I know there have been plenty of threads about spam lately, but my spammers have hit an all time low. It must be retaliation for using spamcop. Today three of my spam were actually quite vile and borderline threatening. Actually, they were quite threatening, but how can I take them seriously?
Spam 1: Subject line: Hey bitch I got a message for you.
Body: Visit [this website] or I’ll kill your fucking family.
Spam 2: Subject line: You want to fight bitch?
Body: Come to my house and I’ll fight you niggaz.
Spam 3: Subject line: I’ll fight you niggaz.
Body: Come to my house and I’ll fight you niggaz.
Yeah. I’ll come to your house. Mm-hmm. What was your address again? Let me make a phone call first…
How can I take an anonymous e-mail seriously? Especially since it was addressed to half a dozen people. I forwarded it to TOSspam and TOSemail, as well as spamcop, but what can they do? They’ve been extremely ineffectual in stopping the spammer(s) so far.
Do I really have to shut down this e-mail address? I’m so tempted, but I’d just hate to have to do it. I’ve been working on genealogy for so long and given this addy to so many strangers and left it on so many message boards–which I’m sure is 9/10ths of the problem–and I still get responses–positive ones, even!–from people I don’t know who just found my address in one forum or another. I don’t want those e-mail to start bouncing! But I can’t even remember every place I’ve been!
Why should I have to go to extra trouble because of those scum bags?!? It’s just so fucking unfair. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them! They’re worse than telemarketers! Worse, I say! At least I don’t get 100 phone calls from telemarketers every day!
What makes spammers madder than anything isn’t getting kicked off-you can get virtually unlimited email addys now.
What hurts them is the thought of having to give you money.
Go to Junkbusters and sign up for the GPL Spam offer. Just like the settlement that made it illegal for telemarketers to continue calling after someone’s requested to take them off the list-there’s precedent for unsolicited emails as well.
Get the GPL, save a copy as text, then reply to the spam with it. I started doing this three weeks ago, and in the first week alone my spam dropped to a tenth of what it was. I have ten email addresses, and thanks to the GPL, I now get, at most, TWO pieces of truly unsolicited email a week.
I’ve learned to recognise the crappy subject lines, and I just do a little tidy-up before I open my real mail.
It’s the price we pay for living through the Tin Lizzy, Model-T Ford era of computing.
One day you’ll be telling the young 'uns “And we used to get this unsolicited mail - I forget what we called it - Corned Beef, I think. And it used to clutter up our email Inboxes…” etc
Most ISPs have an abuse department you can forward these emails to, and they will do their best to block that sender. It’s not always effective, but when it works I imagine it really pisses a spammer off when hundreds of their emails to users of a certain ISP start getting returned.
A large number of spammers aren’t actually selling anything at all, only trying to incite you to reply in a fit of pique. My guess is that they open a random webmail account, send out mass emails based on a list they purchased and wait for replies. Those mails that get bounced are easy enough to delete, those that get genuine replies are collated on a list and sold on.
For these operators it’s the valid email addresses that they’re looking for, not sales. If their account gets closed down…they just move on to a new one.
The terms of the GPL allow you to collect a cash fee from those sending you unsolicited email. If you’re interested, email me and I’ll send you the text of it (it’s pretty long and I don’t want to put it here).
As to the second, let me put my Geek Patrol uniform on. If you can figure out where it’s coming from-i.e., which ISP the service is from, then you can contact the abuse coordinator and get the accounts revoked. Obviously, this only works on each service or ISP, but you can also track the STMP mailer and configure security programs to refuse a connection from that host.
I gave up on that, too. Every time I forwarded a SPAM to abuse@yahoo.com or abuse@msn.com, I would get back at least 2 e-mails from the abuse department, usually telling me that the mail did not originate at their location and how to read headers. Who has time for that?
I finally changed web based e-mail accounts, as Yahoo was just overrun with junk. My new account (at mail.com) has been set up for over a year (I’d forgotten I opened it!) and I have yet to receive a single unsolicited e-mail.
