BS: 'Bulk' email

Subject: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:27 PM

Every day or two I get an email entitled simpy "bulk" in brackets. It is not identified as coming from anyone nor does it have any identifiable subject in the subject line.

Gosh. What could it be? ;-P

I delete it. Does anyone else get this one? If so, have you ever been reckless enough to open it?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:32 PM

Yes and no.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:46 PM

Haven't seen it. Most likely a transport for a worm.


Delete is right.


A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:49 PM

I get email that has no sender, no subject, and no content.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Peace
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:50 PM

You are getting the ghosts of the deleted e-mails. They have to go somewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: bobad
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:53 PM

So do I and surmise that the sending program detects that the recipient has an anti-spam or e-mail screening program which triggers it to cut out. I use Mailwasher and bounce it back to sender.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: bobad
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:56 PM

Just had the thought that maybe they are from the guy who needs rejection.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 09:59 PM

That could be it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 10:43 PM

Some email services appear to have spam rejection programs that stamp a reason for rejection on a "blank message" and forward the notice of rejection, withholding the actual message until/unless you request that the message itself be sent. It's remotely possible that you're seeing this pseudo method in operation, although the rare examples I've seen have looked slightly different than the description here.

I've never been able to figure out how this helps the recipient, if there isn't at least a hint of an identification of the sender; but it seems unworthy of much attention since email services do many things to befuddle, confuse, and amaze me. I'm sure I'll never understand them all.

Deletion seems the proper action, there being far too many things that need my understanding and attention for me to worry about one more piece of - - - probably junk.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Amos
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 11:02 PM

It's also possible someone is using your email address as a spoofed source in th headers, and therefore your email receives these washed rejects. Do youy inspect the headers in them?

A

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Jun 06 - 11:16 PM

I had a look at "details" under "properties" and the address is a whole bunch of numbers, nothing more.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: GUEST,Fernando
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 12:23 AM

Anny address will sooner or later start getting a lager and lager amount of unwanted spam and junk mail with viruses,

Get a free mailbox at Yahoo.com The only price you pay is seeing the banners on the site.

You can't get a virus there.

They have spam filters that are somewhat effective.

You can get your email and send email from any computer connected to the net anywhere in the world.

When you start getting too much junk at that address you can abandon it and get another.

Never use the address that your ISP gives you. When that begins to get too much junk, you can't abandon it. Just never use it.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 01:00 AM

Eat more fiber.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: jacqui.c
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 08:32 AM

Yahoo also has a bulk category and, from my experience, learns fast what is and is not junk. It also has an 'empty' button so one click disposes of whatever is in the bulk folder.

I get lots of spoof Yahoo messgaes telling me my account is going to be shut down etc. No problem - straight into bulk and then zapped - helps get any aggressive tendencies out of the system to think of the pesky little buggers disappearing down the trap.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Kaleea
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 08:24 PM

Could it be that the whoever it is you have an email account with is marking the email as bulk?
I sure get tons of spam crud that tries to look very official as being from banks, paypal, & plenty of other whacko stuff, I do not open any of it, but I mark it as spam so that yahoo can know. I for shore ain't a gonna open anything with no subject or sending address.
Is it really true that one can't get a virus from yahoo? Or just from yahoo mail? My 'puter techie feller says that lots of viruses & worms & scary things are sent easily through yahoo. I used to have norton, but crud seemed to get past it. Then I got free Avast! & haven't had any viruses or crud since. Wild, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 22 Jun 06 - 10:03 PM

So do I and surmise that the sending program detects that the recipient has an anti-spam or e-mail screening program which triggers it to cut out. I use Mailwasher and bounce it back to sender.

Think before bouncing back to sender. Who you think is the sender might be an innocent in all this and you could be compounding problems, or at least annoying someone.

My ISP and several other ISPs had a really bad one a few months ago. I believe in the end it turned out it was a DDos attack but anyway this is what was happening.

Email address including my own were being spoofed (they were sent as "randomname@domain" all over the place and many of these were to valid domains but invalid email addresses.

The first I knew of the problem was getting "message undeliverable" replies as well as the odd "on holiday", etc. messages. I changed to setting a new catch all account (I couldn't have no catch all then) so I could delete the flood of email I was getting - it was running into the 1000s per day.

