Could someone explain to me (w/o getting overly technical) how to view this “header information” people talk about reagrding spoofed e-mail addys?
Related question: I must get 10 porn spams a day, at work and at home. ALL of these types of spam do not seem to contain text messages, but instead, webpages, embedded in the e-mail message. How is this done? If I could understand that, I would think I could tell my Rules Wizard to look for emails that contain embedded webpages and delete them. Is this doable?
It depends on what e-mail client you’re using. Eudora has a button (labelled “Blah, Blah, Blah”) to show the headers. Most online e-mail (Yahoo, Hotmail), you set it in the preferences.
Since you mentioned “Rules Wizard,” it looks like you have Outlook (if it’s Outlook Express, disregard this). To show the headers there, open the message, click on “view” and “options.” You’ll see the headers at the bottom of the window.
Don’t get all ready to strike out at the spammers based on the header you will see, it is very often spoofed (faked) and of no real value. If you REALLY want to persue it read up first, contact the senders ISP if you can verify the header is genuine, and thats about all you can do without making it a life quest.
Thanks for the info so far guys. The link to How Email Headers Work was very interesting. I might be able to use it, minimally, to my advantage.
I realize email headers are of limited value, since a lot of the info there can be faked. But at the very least, email headers seem to be capable of identifying the IP addr of the spammer. Feh, it was a longshot.
But how 'bout my other question? I appologize for my ignorance, but what is the “mechanizm” used for “embedding” those full color “web-page” -looking come-ons (pardon the pun) commonly used by porn spam??
Is there something in the body of the email message that, when opened, automatically turns that email message window into “browser window”? What I’m trying to get at here is, what, if anything, can I tell Outlook to look for, to identify if any given email contains such an ad? For example: “If BODY contains .html, DELETE IT" where ".html” would be the actual message body - a link to a webpage billboard or something?
The “webpages” are graphical images with HTML links to internet sites. In part this is done to avoid filters that scan for common spam words (say, “Vice President Of Nigerian Petroleum Company” or “teens”). Some anti-spam programs/filters can be set to bounce e-mails that contain only images/HTML, but it’s tricky – lots of legitimate e-mail is graphics/HTML based (e.g., your airline weekly websaver notice, or the 10% off Gap coupon).
Check out www.spamcop.com for some methods to trace spam back to its origin using the header info. FWIW, these methods are of limited utility as you’ll usually find the originating server was in China or Brazil and your complaints to abuse@chinaporn.cn will fall on deaf ears.
I don’t know. I know the spammers are relaying their spam off of open servers. But one can even use THAT information to help filter spam.
How much legitimate email do you get from China, Brazil et al?
If you’re like me…the answer is zilch. Ergo, you can set up filter rules on the headers according to the IP addys from China and other areas prone to relay bouncing. I’ve actually done this with my work computer that runs Outlook Express. It took me awhile to collect and enter the IP addys into my rules, but my spam has beem filtered so that very little enters my in box, with no false negatives from that kind of filtering.
See more about this strategy here
FWIW, at home I use Mac OSX, so I use the included Mail app which has autmatic Bayesian filtering.