The amount of junk email I am receiving has increased considerably over recent weeks.

I have just upgraded to the Norton Internet Security system with the anti spammer which deals with the junk mail.

However, the virus infected emails are still a major problem as the virus protection intercepts each one which then blocks all further incoming mail until it has been deleted.

When I opened my email today, there were 27 emails of which 25 were junk and 20 of those were virus infected.

In total it took 18 mins to accept 27 email!

Suggestions please, please keep it simple as I am a novice at this.

Thank you.

Pat@hookedoncyprus.com

J&P
Quick question, does the server your site is on offer spam guard? If so I found this a great tool for intecepting spam so I don't have to waste time with it. Also never click on the "please remove me" Link Quite often it is a way for them to find out if that address can recieve spam.

BTW I was in Cyprus on a peace keeping tour, and I want to return someday.

Greyhawk

I will check out with my server.

Glad you liked Cyprus, one of our favourite places.

Served 2 years in Canada at B.A.T.U.S Suffield Medicine Hat. Great country.

Thanks again

Was just about to reply to your email, so may as well answer you here.

Have you joined any mailing lists? Mailing lists are a horror for recieving viruses off.

My best advice...is set up an alias email account, and whenever you register for something use that email addy. Hotmail is usally the best one. Saves your normal email account getting flooded with junk.

It doesnt matter what you join or register for, you will get junk mail. So it's best to isolate it. Also, if by chance you miss out on one of the DAT updates, you are leaving yourself pretty susceptible to attack. One week about a month ago the anti virus co's had to issue several updates in one week, the viruses going around were that bad.

Might be an idea to get a firewall too. Zonealarm is a good one.


Good luck !

Cindy

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Will keep in mind about the mailing lists.

Any thoughts on how I might reduce the high volume of Junk I am receiving?

Take care.

Pat

Checking that your server has spam guard good start. Otherwise...go to bottom of each email & ya should find an unsubsubscribe link (if ya lucky).

Or...if you are using Outlook Express, every time you get one...go to TOOLS, then go to MESSAGE RULES, then go to MAIL... go to the MAIL RULES tab & click on NEW...then go to SECTION 1 & select one of the fields, then go to SECTION 2 & check a field depending on what you want to do with it. Go to SECTION 3 and click on the blue link & type in relevent info there then click on ADD. Then click on the blue link under it..and do the same (decide what you want to do with it), then Click on OK. Then click on OK in next window. You can also decide to block them if you wish.

But...while this can be a deterent for some, you will find that most have rotating email addresses, so you will never be able to get rid of them properly...but you can slow them down a lot if you (a)unsubscribe (b)block (c) use your message rules.


Cindy

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Thanks for getting back to me Cindy. Will incorporate what you say, anything to reduce the volume.

Again, thanks.

Pat

Use Eudora (www.eudora.com) as your email program.

Use Spamnix (www.spamnix.com) as an Eudora plug-in.

Both work great and you don't have to worry about attacks aimed at Outlook.

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Unsubscribing from the email will confirm that your email address exists to certain companies who will then bombard you even more.
Once you start recieving spam that account is history im afraid, will always be unclean.

Best advice as elluded to above is never put your proper email address about anywhere, forms, lists, registrations, friends joke email lists, your website. All of these are sources of spam. When I was new to the net I joined a mailing list, about 94 it was, now I get 500 junk per useful email ratio. That account is never used.

The Outlook exclusion list is just plain awful im afraid, you will be forever updating it. I have tried that method but the spammers are always changing the methods, e.g H E L L O Hello H3llo its endless and now putting random chars in background colour in the spaces e.g HelloXhowXareX the X will be white:/

If email is for private use might want to use a positive filter technique, in that the subject must contain the words Blueberry Pie or else be deleted.

Here's what I do. I got this idea from my employer.

I have all of my website mail filtered to a web-based email account. It's a paid account so I have more storage space. I can pick and choose which ones I want to open or forward to an email account that is pulled in by my POP3 email software to my computer that no one else knows about. That way viruses are not clogging up my ISP connection or stopping legit mail from coming through. I can also quickly delete mail I don't want. This web-based email service also has filtering and catches most of the known spam.

