Preserved Topic: how to get rid of spam?

since a half year or so my emailadresses get some heavy spam attacks. its about 5 mails daily on every of my adresses (i have four). they all get the same mail in about the same time. and it all started at the same day. and i have absolutely no idea how i got into this.

i always use the unsubscribe link or the reply with subject remove option at the bottom of the mail. no success.

the type of mail are always the same. some examples:
Make backups of your personal DVDs now.
<><> YOU WILL NEVER FORGET THIS <><>
AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub
BUYING TRADERS INFORMATION


any ideas, on how to get rid of these? and i dont mean any spam-filtering tools. i really wanna get unsubscribed!

GRUMBLE: I suspect that if they cam from some countries you can sign up to a direct mail register as you can in the UK but that wouldn't stop spam coming from outside of the country. I'm not too sure about this.

quote:

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i always use the unsubscribe link or the reply with subject remove option at the bottom of the mail. no success.

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Thats probably the worst thing you could do. Above board companies will take you off their lists if you become signed up to their newsletter by accident but they also tend not to spam you with email - by replying and going to the unsubscribe page you are only confirming your email address and therefore making it more likely that it will be sold on eventually increasing your spam (catch 22?).

I'm not sure there is an easy answer yet although the direct mailing laws could help.

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

hm.
see if you can find from what Ip they came from.
then find out what company that belongs to.
then complain to abuse@company.com, preferably
polite and including the spam mail.
(hey, isn't there a law in austria that makes spam really expensive if you're caught at doing it?)

so long,

Tyberius Prime

i havent heard of that law yet. might be interesting.
but most of the mails are coming from the states anyways...

ok, emps, so i dont unsubscribe anymore.

thanks so far.

Yup, never click that link. =)

To be honest, the email addresses are screwed. Spammers create single email addresses just for the purpose of sending out one email to everyone on a list, then they never use the email again. So you can't trace them, and blocking them doesn't help. Once you're on one spam list, it's only a matter of time before you'll be on every list. The day you get a single peice of spam, you know that within a few years the email will be useless. You won't be able to sort out the real email anymore. There's really no way to stop this. At what used to be my first email, I now get literally fifty to a hundred spam emails per day. I've abandoned it.

So, your best (read "only") bet is to make a new email and let people know you're switching. Then you have to be very careful. There are a number of things you can do that would get you on another spam list. Here are things to avoid:

1. Never, ever, ever, ever type your email in a text box on the internet and click a "submit" button. That's suicide. I don't care how reputable the company is, don't do it. If you need to do something like that, create a new temporary email or use one of your old spam-overridden ones. Also make sure that you don't give your email address to someone who might type it in themselves; for instance, to send you an online greeting card or something. Unfortunately, that's difficult to prevent, but do your best.

2. If you want to put your email on your web site for others to email you from, read http://www.alistapart.com/stories/spam/ .

3. Avoid putting your email in forums or newsgroups because you won't be able to protect it as in #2. If you want to do this, try putting the word "nospam" or something similar randomly in it so that it's not a valid email. People will have to remove this manually.

Anyway, start making the switch now, because there's really no way to save the emails being spammed.

I second all Slime has said.
But, the most important is: do not reply, do not unsubscribe, just delete them.

I have an idea and I think sooner or later I'll have to implement it.
I'll have an email address like this: fake@mydomain.com that I would use everywhere.

Then, everyone that send me a message using this email would receive an automatic reply saying that "Please, you must resend you message to the email realmail@mydomain.com so I can actually read it. If you do not resend it, your message won't be read by me. Also, please, keep in mind that this real email address can change at any time so if you ever want to contact me again, use the address fake@mydomain.com to know my current real email address. Thanks for understanding my no-spam email policy". Something like that (I thought about adding something like: "if you are a spammer, please, fuck you!".

Then, after some time, my email realmail@mydomain.com would start receiving spam. Then, all I'd have to do is to change my email realmail@mydomain.com to another one, like anotherrealmail@mydomain.com, and update the automatic reply.

