Spam, where's it coming from?

BarMoo

Title said it all really.

For you computer techies out there my InBox was full of SPAM today - so I have a question: which/why/what/where does it come from?

I have every blocking tool under the sun constantly watching my PC. I virus check twice a week (never had one). I AdAware & Search/Destroy more than I go to the loo.

Any pointers? How to protect oneself, etc.

Mark.

__________________
Have Fun, Moo.

rolfw

I use Mailwasher Pro and find it superb, not sure how much it is now, but well worth the money. It will automatically organise your mail into spam, possible spam and probably genuine, you can then use the lear mode to tell it what you want to receive.

Unfortunately if you keep a used E-mail address for anything more than a few months, the spam engines will find you.

__________________

Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below

Analoguesat

If you have ever used an email address for a contact on a web page of your own , the web bots will have crawled it and logged it.

If you have used USENET (newsgroups) and not set your "reply to" address as a dud one, it will have been harvested..

Its also likely that someone that has your live address on their computer has been ompromised by a virus or trojan and its sent you loads of junk. (Ive seen incoming emails that suggest Im sending viruses to myself!) Get yourself Mailwasher, or one of the Pop3 mailbox scanners, and rid yourself of the junk.

Topper

Mark

IMHO These days is far better to use webmail. Hotmail (dot com or dot co,uk, Yahoo and BTyahoo all have spam filters which are very effective. BTYahoo and Yahoo also have pseudo mail boxes like I use here. They are linked to my main account but as soon as I begin getting spam I close it down and open a new one. Whilst you obviously have to keep a list of what addresses are being used on what site it is no longer a big problem. Three years ago I was being sent 100 plus viruses from the states every single day and now I am down to 2 per day.

__________________
War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left!

Formerly toppervte33h
whose six pack has turned into a keg

Help support this web site by making a donation
Or use other options to help support Sats UK
Show Your Support
by clicking the button

Thank you.
Freddie Flintoff is back

BarMoo

I am using Thunderbird for picking-up (POP3) mail which is doing a pretty good job at filtering. My GMX account pre-filters spam and sends me a report so I can pick and choose whether to go my account and actually open it.
Noton 'Auto-Protect' does something about WORMS (I haven't been that interested to find out exactly what it does ;-)

And I still get SPAM from the most unlikely quarter. V$agra, sort Ur W0man out, got a small one, jobs available in Reading, et al.

I'm sure that the scrubbing/washing/cleaning combo I have is pretty standard; but, as fast as you close an email account and setup another - yep, the SPAM starts rolling in.

He ho.

Mark.

P.S. I'll check out Mailwasher.

__________________
Have Fun, Moo.

Analoguesat

Theres a lot of crap flowing around at the moment for Job recruitments.

About 3 years ago my Demon domain was used for the return address on a spam mailrun. I got clobbered by 25,000 bounced emails in 6 weeks. NOT fun when you are on dial up! they were coming in faster than I could ditch them...... (pre Mailwasher days - Ive got an older version of MW that I prefer to the new one.)

rolfw

Jobs in Reading, blurry hell.

__________________

Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below

closetosoton

i recommend:

www.spamgourmet.com

won't help you with your current email address, but if you go for a new one should kerb future spam. i've been using it for a good few years now for good effect. read the FAQ.

-cts

gameboy

Demon now use spoof email addresses - if a mail gets to them they are blocked to everyone, as the address doesn't exist.

It works great and my spam has dropped - add to the OS X mail application that has a 'junk' mail 'learning filter' and it's almost all gone.

__________________

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

Analoguesat

Yup - Demons turning on the email filters 6 months ago dropped my spam level from several hundred a day to a dozen or so, and MW helps keep the rest under control. Every so often they they tweakthe filters to keep the onslaught under control - a few weeks back there was a sudden increas in right wing German spam which disappeared overnight.


Had a thought about where spam comes from too. If you have opened a spam email containing images, just activating the email triggers the image server that the address is a live one.

rolfw

I'm not convinced on ISP filters, yes they do stop a lot of spam getting through, but as we well know, they also stop mail which isn't spam, there being many posts in the Forum Problems section, from people who have had their activation E-mail spam blocked.

I'd rather have that control myself. and easily at hand on my computer.

__________________

Rolf If you enjoy our site, you can help support it by wearing our unique branded merchandise, you can do this by clicking on my baseball cap, making a direct donation with Paypal by clicking on the Donation button below, or using our site supporting advertisers, to do this, click on the central image below

gameboy

MSN flaw put Hotmail accounts at risk

Microsoft took part of its MSN Web site offline over the weekend, after it learned of a flaw that could let an attacker gain access to Hotmail accounts, the company said.

The MSN Web site, http://ilovemessenger.msn.com/, contained a so-called cross-site scripting flaw, a Microsoft representative said on Monday. In its initial review of the issue, the company found that an attacker could use the vulnerability to obtain "cookies" from Hotmail users by getting them to click on a malicious URL. That could then grant access to those e-mail accounts, the representative said.

Cookies are small files stored on a computer that contain user data. Hotmail is one of the world's most popular Web-based e-mail services, with more than 200 million active accounts, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft's acknowledgement of the Hotmail issue comes after the security hole was disclosed on Saturday by Alex de Vries, a Dutch programmer, on the Net-Force Web site for security enthusiasts.

Cross-site scripting flaws are errors in Web site design, not in Web browsers, and were discovered more than five years ago. Microsoft has described the flaws as serious security vulnerabilities.

Hotmail customers are no longer at risk, according to Microsoft. "The 'I Love Messenger' Web site has been disabled," the company representative said in an e-mail statement. The site, which hosts emoticons, display pictures and backgrounds for MSN Messenger, Microsoft's free instant messaging service, will be restored once the issue has been resolved, the company said. On Monday afternoon PT, the I Love Messenger Web address was redirecting users to the main MSN Messenger Web site.

The Hotmail and MSN flap comes within a week after Microsoft acknowledged that its South Korean MSN Web site had been hacked. Attackers placed malicious software on the news section of MSN Korea in an attempt to steal passwords for "Lineage," a popular online game in Asia.

Source: News.com

__________________

Only he who does nothing, does nothing wrong.

PaulR

I have 3 active email addresses; Virgin, Tiscali France and a local company Merseymail. My Virgin account is the most used and I haven't had any spam there for several months and then only 1 or 2 before that in several months. The other 2 accounts have never had spam.

All 3 companies have their own spam filters and work pretty well I reckon.

PaulR

Happy-Buddah

Spam! Best thing with sliced bread .
Two slices thick cut spread with beef dripping, sprinkle salt and pepper on dripping, quarter inch thick slab of spam on top of one slice, nice big dollop of Dadies sauce, place other slice of bread on top, pick up move towards mouth, open mouth, place spam sarnie between teeth, bite, chew, swallow, utter extasy!
Why shoulsd something as good and filling as that be associated with the cr*p that we have to put up with on our computers?
H-B

closetosoton

some history.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(Monty_Python)

Channel Hopper

Cant stand spam, though I do like ox tongue and even haslet, if I can get it.

__________________
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

BarMoo

Jeeze, very droll, how very droll.

Mind, I do have a soft spot for tinned ham (there's some't about the jelly - BSE probably).

SPAM is simply horrid and only barely palatable when it's deep-fried in batter. Can't believe I just admitted that.

He ho,

Mark.

__________________
Have Fun, Moo.

Happy-Buddah

I think that my liking for spam goes back to the war and post war days.

@CH
Morrisons sell Haslet, very nice too
H-B

Channel Hopper

Thats where I got the last lot from, but then they closed down the local and its become a Waitrose

__________________
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"