For spam it doesn't catch, I have the service filters setup to file each email address into a specific folder when it arrives, ie. "youwho@" would go directly into a youwho folder. This way I know which email addresses are most abused. If it becomes too much of a problem, I setup my website to auto bounce any mail that might arrive with "youwho@".

Hope that helps! It works great and you are not slowing down the arrival of legit mail and taking a chance of a virus coming into your computer.

I've been using 2 different programs over the last several years: Mailwasherhttp://entier.ecosm.com/link/?wybyw and Popcornhttp://www.ultrafunk.com/products/popcorn/ to preprocess my email before I download it to my computer. These programs allow you to read the email headers on the server and delete them (or even reply to them) without them downloading. Mailwasher has some advanced filtering systems (blacklists, friends lists, etc) and allows me to quickly scan hundreds of emails and delete them in mass. This keeps me from having an anti-spam filtering program inadvertently deleting or misfiling any important emails.

Popcorn has been very useful in diagnosing email problems. One of my clients recently had their anti-virus program completely lock up their computer because it refused to download the infected file. I used Popcorn to access the server directly, found the offending message, deleted it and they were back in business in minutes.

This whole preprocessing technique takes me less than 5 minutes a day to scan hundreds of emails. In my opinion, it more effective than any filtering/anti-spam software.

I use netscape 7.1 and it has a message filter set up rule that says that if the sender has a card in your address book any emails from that sender get deleted.

Since virus has just about ruined the usefulness of the address book I just put a card in for every one of the spam emails I get and then I don't hear from them anymore. They go into the trash. I use Norton and so I get a popup each time a virus infected email comes in so I add a new card for that address too.

Then if I ever do get a virus guess who gets hit back with it. The spammers and eventually the sender of the virus as well. (hopefully)

And if I get a mailer daemon message that goes in my address book too. Once you get a couple thousand or so cards in your address book it puts a big dent in the junk emails. And what is left I just do a shift delete if they are up front about what they are trying to sell I just do a shift delete because it is quicker than doing the address card. And if they trick me into opening the email and it is spam then into the address book they go.

Works for me.

I've also been using Mailwasher to preprocess my email. I've been mostly pleased. It will let me bounce mail back (instead of "unsubscribing" this is supposed to let them think that it's NOT a live address). I've configured Mailwasher so that if an incoming mail is not addressed to one of MY addresses (I have several accounts forwarded to one), it flags the message for deletion. The only problem I can see is that the WebProWorld/DevWebPro emails arrive with what appears to be some kind of machine-generated account name (different numbers each time) @emailizer.com, and Mailwasher flags it as "origin blacklisted." It wouldn't be so bad if the account name was constant - I can override their classification and declare the address as a "friend," but since it changes each time I just have to be careful not to delete it...
carol

http://freshmeat.net/projects/confirm/

I realize it's not windows based, but it is a very interesting concept. If there is a windows solution similar to this, i would VERY much like to know about it.

The only problems i ever would see is if two people kept sending confirmations to each other :) There has to be a workaround that too though.


http://www.gnu.org/directory/email/spam/


edit: Just remembered another challenge/response system:
http://tmda.net/tmda-cgi/why.html

edit: found an online version...not free though:
http://spamarrest.com/products/howitworks.jsp

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I have also been using mail washer & is a great help. what you can do is right click on message & on the option click add entire domain to friends list. Hope you do not do such to yahho or hotmail domains, else many junk mails will be marked as friends mail.

Many good comments in re: ridding spam as fast and safe as possible. I'd like to throw my 2.5 cents in.

I use two spam related programs. Pop-Peeper allows me to read emails (HTML especially) just to see what it is, assuming that is does not look like spam FIRST, and delete or reply without downloading. I also use Pop Tray which has some very good filters and can auto delete email. Unfortunately it does not seem to render HTML, so that's why I also use Pop Peeper.

I have been careful since I do not want to auto delete a biz related email, but one reason I like Pop Tray is that it gives me the "To" address. I notice many programs do not. The reason I like this is that MANY emails I get are sent "To" an email address I do not have. I can take, say, 20-30 spams addressed to this 'none address', highlight them all, and delete with one click.
So I can delete a hundred spam emails in a matter of literally seconds.. AND.. I do not download any of them that may contain a virus, etc.

