper said it very well. Once out of the bag, it can't be put back in. I think one of your big mistakes was using a WORK email account for something personal, unless I read your post incorrectly. You always use a throw-away account for things like free downloads, free offers, online purchasing to keep the email address you use for communication away from the spammers.

Trying to post the spammer's address so they will get harvested is mostly a waste of time because most are generated by spam servers around the world and they could care less about spam and may not even accept incoming messages. Those few addresses that are real people and are spamming you - why bother.

You can't get the spammer in trouble really if he's using other mechanisms to send you spam. They aren't directly FROM him, so he's kind of pawned off his dirty work (and even that can't be proved). If he was sending you tons of message per day directly from his ISP/email, you could probably get the ISP to squelch him. But the attack is indirect now.

I believe you have to focus on spam filters at the ISP level, your domain level and/or at your computer level. Time to move on. Chances are, things will get better with time as filtering will pick up more of the junk as it learns.

 

[wannabie2]

Thank again for the advice. the flood of mail has gone down from 5000 per day to 100 and dropping.
I have taken precautions for that not to happen again. I called my mail provider and they told me of a way to trace the person that did this.

Look at the headers of the junk mail and find matching ip addresses. if the matching ip address doesn't belong to a spamming site then it's most likely belongs to the spammer. it will take a lot of effort and reading on my part.

Just thought you'd want to know.

 

[58sniper]

The only IP address in an email header that you should consider likely valid is the very last one. Anything before that can be spoofed.

The key issue here is spam. Having a proper solution for dealing with that not only deals with this particular instance, but protects the recipient in other ways as well.

Do you have your Tek-Tips.com Swag? I've got mine!

Stop by the new Tek-Tips group at LinkedIn.

 

[goombawaho]

I called my mail provider and they told me of a way to trace the person that did this.

And you're going to do what if/when you get the actual ip address? The ISP won't reveal who they are to you and they won't likely take any action. And it may not be the actual person's IP address. They could be doing it from a McDonald's for all you know.

I'd say time NOT well spent.

 

[wannabie2]

goombawaho (MIS)

And you're going to do what if/when you get the actual ip address? The ISP won't reveal who they are to you and they won't likely take any action. And it may not be the actual person's IP address. They could be doing it from a McDonald's for all you know. I'd say time NOT well spent.

chances are it's not a McDonalds. There is an address connected to the IP address, even if it's DHCP. the ISP has records of leases and with my lawyers help I can get the information I need to find and sue. Just put in the paper work to end Cyber Terrorism.

 

[58sniper]

You'll need a search warrant for the info from an ISP, or you'll have to sue the ISP & demand the info. That info isn't going to get you ANYTHING. It may get you the location, but you still can't put a specific person in front of a specific computer on a specific IP address at a specific time. And I'm not aware of any criminal charge that could be levied for intentionally signing people up for spam. Civil liability would be a stretch.

Do you have your Tek-Tips.com Swag? I've got mine!

Stop by the new Tek-Tips group at LinkedIn.