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On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
On Sun, 23 Nov 2003 09:49:56 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote: There seems to be some interest here in dealing with usenet and email SPAMmers. For email, I block "incomings" that have the usual offending subject matters in their headers ('Inet user' is a good one to block at the moment), and I also block a number of ISPs, including all mail from: juno.com netmail.com puremail.com freemail.com bigfoot.com toursydney.com.au These ISPs got on my blocked list because of the frequency of SPAM coming from their direction. I also block individual emailer spammers, such as: If I get more than a half-dozen SPAMs from rocketmail.net, it, too, will go on the blocked ISP list. If you've got one of the newer cell phones that allow web browsing and usenet posting, you have to be sure to munge your email address, else your cell phone email account will be deluged with SPAM. I have one of those phones, but I don't use the internet features at all. But I've read a lot about users whose phone email accounts get more SPAM than their home/office email accounts. There's a move afoot to publish a directory of cell phone numbers. Hopefully, we'll be able to keep whatever cell phone numbers we want away from such a directory and from directory service. *This* aspect of technological wizardry is not an advance. If they ever publish a cell phone directory and charges continue to be accrued by the receiving party, I predict a return to the concept and use of debtor's prison. |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
It's also necessary to have good spam and virus filtering at
the ISP and 3rd party email account level. My Bigfoot account, after going through Bigfoot's filtering, goes through my local ISP filtering. The result is, although I post to usenet with a valid Email address, I receive less than 5 spams per day. I filter out all the Korean junk and the usual offensive headers and ISP sources. Small, local ISPs usually have better filtering than the big box accounts, who just may be *adding* spam to your account. If your ISP is forwarding alot of spam to you, you're not being served well.... My local ISP (Seanet) has up-to-the-minute virus filtering, and will forward all infected Emails with the virus or worm stripped, flagged and identified. MY .02 JR Harry Krause wrote: There seems to be some interest here in dealing with usenet and email SPAMmers. For email, I block "incomings" that have the usual offending subject matters in their headers ('Inet user' is a good one to block at the moment), and I also block a number of ISPs, including all mail from: juno.com netmail.com puremail.com freemail.com bigfoot.com toursydney.com.au These ISPs got on my blocked list because of the frequency of SPAM coming from their direction. I also block individual emailer spammers, such as: If I get more than a half-dozen SPAMs from rocketmail.net, it, too, will go on the blocked ISP list. If you've got one of the newer cell phones that allow web browsing and usenet posting, you have to be sure to munge your email address, else your cell phone email account will be deluged with SPAM. I have one of those phones, but I don't use the internet features at all. But I've read a lot about users whose phone email accounts get more SPAM than their home/office email accounts. There's a move afoot to publish a directory of cell phone numbers. Hopefully, we'll be able to keep whatever cell phone numbers we want away from such a directory and from directory service. *This* aspect of technological wizardry is not an advance. -- Email sent to is never read. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Harry Krause wrote: There seems to be some interest here in dealing with usenet and email SPAMmers. This from the guy who constantly spams this newsgroup with off topic crap? Oh, I forgot, you are the face on the hypocrite poster. -- Charlie ----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
I recieve way too much spam, more than 100 per day on avg. I have MS IE set
up with message rules to route some of the junk to a junk folder. When I block this stuff from being downloaded from my ISP server it eventually piles up and slows my mail account to a crawl. So my question, do the spam blocker programs make spam mail pile up on the server ? Ron White My boatbuilding website is: www.concentric.net/~knotreel |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Ron White wrote:
I recieve way too much spam, more than 100 per day on avg. I have MS IE set up with message rules to route some of the junk to a junk folder. When I block this stuff from being downloaded from my ISP server it eventually piles up and slows my mail account to a crawl. So my question, do the spam blocker programs make spam mail pile up on the server ? No. I use a program called Mailwasher (http://www.mailwasher.net)...it not only deletes spam from the mail server, but it also "bounces" it back to the sender as undeliverable. I now have it configured to do it autmatically...I never even see most of it. All spam blockers need input from you to know what is and isn't spam, btw...so it'll take a little time and effort on your part to get any of 'em working. And you'll never be able to cut it down to -0- without blocking all email from every other ISP...'cuz spammers use bogus (and sometimes real) MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink return addresses. But a good one will block all spam from web domains...and allow you to manually delete the rest without downloading it. Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
On 24 Nov 2003 14:38:51 GMT, "Ron White" wrote:
I recieve way too much spam, more than 100 per day on avg. I have MS IE set up with message rules to route some of the junk to a junk folder. When I block this stuff from being downloaded from my ISP server it eventually piles up and slows my mail account to a crawl. So my question, do the spam blocker programs make spam mail pile up on the server ? This is going to sound like a commercial for one program, but it really isn't! I'm just a satisfied user of an application from New Zealand, Mailwasher Pro. First, I have to observe that you are *lucky* to get only 100 spams a day! I regularly see 10 times that pass across my server. In my opinion, one of the single biggest problems with spam filters is the issue of "false positives." Many ISPs have their own spamfilters in place. I have problems with this approach because the user has no control over what gets blocked, and on what criteria. For example, there is a fine e-newsletter about the Sacramento Delta, "Delta Scuttlebutt." I forwarded a copy of the letter to my wife at work; it was blocked by her employer's ISP because it contained the word "butt!" I have long used spam filters on my email client (Eudora), but using that approach alone, I'd still have to download all the crap before filtering it. With Mailwasher, which I've been using for several months, I download only enough headers from the server to determine whether they are spam or legitimate. Then Mailwasher deletes them from the server. At present, I am using a combination of my own blacklist, two network blacklists (SpamCop and ORDB), a proprietary real-time blacklist, a whole arsenal of RegExp filters and a whitelist of legitimate senders. I have 100% confidence in several of my filter expressions, so I tell Mailwasher to delete those spams without any intervention from me. Those that remain take just a few seconds to skim over before deleting. There's no "perfect" spam filter, but for my purposes, Mailwasher comes pretty damn close. HTH, Joe Parsons |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Thanks, I'll visit that site. I really like the idea of bouncing it back and
possibly causing some annoyance for the spammer. -- Ron White My boatbuilding website is: www.concentric.net/~knotreel |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
I've used the freeware version of Mailwasher, which I got before the Pro
version was available, and for which I made a $20 "donation," for about a year. I've also been very pleased with it. It occasionally mistakes a legitimate email for spam--for instance, I've made *free* a wildcard, which caused it to bounce an email from a friend whose last name is Freeman)...but that was easily overcome by adding his email address to the "friends" list. I prob'ly have at least 200 wildcard expressions, domain names and subject line filters in place...and I just keep adding on as necessary. Since spammers continually change domain names and email addresses, I've also configured it to delete those that don't show up again within 90 days, which keeps the list down to a manageable size. However, it seems to me that if I can cut spam by 90% with a freeware program, ISPs have the technology to do it before it ever gets to our mail servers. And it shouldn't require any filtering...only bouncing everything to 10+ addresses from the same sender. Legitimate senders who want to send new baby announcements etc to half the world would still be able to do it by just limiting 'em to batches of 9 at a time. Prob'ly wouldn't be foolproof, but would get rid of 90% of spam...and have the added benefit of clogging up the spammers' servers with their own junk coming back to 'em. Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Don't bounce the email, very very rarely will the address be legitimate.