Just my 2.5 cents :)

Lando

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There are plenty of things a person can do to deal with spam and/or virus email messages that fall into one of two categories. You can (a) guard your email address jealously to be sure that the evil spam/virus people don't find it laying around somewhere and, as such, don't know to email you, or you can (b) filter virus and spam email in various ways.

While I work hard at (a), (b) is the more realistic approach. In trying to keep your email from falling into the wrong hands, there is concern with mailing lists, certainly, but I have found that the greatest enemy I face are my well meaning friends, topped only by their well meaning friends. Jokes and the likes are by far the worst culprit of putting your email address on display for the world to see. Your friend receives a joke and thinks it's the best thing in the world, deciding to share with all their friends, they forward it to everyone on their contact list, giving each person the email address of everyone on their contact list. From there, people forward it again, leaving that initial list and adding their own contact list to the email. Finally it ends up somewhere that is publicly indexed with all those email addresses. An email harvester finds this and everyone on there has become another name in it's list.

How can you avoid this? You educate. Unfortunately that's a harder task than filtering in far too many cases. (My mother learned, but not until I changed email addresses and refused to give her my new one.)

So for filtering...

<crusade>

Ask about filtering with your email provider. If they do not provide this, find a new one. Filtering email at the server level is responsible and cost effective, and in theory an email server administrator is capable of setting up such a system. (If someone who specializes in trafficking email can't do it, why in the world would anyone expect the average email user to be able to?!)

</crusade>

Okay, now that you've managed to get a mail server that filters, use a reliable filter on your own pc as well. Server filters -should- catch most spam/virus messages, but sometimes won't catch all. You need to protect yourself too.

For virus protection I personally use Symantec's Norton Antivirus, and it works like a charm. I recommend it.

Spam filtering is a bit more complex, but my major recommendation in this is to use an application/plugin that employs Bayesian filtering. I personally use SpamBayes with Outlook and it catches 95% of my spam as spam and tags another 4.9% as potential spam, leaving only one message every week or so that snuck past. I haven't had a single message flagged as spam that I wanted to keep.

Last, I recommend killing spammers when you identify them. Judges and juries use email, so I doubt you'd be convicted.

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Well, duh! I guess everything is obvious once you know how to do it. Thanks, javad. You're a genius!
carol

I use a very simple, yet effective setup for MS Outlook.

First, I'm running NAV, and I have it set to automatically delete any virus-ridden email attachments, so I don't even get a prompt, the email just doesn't have an attachment.

Second, I've created my own Outlook toolbar, with 3 buttons on it. I've put it right in the center of the Outlook toolbar area, so it's easily accessible.

The three buttons are:
1) Add to Junk Senders
2) Delete
3) Add to Adult Senders

That way, when I'm looking through emails, before I delete a spam-mail, I can click either 'Add to Junk Senders' or 'Add to Adult Senders', and the next time an email comes from that address, it automatically goes to my Deleted Items folder.

It takes awhile to build up a comprehensive enough list of spammer's addresses, so I've also set up filtering rules for those emails that always seem to get past the above setup.

Today, I received over 300 emails, 90% of which was spam... only 6 spams came into my Inbox.

For truly disgusting emails, I also have a button set up that allows me to report the spam.

Norton has been always messy and uneffective, and promotes spamming through distributors who won't let you go. Why don't you try another antivirus to start?

I came across an interesting article that relates to the challange/response system I noted above.

The Newest Front in the Anti-Spam Wars

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/31501.html

The article is pretty informative. I plan on implimenting this method soon. I'm getting WAY to many spam emails, and filters just aren't cutting it anymore.

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http://www.spambite.com/ works the same way.
It looks like a good deal and you can try it for free for 30 days.

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Using Outlook 2003 here, and with the new spam filters it's caught every piece of spam I've recieved without having to set up anything. It also helps if your ISP or mail server uses spam filtering of some kind. Along with a few other major improvements, the new Outlook is worth a checkout! ;D

The Martian

Go Apple/Mac - PC Viruses don't effect their systems for the most partt. Very few hackers/viruses want to spend time messing with Macs!

:)

Peace Baby!

I can't see a mention of AVG from Grisoft so far.