Zette
**Note: Mail.com just did a major upgrade and service is sporadic right now. I just wanted to note that before anyone rushed out to sign up there.
I already send all my spam to Spamcop.net and let them sort out the headers and the ISPs, but the spammers just move on to other ISPs. And I honestly think some of these ISPs don’t care. I think they’re there for spammers.
I was just so angry that the spam had stopped being merely offensive and had become threatening. “I’ll kill your fucking family” or “I’ll fucking kill you and your family,” whatever it said, that’s supposed to make me want to visit your stupid web site??
I forwarded these offending messages to TOSemail1, TOSspam, Spamcop, and SpamRecycle, with a note that this had crossed the line from spam to harassment, but I haven’t heard back. If I don’t know the spammers’ real addy, how else am I supposed to fight them?
And AOL’s filter is useless. It only holds 100 addy’s and/or domains, and I still get e-mail from those that I entered, so what’s it doing? I wrote to AOL about their POP3 host name so I can use Spamcop’s filter, but of course they don’t have one. They did tell me what keyword to use to find compatible filters, though, so I’ll have to play with that tonight. I hope to hell it works better than their own filter.
Oh, and about just deleting the spam: I used to do that. But if I didn’t check me e-mail for a day or two, I’d come back to find 200 spam swamping my in-box and making it that much harder and more time-consuming to scroll through and pick out the legitimate e-mail. So I decided to fight back. Evidently that just makes the spammers mad.
[kicking the dirt]
I never get any SPAM!*
[/kicking the dirt]
What am I doing right? I don’t believe I’ve activated my +3Cloak of Anti-SPAM, but I have a work address and an AOL account and I seriously NEVER get one piece of crap mail. I suspect my employer is filtering some of the junk because we used to get about one porn SPAM/day, but that stopped about 2 years ago. As for AOL, same deal - nothing. I use the AOL account for ordering stuff (Harry and David, Amazon etc), but I guess they actually don’t sell their lists. What a concept?!
Anyway, fucking SPAM fuckers! As for Junkbusters - that’s just gibber-jabber! I say we drown them SPAM sons-a-bitches in a vat of that SPAM jelly that always forms at the top of the can! Would serve 'em right!
No I am not seriously complaining about not getting SPAM.
A proactive way for webmasters to combat spam is to post use random email generating scripts to give the spiders a whole shitload of invalid addresses. The more people who use them, the better they work.
Simply stick a link at the bottom of each of your pages to a site like this:
First, if you do decide to complain to the abuse dept of an ISP, make sure you have the correct domain. Return addys are usually faked. You need to the headers for the correct IP address.
See http://www.tmisnet.com/~strads/spamhunt/index.html
for general tips.
Second, the best idea is to shield your real email address as much as possible. Use a hotmail/yahoo mail account for “public” access (for online ordering etc…) …and pretty much count on that being spammed. Only give out your real email address to verified humans that you trust.
If you wish to post your email addy on a web site, consider cloaking it. One common way I use is to convert it to hexidecimal, which web browsers will correctly translate for mailing purpose. Email address gathering spiders, however, will choke on a hexidecimal addy.
I deleted out addresses or portions of addresses so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to promote these products myself.
OK, this e-mail was not sent to me personally, it was sent to “gr8hondasiride@aol.com,” whoever or whatever that is. And I honestly don’t remember opting in to any such list. Plus, I’ve already received 3 pieces of mail from this guy. Most of my opt-in mail dealies aren’t that persistent. It smells like spam to me, and if it is I want very much to bust him, not just filter him.
But if I report him to Spamcop and he’s not spam, I’ll be the one that gets in trouble. And I don’t want to reply to the remove address because I can’t trust him to give my address to everyone else and their dog.
Furthermore, in a subsequent e-mail, the spammer included this disclaimer:
I followed the link and it gives tips on how to spam people legally (though it has a disclaimer of its own stating that they don’t recommend people actually follow any of their advice and that you should get a lawyer before doing anything). So… if it’s legal, I can’t go to Spamcop?
Actually, this might just be a good test case for that Junkbusters’ manifesto. Here goes nothing.
