I always check my son’s e mail account from time to time, to see if there is any X rated stuff (he’s under age, and still gets titillating material sent to him), today, his account since just yesterday, had 369 e mails from a e-wallstreet address ‘Win Big Screen TV’.
Billy thought it funny, and so did I at first, but then when it became apparent, almost one a second had been sent, I just thought of the enormous waste of time, and energy it is, culling through, erasing them.
I then went in, and hit the reply button, griping about them sending such an excessive amount of e mail to someone so young. Hit, ‘send’, mailing about five of the notices back. I soon got a ‘Daemon’ “sorry, this is undeliverable.” notice.
Is this some kind of scam?? Anyone having the same kind of problem?
I get lots of spam, but not nearly to the extent you are talking about. The easiest way to deal with the problem is use an email program that filters incoming mail. With Hotmail for example, it does a fairly good job of putting junk mail in the ‘bulk mail’ folder using its’ inbox protector feature. I check ‘bulk mail’ once a week or so in case a long lost friend is trying to reach me, or some info. that I really did want got thrown there by mistake.
You should never reply to junk mail; at best you will get the error you did – at worst, they now know that this address is working, and will send you more.
Another solution is to have two email addresses; one for “friends-only” and one for “public use.”
Hope that tides you over until someone smarter than I can give a more technical answer.
I assume you are on AOL? Just delete them and forward a few to TOSSPAM.
First rule of spam…do not reply. Once they get the idea you will respond and are actually reading them, they will continue to send you more crap. Second, since you are the parent, go into keyword Mail Controls and set up your kids account to accept only email from addresses you allow. This will eliminate spam and will ensure that porn doesn’t get through.
Quite often a spammer will use a non-existant email address “spoofing” you and places like AOL and Earthlink. It gets sent through a completely different IP address. It’s done all the time.
I can set up my Outlook with any email address I want. It can look like the real thing but using my ISP’s POP3 server I can send it out with the wrong address.
It is a common practice among spammers to send out messages with invalid return paths. The fact that your son got 369 in one day is a bit odd, though.
This is why you should
Never, ever reply to Spam. Sometimes the return addresses work, for the express purpose of determining whether there is a human at your email address, to hone their lists.
Never ever buy anything from a Spammer. Most of them are not trustworthy, and the ones who are are evil bastards who deserve to die.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by techchick68 *
**Anti Pro,
I assume you are on AOL? Just delete them and forward a few to TOSSPAM.
**
No, techie, this is NetAddress, our ISP, is AT&T. NetAddress is the same place that I complained to two years ago, about the X rated stuff they were allowing through to a 13 year old. AOL sounds like they at least are aware kids have e mail accounts, and should have some kind of boundaries to them. I wish NetAddress did.
All three of you have told me not to reply to Spam, and this is the first time I have ever done it, soooo, not only have I had * that * lesson reiterated, but it was fruitless too!
**
Now see, I don’t get this! I thought spam was like junk mail, it still is advertising, wanting you to buy something. But, how can you do that, even if you’re deluded enough to want to do it, if it just comes bouncing back to you? It doesn’t seem to make much sense.
I’m waiting for the computer genius’s to make an e mail cattle prod, so that we can ‘care enough to send only the very best’ kind of shocks to these pond dwellers!
You think that’s bad? I once got 429 identical messages in one day… In Spanish. No, this was not on AOL, either, it was a school account. One has to wonder just how stupid these spammers are… Even were I the type to buy something because of an e-mail message, would I be any more likely to buy given 429 copies?
Basically they do this because of federal regulations that are impossible to police. They can get away with it just like I described only in mass mailings. Since they send it out to a zillion email addresses that may or may not exist, they don’t get a lot of return mail and they are better able to “hide” themselves from AOL, Earthlink and the bigger guys.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense. As a web designer and owner of several domains, I would never consider using a spamming program to get one or two replies.
I hear it works well with the porn sites though.
You might consider changing your kid’s email address to something that’s odd, something that would take a million years for a spammer to figure out…that might help a little. Say, your last name backwards with his first initial…that might throw them off the track.
Try spamcop.net.They can help close down these spam sites.I just forward all my spam mail at spamcop@spamcop.net.Or you can set up an anti spam filter with them.