Its a free antivirus program (for home use) and I have found it to be superb. It plugs into your email program (I use Eudora - avoids the Outlook vulnerabilities) and checks everything automatically - I recommend setting it to check for updates daily as I did once get a virus (Swen) sneak in before the update, but I did not launch the attachment so no harm done.

A stealth firewall is a must have (e.g. ZoneAlarm / ZoneAlarm Pro), especially if you are connected most of the time. The one time I came out of stealth mode (i.e. not responding to pings etc.) I got bombarded with SQL server vulnerability probes within seconds. Frightening.

Other security tips:

- don't try to unsubscribe from spam no matter how much they tell you is isn't spam (mailing lists you did subscribe to are OK).
- try using www.spamcop.net to report spam. I dont know if it does any good but it makes me feel better
- forward spoof emails to eBay/PayPal/the institution being spoofed
- make sure any computers for network with (e.g. Wi-Fi) are as security-conscious as you are
- download security patches often especially Windows and Internet Explorer
- if you control all mail to a domain, bounce mail not addressed to a specific alias or mailbox
- on your websites do not put your email address in clear text or use mailto links. You WILL get spam from these. I put emails in a gif, others put square brackets or similar in the address.

can't think of anything else at the moment....

I use Yahoo e mail & almost 99% of my junk mail is put in a bulk folder. I have used many other services & they are the best by far. You can also get a personal box ie. scent@ perfume-garden.com.

http://www.enigmasoftwaregroup.com/
This email is for spyhunter. I promote religiously and it works. It removes the perisites that tracks all your moves and transactions on the internet.

I use Norton and Macaffee both virus and spamkillers also Norton firwall and until I added SpyHunter things still did get through. Spy hunter gets all the rest that Macaffee & Norton dose not get.

Go to that address and check it out. After trying the demo it will impress but after using full version you couldn't believe why you didn't have it.

Hopes this helps...
Chef Poe

Only 27? I get about 63 messages a day, of which an average of 60 are spam. I'm only on a couple of mailing lists and have encrypted my email address on my websites, but the amount keeps increasing.

I tried Spambayes as a filter, but found it difficult to set up and not too effective in use, so I switched to Spamihilator, which is easy to set up and allows more options - I cascade the mail through a series of filters - Bayesian, word filters, server testers, etc., but it still either allows a lot of spam through or else trashes messages I want if I tighten it up. Usually both! So I still have to check through everything to make sure I didn't lose an email I wanted. Between that and constantly tweaking the program, I might as well wade through it myself and delete the spam.

As to filters that bounce the message - most spam these days has fake return addresses, so all you are doing is plugging up the Internet with undeliverable messages.

In my opinion the only solution to the spam problem involves a combination of legal and technical measures - making it illegal to spoof headers and use non-working return addresses, then rewriting email software at both PC and server level to make it extremely difficult to do so.

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Using Mailwasher to selectively bounce spam, I've had some returned as undeliverable but mostly not. If Mailwasher has labeled a message as "Origin Blacklist" I just delete it. But the porn spam (and why am I receiving that???) I definitely bounce.

I would welcome legislature making it illegal to spoof headers etc., but knowing that the legal system works slowly, what are we to do in the meanwhile?

carol

I mainly use Outlook Express for email but rather than creating a whole bunch of rules for individual messages to filter spam, I found it easier to create just 3 rules total.

1. Anyone not in my address book goes to a Junk Mail folder.
2. Any email with an attachment automatically Deleted.
3. I search my junk mail folder for things that I may want to keep like ezines and subscriptions and add them to rule #1 and delete the rest.

So basically anything with an attachment gets deleted and my deleted folder empties when exiting OE. All others go to my Junk Mail folder unless they are listed in Rule #1.

I figured it's the needs of the few out weight the needs of the many. The emails I get from legitimate sources was far less than the amount from spammers.

And as others have mentioned, Never click the unsubscribe button! As a side note also concerning your email address on your website. I use FormMail from Matt's Scripts and have a .FormMail.conf file that assigns aliases to any email address I want. So if I want to send an email to the webmaster, my code on the html page form would simply be: <input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="webmaster" />. Now the spiders can't get any emails to add to their list.

Just my opinion, or is it?