Yes, it's a terrible and stupid solution, but it's the only one I can think of. With the globalized nature of Internet, there is no way to avoid spam in the near or not so near future. You can solve the problem in 200 countries (although I doubt it) but still you'll have some other countries that'll allow spam for a bunch of dollars.

Yup, mine's a lot like Slime's. I used to give Spamcop and UXN Spam Combat a work out with some frequency. Now I just filter everything that's not in my address book and scroll through the deleted items folder a couple times a week to see if I missed anything.

Good luck.

edit: missed the space bar



[This message has been edited by cyoung (edited 08-02-2002).]

Yeah I have a secondary domain that forwards to my regular email account the cool thing about it is that I have it configured right now to send **anything**@mydomain.com to my regular email addy.

So when I do have to use a form field on a webpage I use something like

amazonsignup@mydomain.com So that I can know where the spammers got my name and can block that addy at with my mail client.

May be a little overkill but it's actually working nicely.

Also you may want to be careful even putting your address in site's like this with member lists that display your info. the bastards are writing scripts to rip those email addresses from memberlists so many IT pro's I know are now always using some sort of "myname at bmydomain dot com" format to confuse any spiders/parsers that will retrieve this info but still allow someone to contact them if necessary.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

The best thing you could do is changing email adress often,
but then you have to tell the people who need to know also often that it changed. (big drawback ;( )

If you need to fill in your addy in online forms (for registration or so) you could use spamhole for temporary adresses.

Also a good email program with good filter posibilities could help a lot.

Do Not keep email adresses online. Your webmail adressbook, don't use it. (hotmail has one)

Do Not use yahoo-mail hotmail or the like, for important things.

Vote on politicians who want good anti-spam laws....

Use strange characters in your name email name, i had a space in mine and i took over a year before i got spam on it.... pretty good if you are on hotmail.

Powered by Curiousity
~First Member From the RAT-DEFENSE team~

Oh, yeah, that's important too: avoid hotmail =)

~bookmarks spamhole~

Thanks for the link Rinswind, that's a keeper.

I register very early in a now very known free webmail service, here in Brazil, so I got an email address with just two letters: av@ig.com.br

Due to this easy email, I receive many message, sent to aa, ab, ac, ad, ae, .... av, aw, ax, etc @ig.com.br, and obviously that these messages are generated by the spammers to test for valid emails.

So, having an easy to remember email address is not a good idea.

I remember I had an email addy once that never got a single piece of spam...

whathehellyouthinkyouaredoingsendingmespam@email.com

that wasbackbefore they changed their rules so that you had to have short addresses.

dammit!

OMG, want an amazing addy Skaarjj! Hah!... Too bad they changed the rules

Yah, I've had a hotmail account for about 3 months now. I only got it to use MSN Messanger as one of my old friends in Turkey didn't know much about computer and only used MSN Messanger to talk to people. 3 Months on and I never used that addy, never typed it, never given it to anyone and it recieves around 10+ spam a day!

Although, I strongly agree with the "Don't reply, Don't try and un-subscribe" theory. If everyone would ingore these emails completly then eventually the people paying for the spam addresses would go broke and there would be less spam. After all, would it get this bad if it never worked? Someone has to be responding to at least some of it for the problem to be this bad doesn't it?

I think the best option is to ingore it completly and educate everyone else to do the same.

Although I have had success with one spammer who sent me several emails form the same addy. Which was from the ISP I was using at the time, whom I also had a friend working at. Turns ot he was spamming 2000+ emails a day but we couldn't hold a candle to it in court so we didn't even try. Although he did get banned from the ISP and his details were forwarded to the other top ISP's in the state, not that it would help much though.... However I was supprised that the ISP itself didn't have any kind of internal checks for things like this happening. 2000+ emails a day for 2 months and they didn't notice!

"If everyone would ingore these emails completly then eventually the people paying for the spam addresses would go broke and there would be less spam."


