VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[nick reed]

Everyone gets spam. I always get some now and then but recently I am plagued by a "new" type of spam. In the past, I have been able to apply filters for certain words or whatever but this "new" type of spam defies filtering. There are two primary messages, one is financial, like investments or loans. The other is selling copies of expensive watches. The senders names are always different and not some of the weird names that you see on other spam but real believable names. The subject line may be one word or multiple words that mean nothing. The mind blower today was one that I got with a name of a co-worker on it. He is not on the internet.

I get a half dozen of these every day. I am wondering if someone set me up, especially after that one with my co-workers name on it.

Any clues? Any advice?

Nick

[Deirdre]

In that same vein:

What alarms me is Spam I receive that has the names of recent correspondents as "senders"--as though the spammers are intercepting and grabbing names from my e-mail.

Some of my correspondents have unusual names, too. That's what makes me smell a rat.
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[Hart]

Nick, I get those watch ones about as often as you do at my radio station email account, with a different email sender everytime too.
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[dmgood]

This sounds like two different issues to me.

1. The phoney name and bogus words to get through the spam filter to sell knockoff watches. This is just spam that got through the filters. Seeing this stuff just drags me down, weight of the world stuff. Thank goodness for the summary view where you can just check them off the list and report as spam or delete.

2. The email coming in as if from people from your address book. This is the characteristic of a recent virus. It sounds like you or someone you know has the virus and is spoofing the names and sending them out. If you don't already have a good virus checker, get one.

[Deirdre]

[dmgood]

[nick reed]

In regard to the use of my co-workers name... he is not on the Internet, so I am not in his address book and he is not in my address book. Yet his name is unusual enough to disreard it as a coincidence, although it could be purely coincidence.

Like Dee, I ususally get names like Lindsey and such. This morning I got one from Carolyn Kurtz "Her beograd a chute" regarding investments.

I know that I should know the answer to this but I can't remember... does opening spam tell the sender that you are there?

I have been getting this spam since I put up a website. Could these spammers be using my "send email to me" function to find me? If so, is there any way to protect against this?

Nick

[Deirdre]

Ah. Outlook.

Don't use it.

yay!
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[dmgood]

[Charlie Channel]

Over the past two weeks, I've noticed a definite increase in SPAM. Unfortunately, spam filters simply are not doing the job. So, I've secured one e-mail account for e-mail only from designated e-mail addresses.

I didn't want to do it, since it's more work. But, then, that's just the way it's got to be. On that account, anybody who wants to make sure I get their E-mail must first allow me to include their E-mail on my access list. That means for software delivery/registration or other critical communication via Internet, I've got to add the sender's E-mail account to the access list. That's it. I've pretty much had it.

Please keep in mind that I've got more than one E-mail account. Also, I have E-mail aliases. Only one "key" account is used the personal process of pre-approving E-mail senders.

Forwarding and filtering does not work with Comcast.net. The only thing that happens is I get more spam! So, I'm filtering, exclusively, with that account.

There are, probably, different models that can be implemented to control SPAM. Charging for E-mail transmission is one approach. Digital signatures and certificates is another. I tend to favor the latter. I think it's time for the evolution to occur.

CC

[Hart]

I guess I'm at a much lower exposure and lucky. My "info" address from the website gets hit pretty hard, but my personal account only gets maybe 10 a day. I've had it since the fall of '04. Those few don't bother me as Thunderbird catches most of them and moves them to the junk folder. I've disabled all the filters on the server side too. Probably just jinxed myself.
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[Doc]

Also, if your web hosting company provides spam blocking and anti-virus utilities, make sure you take advantage of them. Most do these days. Some are automatic, some must be activated by the domain. Check your Control Panel.

Those viruses that weave through your address book are worm viruses. They're a bit more difficult to erradicate once contracted, but it can be done.

And, yes... worm viruses CAN affect Mac's!

[Deirdre]

[Bruce]

I guess I'm lucky. I have a Mac and I use Entourage (Microsoft Office's email program), and my ISP is Cox Cable. Cox catches about 30 spams a day, labels them as --SPAM-- in the subject line and I have a rule that dumps them all in one folder. My Entourage catches an average of 4 a day that get through Cox, and then I get one or two a day that slip through both of them. The only problem with the "catchers" is they catch a legitimate email (mostly newsletters or other group mailings) once a week or so, and so I have to go through all of the spams every few days to find them and notify the filter-er.

What scares me are the emails that come from MY email address. I know the actual source is some address in China or somewhere, but I wonder how many filters are blocking my outgoing emails because of this?

I have a friend in Bali, who uses an ISP in Singapore, and it won't take any email from a Cox domain name, so we keep trying ways around it. Not always successful.

B

[kgenus]

I moved my email server in-house and I no longer see the spam I get. The secret is to setup one free account on gmail, hotmail or yahoo and subscribe to everything you possibly can that will generate spam, then download all those messages and "train" your spam recognition software against that repository (I'm using Linux with Spamassassin and D-Spam). I've also created an account called SPAM and it's accessible via IMAP so on the off chance a piece of spam does make it, I can just drop it in that folder and the software trains on it within 59 min.

Don't rely on you ISP to do this for you, they won't.
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