Shawn

Reference: http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/formmail.html

I like to spam them right back.
Most of the spam and I get hundreds, has a place to either look at a site, order some pills that will make you superman (honestly I am offended by those letters, sort of degrading to men don't you think?).
There is usually a place where I can get back to them. I send them the longes pic filled letter I can think of and very seldom hear from them again.

dmcgill

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Web World directory

Just found a very good spam filter that uses "bayesian learning" and adapts as you go. Filters automatically. (I didn't like the extra steps I had to go through with Mailwasher) During the "learning process" you'll want to check the spam file, it's blocked many newsletters. Only had it a couple of days and pleased as punch...only one or two spam have gotten through today. Easy program for non-techies like me.

www.spambully.com

Site is ugly as heck but if you look there's a free two week trial download offer on the right side. I can tell you this is one I'm not letting get away!

Cheers,
Jean

Hi - I've been experiencing the same problem and so decided to check out some anti-spam software. The best one I've come across so far is Qurb which can be found at http://www.qurb.com - I definitely recommend!

I remember recieving over 300 infected emails in a single day. I use Yahoo which has excellent spam filters, I have also blocked al mail sent to 1@, info@, and sales@mydomain.com as they are the ones frequently used by spammers. A good pop mail program with built in smart spam filters is the one supplied as part of the mozilla suite, or Thunderbird which is the standalone version. Both block the showing of images in email classed as spam to prevent the spammers from knowing you have read the email address. This way they don't know the email address was real.

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Carbonize

Hi, carbonize:

Can you explain how that particular trick is accomplished by spammers? Or more importantly, how do you know if you've fallen prey to it?

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The image name wil contain either your email address or a code to represent it. So when your pc requests the image the script on the spammers server logs the email as having been read and thus the address is active an it sends you the image. This is not a hard trick to achieve. http://www.freddys-utilities.co.uk/no_photo.jpeg is a good example of how an image can actually be a script.

__________________
Carbonize

ahhh... clever critters, these spammers...

thanks, carbonize...

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See I'm not just a potential patient, or do you call them clients?

Dr. Minstrel "Lie on the couch and tell me your problem."
Carbonize "I keep thinking I'm a pair of curtains."
Dr. Minstrel "Pull yourself together man!"


I wanted to post a different one but my wrist still hurts from the last time I got slapped on it for posting an adult joke :-|

(Waits for the suggestions on why my wrist really hurts)

__________________
Carbonize

Because you do so much typing, of course :)

Julian

Opens desk draw and checks MOD slap ruler is handly placed :)

Good one - added it to my collection - :-)

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Dr. Minstrel "Ok lie on the couch and tell me about your problem."
Carbonize "Well I keep blacking out and when I come to my senses I have my **** between two dry biscuits. What is it?"
Dr. Minstrel "You're ****ing crackers."

Waits for slap on the wrist.

__________________
Carbonize

Yahay looks like I haven't lost my touch after all.

Carbonize the thread killer strikes again, mwuahahahaha!!!!

__________________
Carbonize

Sorry Carbonize but...

Ever since I posted a reply to this question I have been getting bombarded with spam emails, I am truley thankful I have Spam assisn running.

Greyhawk

I invite you to check out InBoxer, a baysian spam filter based on the open source code from spambayes. Outlook only at the moment... I also invite you to check out InBoxer site at http://www.inboxer.com/MediaKit/Whyspamfiltersfail.pdf. for white papers on spam fighting techniques.

a client side solution allows for personal tuning. One persons spam is anothers reading material

No Comment!! ;-)

About 3 yrs ago I can say I was getting numbers in that vicinity, but I learnt to manage them, now I am lucky if I get maybe 20 per week that slip thru. There is no way I am going to eat into my download limit with spam, I can do that well enuff on my own!

I agree with Carbonize (about Yahoo & not his wrist), except that I use Hotmail. I subscribe to various titbits around the net, but they don't have a hope of getting my personal/work email address. I dont even let WPW have it ! I have a separate address that redirects everything to Hotmail & then filters what I want back to me.

In regards to mailing lists, same deal, it gets routed elsewhere and anything that doesnt come from the list gets quarentined & dumped at Hotmail.

There are many ways of coping with spam without it turning into a problem & having to search for quick fixes.


Cindy

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