Well, sending spam doesn't cost anything... and I don't expect the porn industry to fall to pieces any time soon =)

"You have received this advertisement because you have opted in to receive free internet offers and specials through our affiliated websites. If you do not wish to receive further emails or have received the email in error you may opt-out of our database... Click Here. Please allow 24 to 72 hours for removal"

This is comic... Why 24 to 72 hours to be removed? I have already seen some people asking for 5 days before your address is removed from the database. This is really tragicomic.

My email is second in the list of must 'spammed' email address in the world (first, I've heard, it's Doc's email) what I do is just delete them! you become an expert on the 'read the title and know if its spam' arts!!!!


*Runs naked to 'SPAM' kids around the fence*

what kind of list?

Lists of emails that spammers send their spam to.

I have been using the same e-mail adress now for a couple of years and I only recieve a couple of spams per week. Not sure how I managed to avoid the spamming lists, but someone has to be the lucky one

To contribute something usefull to this thread as well; I think there is a plug-in to Mozilla (probably Netscape as well) that sorts all of the incoming mail and the gives it a "spam ranking" after a couple of given criterias. It was mentioned it a linux magazine a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not sure which one and I'm not at home right now so I can't check yet...



_________________________
Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
- copied from the wall of cell 408 -

Just found this address and I think it's interesting specially because I agree that the only best thing to do it "just hit delete".
http://www.theistudio.com/spam.htm

I've found several things effective in fighting spam:

1. Never put your real email addy on a web page
2. Use alias' that point to your real email addy (preferably a POP3 email account)
3. Use Outlook - it can be set up to delete automatically emails containing certain words that are contained in most spam emails.
4. Never reply to spam as it informs the spammer that your email addy is valid.
5. If you don't want to pay to use a POP3 mail provider then I suggest using Yahoo mail as they've done really good work on deciphering what is spam and what isn't and they send the spam to a bulk mail folder which can be easily emptied without having to view them.
6. If you must use your real email addy on a web page do this: yourname@my'NO SPAM'hosting.com (inform viewers to remove the 'NO SPAM' prior to emailing) this method prevents bots from plucking your email addy.
7. The best method to unsubscribing from these spam lists is ignore the spam and change your email alias often and follow the steps above.

Hope these tips help man!




[This message has been edited by Boudga (edited 08-18-2002).]

As I own the domain icklepix.com whenever I sign up for anything at a site , I use thesitesname@icklepix.com as my address, so If I get spam I know where it came from. Also , if Im getting lots of spam I can simply block emails from that alias, its quite handy.

It seems like my routine is to come home from work, delete all the spam and check for any responses to any asylum posts I've made. I'm thinking about creating a address specifically for forms and registrations like "spam@domain.com" and just checking it now and than and keeping a private address for friends and business. But so far, as burdensome as it has been, the "just delete" method seems to be the only hope.

Started FAQ on this:
http://faq.ozoneasylum.com/731/

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Just read about this:
http://cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/

Cloudmark's spamnet is a kind of community effort in identifying and blocking spam. If you spot any spam you block it and it gets blocked for everyone else too.

Sounds very interesting and its free

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

*Hhhmmm I should get of my arse and start posting stuff, cus I hear about things and just don?t post about it, oh call me lazy *

Yep Emp I heard about that a few weeks to form znet and some more little info here & here. . It's looks good but it's only for outlook (I use outlook express so I don't know what's it is like), till they make it for more apps.

Anyway here is a little list of plug-in's and software to help cut it down a little.

but your only going to get spam if you sign up to things and don't read small print...ermm... text .

Might help you or not I don't know, but there is laws, software (you comp and server), filters, etc to help so use them if you can't press that nice delete button.

~ I wonder sometimes that all these little annoying freebies are caused by the creator?s that make protecting software or apps to stop it. Just look at the anti-virus without virus why would you pay for the software to stop virus, would they make viruses so sell their products? ?hhmmm? ~


[This message has been edited by Darkshadow (edited 08-22-2002).]