BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?

Subject: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: fiddler
Date: 04 May 03 - 06:20 PM

Thought I'd ask this one 'cos you lot often have good ideas.

I've just checked my University Work Email account and out of the new emails all were porn or spam.

Every time I set my filters to cut them out they just come up with a new address or put '*' in so it doesn't look like p*n*s etc....

Yup this is the IT geek loosing the battle.

I'd even buy software if I could, if it exists!

My other business ISP is better at filtering but I still get some.

Am I odd 'cos I don't like them, I have no desire to see a teenage farmhand misbehaving with her horse!!!

HEELLLPPPP!

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Gareth
Date: 04 May 03 - 07:21 PM

Mailwasher, and tight filters on Hotmail !! Or enjoy it !!!!

A funny but true story

Welsh Assembly Election 2003

The Labour Party Candidate in Caerphilly, one Ron Davies, had 'self destructed'.

We had 10 days to find a new candidate, and complete the nomination formalities.

A new Candidate was chosen by individual members vote, and it fell to me to rewrite various leaflets. One thing I was short of before printing was good (ie proffessional) photos of the new candidate, one Jeff Cuthbert, and the deadline was approaching.

No problem - studio in Cardiff - E Mail the JPGs

Checked E Mail - no pictures _- eventually they were sent again.

Just one problem the header was "Here are your Pic's" Yep the Hotmail spam killer had classified them as 'PORN' and delated !!!!!!!

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: bbc
Date: 04 May 03 - 08:40 PM

Oh, no, I have vertical dyslexia! I thought the thread name said Spaw & Porn! I don't mind getting rid of Porn, but I think we should keep Spaw! :)

Back on topic--the only way I have (at least temporarily) gotten rid of spam was by putting my email address on my son's website. He has a .name domain & the spammers don't seem to have discovered them yet!

best,

bbc

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: NicoleC
Date: 04 May 03 - 08:58 PM

Including Hotmail in any sentence as a solution to spam is highly entertaining. Sign up for a Hotmail account and you'll have 10 spams within 2 hours. (Not MSN's fault, incidentally.)

My solutions:
-Change your email address periodically. Once it becomes compromised, there's not a damn thing you can do until there's an internet equivalent o fht eTelezapper. Trying to use one of these software progams to detech spam before downloading it was, to me, just an elaborate way of deleteing it.

-Never, NEVER enter your email address on a form on the web, post with your real address on usenet, or type your full and accurate email address on any web site, including this one. Come up with creative ways to insert extra characters that are obvious to human brains but problematic for harvesters.

-When you really gotta submit an email address (for example, when they will email you a password before you can continue), use one of the free web mail accounts. Keep one handy, or just make up a new one. If you continue to do business with that web site or later come to trust their use of your email address, you can always correct it later.

-When choosing email addresses, look for unusual domains. Big ones like AOL and Hotmail and Yahoo get shotgunned, and even if they don't have YOUR address, they might randomly generate it.

-Get a well-rounded internet filtering product like Webwasher, which can be set to disable script access to cookies, web bugs and other potential methods of harvesting your email address while you are online without your knowledge.

-In general, stay away from THOSE sites. You know the ones... flashing ads and pop ups everywhere, and 90% advertising.

-Disable HTML email. You may still get the spam, but you won't be triggering malicious HTML code or getting any of those nasty pictures.

-If you have any influence over your IT department, they should really consider subscribing to a filtering blacklist, instead of trying to create their own.

The problem goes beyond email, and even direct marketting associations are supporting anti-spam legislation now. I have little faith in it working. But for every email you do get, legitimate or not, your ISP filtered a spam. At work, we filter over 37,000 emails per day for our 400+ email addresses, yet our users are still deluged. (We're working on satisfying all the requirements to sign up for a good blacklist service.)

My cell phone service keeps trying to get sign up for web serive -- with a Hotmail account. Ha! So I can get spam on my cell phone, too? Spam text messages are coming to a cell phone near you, too.