If you want to know who sent it you have to give us the top of the message. Its a header. You often have to let your email program know that you want to see it. Its usually many lines long.
Two explanations come immediately to my mind. First, the mailbox might have full (from people complaining about receiving a gazillion copies of spam in THEIR boxes) and second, the spammer’s account might have already been closed, because of complaints to the spammer’s ISP.
Bear in mind also that a lot of the time spammers are not selling actual genuine products or services at all. They are simply trying to get angry replies from which they can build a list of valid addresses to sell on to other spammers.
** MC, ** I guess the company * could’ve * closed by the time I sent the e mails back, though it was just the next day. I think it’s more likely that ** Lynn, ** is right, either the box was stuffed with other complaints, or [I HOPE I HOPE] the whole thing was shut down by their ISP because of the complaints from other unhappy recipients.
Thanks for the possible ‘why’ to this, ** MattK, ** I was naive enough, not to think of this just being about selling addresses. Though, as ** techie ** mentioned, this is just like junk mail, and I know THEY sell home addresses. But, I still assumed it was to get your business, not JUST the address.
I can only be glad that Billy didn’t get ** Chronos’ ** Spanish spammer, English ones are bad enough!
** David, ** I’m writing down the spamcop address in my own e mail address book, hopefully this doesn’t happen again. Thanks for that information.
** Techie, ** while I hate having to change Billy’s e mail address, that too, might be the best alternative, especially, since we were new to the internet at the time, since it’s simply his name. Doesn’t THAT just figure not to be such a wise idea?!
Anti Pro, this statement of yours scares me a bit. The internet is intended to be much more liberal and less regulated than other things in life. Your ISP is not responsible in regulating your child’s access to the internet, they’re just a conduit. If they try to restrict 13 year-olds from access to X-rated stuff, they’ll get 10 times more complaints from people who’ll find that restriction objectionable. Keep in mind: just because you don’t want your child to access X-rated stuff, it doesn’t mean that other parents agree with you.
As far as spam, like everyone said just ignore the stuff, but here’s some hints for avoiding it altogether:
Spammers usually get your email address in one of three ways: when you post an article to a usenet newsgroup, when you publish your email address in an online message board, when you enter your email address in a registration form on a web-site.
So, pick a free-email provider (hotmail if you must, I use operamail.com and apexmail.com - they have filters and very few wizbangs to slow down access to your email) and create a couple of email addresses with them. If you post to usenet newsgroups, use one of these email addresses just for that. As soon as you start getting lots of spam, drop that email address and start using a fresh one. If you post to message boards, use different email addresses there as well. In both cases, if real individuals contact you through these email addresses, you can always continue the conversations through your real account, they’ll fully understand.
As for web-site registration, many of them ask for your email just to send you spam. Always try to register with a fake email address first: abc@xyz.com, na@na.com, etc. If that doesn’t work (e.g. they send a confirmation email that has to be replied to), use a fresh free email address, do whatever confirmation is necessary, then just drop that address.
Advanced setting: many free-email providers let you “forward” your email, so you can create and usee tons of email addresses and forward them all to your primary account. This way you check just one mailbox (you’ll see where each message was forwarded from), and when any of the forwarded mailboxes start getting spam, you can drop that email address by just disabling the “forwarding” on it.
** passerby, ** I wasn’t complaining to our ISP, I was complaining to the e mail provider, NetAddress. It was on record, at the time, that Billy was only 13 years old, and I was objecting to e mail sent from a service, that Billy had to be EIGHTEEN to even log on to. I didn’t hold NetZero responsible.
I do agree that the internet is more liberal, and I accept that. BUT, I still don’t think it ought to be legal, OR acceptable, that ads are sent via e mail to an underage child, who would be breaking the law to visit the site.
I’m sorry if my statement ‘scares you,’ I was actually only referring back to an earlier posting with another problem, several years ago.
You think that is bad? Last Thursday I had 1875 identical messages from some spammer at angelfire.net. I forwarded a copy of the letter to abuse@angelfire.net saying that I did not appreciate having that many letters spammed to me. I never heard back, and it probably didn’t do any good, but it may have. Fortunately it was to a hotmail address and they all got caught in the bulk mail folder.