This of course was mulitpied by I don't know how many users. It was so bad that some ISPs (not mine they just lost the email for a while) were loosing routers and other services with the bombardment they were taking.

As for me, while my ISP got email services back quickly, the had to disable the accounts ~(which included folkinfo and jonbanjo) that were being bombarded. It was a month or more before they were able to restore me and the others who's addresses had been spoofed.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 23 Jun 06 - 04:33 AM

Recently I have been getting many emails apparently bounced back to me telling me that I have sent a viral load or unwanted spam, or that the recipient is unreachable. As these are domains and countries I have never tried to contact, it is obvious that my email addy has been purloined by spam senders, or else somone who does have my email address has been hit by a viral worm.

I just use MailWasher to check and delete them.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Declan
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 04:12 AM

Just delete it. Sending it back to the sender confirms your email address is active, which may well be the reason why it is being sent.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 12:38 PM

Another vote for NEVER sending anything back to an unknown sender.

Spam filters used by email services do not send back to sender. They redirect to a junk mail accumulator for analysis until sufficient information is available to confirm that it's crud, and then they delete or forward to authorities to request a legal closure of the offending sender and/or service.

If you are absolutely compelled to "do something" about an offensive or persistently repeated item, your email provider probably has an address where you can send it so that they can "try to do something about it." They have a special place where they put things people send them in this way, in a folder named "Ignore."

They get all the information they require to work their filters from surveys of what people leave, without opening, in their Bulk Mail folder (or whatever they call their place for things diverted by their filter), and/or what people move to the Junk folder without opening, and/or what people delete without opening.

When you "reply" by sending something back to sender, you've prevented your email service from knowing that it was junk, since in order to reply you have to open it and take an action - which indicates it was of interest to you. You could be telling your provider that you want to correspond with the spammers, and they might "unblock" the sender so that their stuff appears in your inbox rather than in the reject bin.

Delete, or mark as junk without opening, which has the same effect as deleting with most services.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 01:04 PM

Jon -

Have you ever read the "classic" DDoS attack report by Steve Gibson? It's somewhat dated (2002?) but still reads like a comic book.

Those who are vague on what a DoS attack looks like might be interested. You can ignore the tech stuff and read just for the "social aspects" of who did it, and how.

DoS attack on Gibson Research

Or, since it's fairly long, Download the .pdf (127 KB) to read at your leisure.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 01:16 PM

My e-mail service has a spam filter, and when I check my e-mail, there are two folders that sit above my inbox, one labeled "Known Spam" and the other "Suspect Email." If I open the "Known Spam" folder, it shows me a bar graph indicating the number of spam messages that I've received over the past several weeks. Sometimes it's a couple of hundred a day! The service automatically deletes them. In the "Suspect Email" folder, they're held in my service's mail box. I can either delete the whole bunch or check certain ones individually. Some of the newsletters I've requested or things like bulletins from Elderly Instruments appear here. I can tick the check box and the service will send them through to my inbox. I can also open them in the "Suspect Email" folder, look at them there, then click a "Delete" button and it goes bye-bye. Or I can mark it so that future e-mails from this source go in the "Known Spam" to be automatically deleted.

What I can't figure out is this:   my e-mail address begins with an abbreviated version of my name and goes on from there with several more characters. Yet, in the "Suspect Email" folder, I receive mail addressed to "donf," "donfaith," "donfink," "donfunk," or "donf. . ." and just about any combination of letters after that. My wife has her own e-mail box and we have a joint box, and they also get similar, approximately addressed spam.

It strikes me that this is pretty similar to opening your snail-mail box and finding it full of junk mail addressed to just about anyplace within ten blocks of where you live.

How come?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 02:25 PM

Thanks for the link John - a good read.

Subject: RE: BS: 'Bulk' email
From: Tootler
Date: 24 Jun 06 - 03:00 PM

I just direct everything that does not come from a familiar or reliable source to my junk folder.

The junk folder is set to automatically delete messages after 5 days. This gives me time to check it for genuine messages that have been misdirected.

I use Mozilla Thunderbird which seems to have pretty effective spam filters which you can continually update by selecting the button for any dodgy messages that get to the inbox.