----------------------
I'm curious to know what parents do. It seems draconian (and cruel to teenage egos) to always go through their email before they can read it, but it's the only way I can think of to be sure your kids aren't getting assaulted with this.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,Ely
Date: 04 May 03 - 09:53 PM

I have a Lycos address and I get some SPAM but I'm not inundated. I got mad, though, when they took away their "block" button. You used to be able to just click on the "check" box by an email and block it without opening it. Now, you have to add the sender's address to a block list, which means you have to open the email (since most SPAM doesn't have the sender address in the "sender" ID field). I liked not having to open SPAM because it helps avoid viruses. I wrote Lycos an angry email demanding my "block" button back but of course they won't do it just for me.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 04 May 03 - 10:52 PM

John Dvorak of Ziff Davis suggested a "solution" that the ISPs could implement. If the ISP acknowledged each email by sending back a "problem" that required a one or two second calculation, and return of a correct answer, before accepting any email, the spammers would be out of business.

First - a fake address wouldn't work, because they'd never receive the "problem," and all their transmissions would be undelivered.

Second - the spammers rely on being able to send several thousand emails per minute - and their return rate is so low that even a second or two for each message would literally sink them.

The delay for anyone sending "normal" traffic would be no worse than the slight delay I get while Norton scans each outgoing message.

This would impose a slight extra message burden on the ISPs, but 80 percent of messages are now SPAM - so doubling the traffic per valid message would still get them a 60 percent gain in capacity - if the SPAM was eliminated.

Any such solution may have hidden faults that need to be examined before implementing, but this one is simple enough to look pretty reasonable. If he can come up with something this simple, certainly the ISPs could too, if they really wanted to.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 May 03 - 12:20 AM

For $12.00 a year my local server (GCI.Com) isolates incoming spam and virus-suspected emails then notifies me that they've come in. I can do a Select All and Remove 25 of them at a time, which is immeasureably better than having them come onto my front page, good as $10,000 a week working part time, or growing an appendage that I can do without, or recently being offered an Iraq Deck of Cards Fugitive something or another, sounds. :)

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,Crazy Little Woman
Date: 05 May 03 - 12:42 AM

I use Juno Speedband (14.95 a month), and I never get any spam.

Thanks for the tips about not putting an e-mail address on the web. Good information for everybody.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 05 May 03 - 01:12 AM

I'm gonna say something that a lot of folks probably don't wanna hear.

America Online really does a good job of blocking spam.

I know it's politically incorrect to say anything nice about mega-corporations, but it's true. In the year that I've had AOL I've gotten less than five pieces of email spam. I was getting some of those "instant message" spams for a while, but I've blocked them now (with AOL's help).   

Now, the only people that send me bothersome messages of any kind are AOL themselves with their never-ending "special offers".

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 May 03 - 01:20 AM

The problem with most recommendations for spam blocking utilities is that you don't know whether the blocker is working for you, or whether the spammers just haven't discovered your address.

Has anyone who was getting a lot of spam blocked it with one of these utilities without also changing their address?

Even hotmail has a fair "filter," and they manage to send about half of the spam to junk mail. The problem is that the spammers fake return addresses, send with multiple different subject lines, and numerous other tricks, just to confuse the filters. It's not uncommon to find what is obviously the same message at least twice in the inbox and five or six times in the junk mail - each with a different "id" and all sent within a few seconds of each other.

It's been mentioned before that you should be particularly cautious about allowing your kids to use "cute" nicknames as an email address. "Cuddlebunny" and "sweetstuff" will invite a particularly obnoxious kind of spam. Just about anybody (sufficiently perverted) can pick out the "currently popular" nicknames kids use, and send at random until they get an answer.

A "strong" address, containing a symbol or two and maybe a couple of numbers can significantly reduce the likelihood that your address will be found by a "random sequence generator." A relatively "long" name may give a little help. If you use numbers, they should not be consecutive: john42 is not nearly as good as j4hn2.