All you will be doing is contributing to the number of useless email being bounced around. "Ron White" wrote in message ... Thanks, I'll visit that site. I really like the idea of bouncing it back and possibly causing some annoyance for the spammer. -- Ron White My boatbuilding website is: www.concentric.net/~knotreel |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Jack Meholf wrote:
Don't bounce the email, very very rarely will the address be legitimate. All you will be doing is contributing to the number of useless email being bounced around. I dunno, Jack... All the spam from spammers' website domains is bounceable. I sometimes check to see if a domain exists and what it is...and it's inevitably a "direct marketer's" website. The only ones that aren't bounceable are from spoofed AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Yahoo etc. I don't try...I just instruct Mailwasher to delete 'em. Ironically, at least 90% of the spammers using spoofed email addresses seem to be using Yahoo addresses. I say ironically because my ISP (SBC, which is an alliance of most, if not all, of the Bells west of the MS river) allied with Yahoo about a year ago...my POP server address changed to sbc.yahoo.com, which means that all email goes through Yahoo servers. It may be unrealistic to expect Yahoo to be able to block incoming mail using spoofed AOL, MSN etc addresses...but one would THINK that Yahoo SHOULD have the technology to recognize and block incoming email from non-existant Yahoo accounts...especially if it's a zillion emails from the same sender. How tough can it be to install software that matches Yahoo return addresses against account lists? Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Peggy, it is very common for spammers to used forged email address of
legitimate users. When you bounce the email, you are inadvertently returning the mail to an innocent person. If enough people bounce the email you end up mail bombing the wrong person. Check out grc.spam for more info on the problems with bouncing email. Many people in this group like Mailwasher, but it universally agreed that bouncing email rarely if ever gets to the person who is actually sending out the spam. "Peggie Hall" wrote in message ... Jack Meholf wrote: Don't bounce the email, very very rarely will the address be legitimate. All you will be doing is contributing to the number of useless email being bounced around. I dunno, Jack... All the spam from spammers' website domains is bounceable. I sometimes check to see if a domain exists and what it is...and it's inevitably a "direct marketer's" website. The only ones that aren't bounceable are from spoofed AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Yahoo etc. I don't try...I just instruct Mailwasher to delete 'em. Ironically, at least 90% of the spammers using spoofed email addresses seem to be using Yahoo addresses. I say ironically because my ISP (SBC, which is an alliance of most, if not all, of the Bells west of the MS river) allied with Yahoo about a year ago...my POP server address changed to sbc.yahoo.com, which means that all email goes through Yahoo servers. It may be unrealistic to expect Yahoo to be able to block incoming mail using spoofed AOL, MSN etc addresses...but one would THINK that Yahoo SHOULD have the technology to recognize and block incoming email from non-existant Yahoo accounts...especially if it's a zillion emails from the same sender. How tough can it be to install software that matches Yahoo return addresses against account lists? Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
Jack Meholf wrote:
Peggy, it is very common for spammers to used forged email address of legitimate users. Jack, apparently you only read the first sentence of my post that you're responding to. I DON'T bounce email from senders using email addresses from AOL, MSN, earthlink etc because I know that 99% of 'em ARE spoofed. But when I see a header offering me Viagra without a prescription, and the sender's address is something like , I don't have any doubt that Mailwasher is bouncing it back to the sender, nor any qualms about instructing Mailwasher to blacklist that domain name, and bounce and delete all future emails from it. I also have no qualms whatever about blacklisting and bouncing all email from senders whose domain names include "bingo" "cash," "casino" "amazing" "bargain" "fantastic" "fabulous" "hotstuff" "extreme" "investment" "jackpot" "wealth" "discount" etc. When you bounce the email, you are inadvertently returning the mail to an innocent person. If enough people bounce the email you end up mail bombing the wrong person. I seriously doubt that any "innocent" person or legitimate business has a website with any of the above expressions in its domain name. Check out grc.spam for more info on the problems with bouncing email. Many people in this group like Mailwasher, but it universally agreed that bouncing email rarely if ever gets to the person who is actually sending out the spam. That only applies to spam from users spoofing legimite email addresses--using AOL, Yahoo, MSN etc...and as stated