Most sites treat email addys as not "case sensitive," so just mixing upper and lower case won't help much; but if I were to use j0hn_1n_kans2s (3 numerals and one symbol) they at least have to include 26 letters + 10 digits + a half dozen symbols in their "randoms." This raises the number of possible sequences rather significantly, and may prevent, or at least inhibit, them from finding you.

There is some indication that spammers avoid addys that "look like a business," although that's kind of an "iffy" one to rely on.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 05 May 03 - 05:36 AM

John, this article may be of interest to you. It seem's spammers are now trying to "hijack" people's computers.

I haven't worked out where most of my spam comes from but most of it goes to an email address, [e-mail] that I hardly ever use for email communication.

Of my other email addresses, [e-mail] and [e-mail] recieve little (say 1 or 2 per week cf. say 15 per day on the freeuk account) even though the latter is the one I give without "anti-spam modification" in newsgroup communication.

I also have "help@" both jonbanjo and folkinfo which are "publicised" on the websites but I have never seen any spam to these accounts. The "help@" accounts are operated by more than one person though so it could be that one of the "admins" has recieved spam that I don't know of.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: fiddler
Date: 05 May 03 - 05:56 AM

Trouble with the email address change is when you have a business email, mine is! It needs to be the same.

It is used legitimately by colleagues and work associates all over UK - sadly none abroad yet.

Its the filtration that is the problem.

You could end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

Lots of good Ideas I shall be sifting them through whatn I finish this next bit of database.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 May 03 - 06:32 AM

Jon -

The virus guys love to stick a worm on your machine that makes your machine send a bunch of junk that looks like it came from you. These worms are the basis for the "Denial of Service" (DOS) attacks that have been publicised quite a lot recently. They'll trigger a whole bunch of infected machines to all send to the same address simultaneously (and repeatedly) in hopes of blocking all legitimate communication.

Incidentally, the spammers tend to ignore dot-org addresses, but they do often launch "crawlers" that look for anything that might be an email address, and they love searching chat and message sites. So you may have just given your addys to another spammer or two by posting them above. Some people "disguise" addys if they want to post them by spelling out the "at" and "dot" instead of writing them so they're easily recognized by a machine.

Another annoying trick that's cropped up recently is the use of the "net send" utility that's intended to let your local webmeister broadcast news to users on the local net. It's built into nearly every op system around. It can be accessed from outside if they figure out your URL, and pops up even if you're not connected to the web. It can be disabled with a regedit, but some of them have apparently figured out how to reset/re-enable it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Jeri
Date: 05 May 03 - 07:12 AM

I hate the stuff and I get a load of it SENT. In my case, I think I got on one too many mass-mailing lists. Quite a few of the spam messages in which the spammer hasn't hidden recipient names have names of other folkies.

One more thing on the mass mailings & spam, I've been getting worms on a regular basis from several addresses on one particular ISP. I think I'm getting those because of mass-mailings. The worms look for addresses in other e-mails, not just in the infected computer's address book.

FOR PETE'S SAKE, IF YOU SEND MASS MAILINGS, PLEASE HIDE THE RECIPIENT LIST!!!

My ISP filters some spam, I filter some, and some gets through. Happily, it's almost always in HTML. I can read it, but not without difficulty. The filters I have set up are based on words in the message title, sender's address - sometimes this is any domain, and mass mailings. Sometimes I miss an address change or other bit of information I WANT to read with the latter, but most of it's spam. (I can also filter IN any 'From' address, so newsletter thingies sent out by, say, Texas-based performers, get to my in-box.

The best way to prevent spam is, as others have said, to guard your e-mail address. To stop getting it completely once you're in the spam loop, I think you have to change addresses.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 05 May 03 - 08:11 AM

I have 2 addys and 1 is only for personal stuff and friends, the other is used for organisations or shopping, or whatever. When I start to get spam on the second one I change it. I just don't see any other way, personally I think that all unsolicited mail should be banned, but it aint going to happen.....Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 May 03 - 09:57 AM

John,

I've tried just about all of the things mentioned here. It's a running battle to keep this crud out of your mail, no matter how you manage it.

I use Earthlink, which merged a number of years ago with Mindspring, the originator of the "Spaminator" program. I use that, and though some spam gets through, I'd say 75-90% it gets caught. It does go in cycles, as new banks of spam addresses are introduced, there's a learning curve for the program. It doesn't cost me any extra to use it, and with multiple email accounts, it works for all of them. Spaminator relies on reports from users, however, to work properly. So though I just delete spam often enough, it builds in volume until I take the time to open the spam header (always examine the size to be sure you're not opening a worm or virus), copy the whole thing into a new mail and send it to [e-mail]. Spam in my mailbox drops off again, and when I visit my account every day or two at Spaminator, I delete a couple of pages at a time (20 per page).

Pegasus has some pretty good filters. Eudora has a fee program for a filter I've never used. Yahoo mail has a way to block messages, and I would think that if you put an * in the right field, you could block anything with * in the subject line. You always have the option to scan the list of spam before deleting (though most of these will automatically empty after a couple of weeks) and tweaking it so legitimate mail gets past the filter.

My biggest concern are the browsers. IE and Netscape go out merrily on their way, advertising my email address wherever I go. I tried blocking it in my Netscape, and had to reset my email again before I could receive any. But that is one idea--to simply go into your browser and remove your email address so it can't leave that behind wherever you browse. You'll have to go back an manually replace it any time you want to check your email if it is connected with a browser. I also subscribe to Anonymiser, because there are times when I'm doing web searches, such as through Google, that no matter what the topic, you're bound to hit sneaky sites that have put keywords in their metadata to get them included in searches. You'll leave behind a lot of information if you're not using a firewall or other software to block the transmission.

So the answer to one of John's questions is that yes, I have one address in particular that I've had for a long time that one of these days I hope to close down and leave the spam behind, but that isn't really the answer. I've brow beat (and probably lost) a few friends for sending long lists of names any time they send a petition or a piece of humor. I used to send humor frequently, but in the last couple of years, I send very little, and generally send it individually. BCC is the feature to use when sending to mulitiple people so everyone doesn't get the names, but something tells me that the list isn't as secure as I'd like it to be. Anyway, when your address is in one of those horrible long emails that someone sends in which several other Luddite senders have not figured out to clean it up so forward it addresses and all, it's a really good chance that someone equally dense along the way is going to post it somewhere, with all of those addresses, and your email is there for any bot to harvest.

Some days email is just a pain in the a**.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Peg
Date: 05 May 03 - 10:15 AM

I was shocked to hear someone say AOL is good for avoiding spam...I have an AOL address I have been using for years; it is thoroughly corrupted with spam of all types; any way I can rectify this or is it too late???

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 05 May 03 - 10:20 AM

My spam seems to come in surges; not too much one day and tons the next. Rather than use a filter that might remove something I need to see, I use my shell account and pine to edit the mail folder. With pine, I can delete 100 spams in about 15 seconds.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 05 May 03 - 10:59 AM

In almost 2 years I have received only 1 piece of spam at my regular e-mail address.

But I also keep a Yahoo address specifically for e-mail lists and any time I have to fill out an internet form with my e-mail address, etc.

Yahoo does a pretty decent job of diverting all the spam to the "Bulk Mail" folder -- which I check before deleting just in case the filter's a bit off, which it can be. And some spam gets into the regular account in-box as well. But that'sokay -- I have a delete key.

Had a company AOL account several years ago and it was notorious for attracting spam, but I think that was primarily because that's also where I got my lists, etc.