twice previously, I don't bounce those. I even get spam that has my own address as the return address...but I've never had any bounced back to me from anyone else who got any using my address, so apparently those spammers have software that automatically substitutes every recipient's return address for the real one. Peggie "Peggie Hall" wrote in message ... Jack Meholf wrote: Don't bounce the email, very very rarely will the address be legitimate. All you will be doing is contributing to the number of useless email being bounced around. I dunno, Jack... All the spam from spammers' website domains is bounceable. I sometimes check to see if a domain exists and what it is...and it's inevitably a "direct marketer's" website. The only ones that aren't bounceable are from spoofed AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Yahoo etc. I don't try...I just instruct Mailwasher to delete 'em. Ironically, at least 90% of the spammers using spoofed email addresses seem to be using Yahoo addresses. I say ironically because my ISP (SBC, which is an alliance of most, if not all, of the Bells west of the MS river) allied with Yahoo about a year ago...my POP server address changed to sbc.yahoo.com, which means that all email goes through Yahoo servers. It may be unrealistic to expect Yahoo to be able to block incoming mail using spoofed AOL, MSN etc addresses...but one would THINK that Yahoo SHOULD have the technology to recognize and block incoming email from non-existant Yahoo accounts...especially if it's a zillion emails from the same sender. How tough can it be to install software that matches Yahoo return addresses against account lists? Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html -- Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://shop.sailboatowners.com/detai...=400&group=327 http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 22:52:18 GMT, Peggie Hall wrote:
Jack Meholf wrote: Don't bounce the email, very very rarely will the address be legitimate. All you will be doing is contributing to the number of useless email being bounced around. I dunno, Jack... All the spam from spammers' website domains is bounceable. I sometimes check to see if a domain exists and what it is...and it's inevitably a "direct marketer's" website. The only ones that aren't bounceable are from spoofed AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Yahoo etc. I don't try...I just instruct Mailwasher to delete 'em. I bought Mailwasher Pro partly because of its ability to bounce spam, presumably back to the sender's server. It is a controversial subject. I was bouncing for about 60 days, but stopped; the amount of spam I was getting did not decrease a bit, so I figured I wasn't doing anyone a favor (especially myself) any favors by adding to the bandwidth congestion. It also slows down the program. That load may not be an issue for someone getting, say. 50 or 100 spams a day, but I get around a *thousand* a day. For me, it's an issue. I'm able to deal with almost all of it (with very few false positives) by using a combination of three live "blackhole" databases, 3,200 blacklist entries that expire after 15 days of non-use and a set of filters that I downloaded from the Wailwasher forum. Most of the filters delete spam immediately without any input from me. Some ISPs do provide filters for their users, but the fact is that those kinds of filters *will* catch legitimate e-mail. I'm just not willing to consider that as an option. But anyone who's looking for a spam solution would do well to give Mailwasher a good look! Joe Parsons Ironically, at least 90% of the spammers using spoofed email addresses seem to be using Yahoo addresses. I say ironically because my ISP (SBC, which is an alliance of most, if not all, of the Bells west of the MS river) allied with Yahoo about a year ago...my POP server address changed to sbc.yahoo.com, which means that all email goes through Yahoo servers. It may be unrealistic to expect Yahoo to be able to block incoming mail using spoofed AOL, MSN etc addresses...but one would THINK that Yahoo SHOULD have the technology to recognize and block incoming email from non-existant Yahoo accounts...especially if it's a zillion emails from the same sender. How tough can it be to install software that matches Yahoo return addresses against account lists? Peggie ---------- Peggie Hall Specializing in marine sanitation since 1987 Author "Get Rid of Boat Odors - A Guide To Marine Sanitation Systems and Other Sources of Aggravation and Odor" http://www.seaworthy.com/html/get_ri...oat_odors.html |
On Topic: Fighting SPAM, here and in email
....only bouncing
everything to 10+ addresses from the same sender. Legitimate senders who want to send new baby announcements etc to half the world would still be able to do it by just limiting 'em to batches of 9 at a time. Prob'ly wouldn't be foolproof, but would get rid of 90% of spam...and have the added benefit of clogging up the spammers' servers with their own junk coming back to 'em. Wouldn't the spammers just send in batches of 9? |
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