The problem is that there is so much of it that I have to delete it every day (sometimes several times a day) and I'm hoping that when I'm away for a long weekend, e-mail that I want doesn't bounce because my box is full (with mostly spam).

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Jim McLean
Date: 05 May 03 - 11:27 AM

I use AOL and get about a dozen spams a day. I couldn't log on today as AOL had blocked my password. They had noticed my account was responsible for sending 500 emails yesterday and they realised that was suspicious. Someone had hijacked my address. AOL gave me a new password which I obviously changed after logging on.
Jim McLean

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: NicoleC
Date: 05 May 03 - 12:38 PM

Yes, AOL is *very* good at blocking spam. (Unfortunately, they are also good at selling their subscriber list to spammers they approve of, which is another topic). So is Hotmail. Both are such huge targets, however, that users are almost inevitably deluged anyway.

Recently, MSN and AOL agreed to team up on their anti-spam software development. That IS good news.

I never get any spam to either of my personal addresses (see security measures above), but I manage a couple of mailing lists. Anything being posted that isn't from a subscriber gets bounced to me for review. Egad, it's a lot of spam, even though we have filters in place. Recently, ZERO spam has been getting through. Unfortunately, the company that ultimately owns and runs the mailing lists won't tell me what they did!

Work is another story -- I can't change my address there and it's published as a customer contact. Not much to do but grit my teeth and hope the anti-spam efforts in progress will help.

I know of no way to get your account off spammer lists, and once it's on one your address will be resold forever. Numerous utilities exist to preview you mail and dump the spam first; none of them have ever appealed to me.

NEVER click the unsubscribe link or reply to spam, unless it's a legitimate company you've heard of. Reply or unsubscribe links are usually just harvester programs that then tag your address as being a good one, making it a more valuable commodity to resell.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,Peter from Essex
Date: 05 May 03 - 07:20 PM

Short answer - Don't have an email account.

If I have a little free time I check the headers from the day's spam on SpamCop and report them to the relevant ISPs. I have no idea if it does any good at all but I feel better for it.

Any offers of Norton products should be reported to Symantec as they do try to track down people pirating their software.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 May 03 - 08:26 PM

PfE

The situation may be a little different in Essex, but when I tried referring a few dozen particularly obnoxious pieces to my ISP I was informed that the headers were all phony, and they couldn't trace the sources. I tried looking at a few others, and found the same obvious situation. I don't figure there's much chance that blocking the "indicated" source is going to do a lot of good, since the next one will be "faked" from a different address.

The volume I get has dropped from about 300 per week when the account was first opened (there were 140 pieces there the first time I looked at it, which was within an hour of "creating" the account) to about 80 per week since I just started deleting them as quickly as possible - before they're downloaded if I can - and keeping the inbox, junk mail, and trash bin empty.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Ian Darby
Date: 05 May 03 - 09:24 PM

Lavasoft do a free download called Ad Aware.

It enables you to seek out and delete the Data Miner programs installed when you visit web sites.

These rascals collect info on what you've looked at and pass it on to herberts whose sole purpose in life is to generate Spam.

Have a look at the above, you'll be surprised at how much stuff is sitting in your PC that you weren't even aware of.

Bestest Regards, and Good Luck....

Ian Darby.

P.S. Also see Zone Labs 'Zone Alert' free download.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 05 May 03 - 10:04 PM

Ad Aware
I have the Norton firewall, and that keeps most of those cookies and pop-up pages out. Sometimes these programs clash if you use more than one, so it's best to read the fine print on these before installing.

I tried the free Zone Alert before going to the Norton program. I couldn't get my email to move with ZA.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 May 03 - 12:10 AM

My solution to this common problem was elegant and simple. I got a friend to write and install a little software program that automatically collects all the Spam and Porn and reroutes it to Spaw's email address.

I'm not gonna tell you what it is, though. He's suffered enough.

- LH

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 May 03 - 12:55 AM

I use Ad Aware and Zone Alarm which both seem to have worked quite well. I also have a bogus addy listed as first in my email addy book for any worms that might try to use my email addresses to send to.

I second what Jeri said:

FOR PETE'S SAKE, IF YOU SEND MASS MAILINGS, PLEASE HIDE THE RECIPIENT LIST!!!


Use the BCC, please!!

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 06 May 03 - 06:39 AM

You can always make sandwiches out of the Spam. Not much that I can do with porn though - I don't own a pornograph to play it on.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Gurney
Date: 06 May 03 - 07:31 AM

Be careful who gets your address. My spam was minor before I sent for some 'free' software, and now the spammers know things like my age and sex, which I can only remember putting on the sales form. That was a commercial site, not a free download site like Tucows.
The software was rubbish, too.
NEVER reply to spam.
One day I'll find out how to delete everything except named cookies.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 May 03 - 08:35 AM

Gurney -

In Windows Explorer, you can go to the cookie directory and delete any cookies you don't want. There's no particular problem with doing that.

In Win 98, go to C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files

In Win XP or Win 2000, go to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Cookies.

In Win XP or Win2000 "username" may mean you have to look at several "cookies" folders, since you'll usually have an "Administrator," an "All Users," and at usually least one "string" with your name - there's a cookies folder in each of them, that you need to check if it's the first time you've cleaned house.

Delete everything that doesn't have "mudcat" or "digitalriver" in its filename. - Well, actually, you might want to leave the cookie from your ISP, and maybe from your bank ...

Most cookies are relatively harmless, but you probably want to get rid of any that say "fastlink" or "adclick" or "doubleclick" and any that don't have a clear name to show where they came from.

The worst that can happen if you delete a good one is that you may have to "log in" again somewhere. They'll always give you a new one.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 May 03 - 08:55 AM

I also never give my real age or birthdate; cheeky bastards for even asking, imo!

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 May 03 - 10:32 AM

People could defeat this kind of thing by ALWAYS giving totally false information to all surveys, including false email addresses. This would be a good way of fighting back. Make them waste their time and money till they stop bothering people.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 06 May 03 - 11:33 AM

LH -

The vast majority email addresses on the spammers lists are not put there because you gave your email addy to a "reputable" site. Of course, when you give your addy to the Turbo Tax people, every brokerage house that has an account with them will get it, and will send you at least an occasional offer, but for the most part the circulation and distribution of these addresses is pretty limited.

Spammers do launch "crawlers" that look for addresses posted on discussion threads like this one, so putting your address up in a forum is likely to get you on a list. Especially if (unlike here) it's a list frequented by "gullible" people.

Some of the spam lists are produced by someone hacking into ISPs with poor security; and there have been reports of "ungruntled" employees selling legitimate lists; but most are "generated" by simply "making up" addresses, sending a message, and keeping a list of the ones that get delivered.

There are only about 12 million possible combinations of 5 letter "names." Pick the "top twenty" email providers, and you've got about 240 million possible addresses. It's about an hours work - or a very few hours at most - to send a message with a "click here to be taken off our list" to every one of these possible addresses with a couple of decent machines and a fast connection. And you don't have to sit around and watch while the machines do the work.

If 10% of the possibles are "good" addresses, you've hit 24 million names worth possibly 0.01 cent each. If 1% of the good ones are naive enough to hit the button, you've confirmed 240,000 addresses, worth about 0.3 cent per address - $700 for a couple of hour's machine time. (The market price fluctuates, and you do need to know where to sell your lists.)

It might take a whole day for some kid's machine to run the 6-letter possibles while the kid's at school - or at his school's computer club where he's sharing how to do it with a dozen of his buddies. (They'll probably leave the school's computer(s) running overnight too, if they think they won't get caught.)

One of the "pro" spammers recently was reported to have claimed his (few hundred - off shore, of course) servers could - "if he wanted to" - run all likely 10 character addresses in "a day or two."

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Grab
Date: 06 May 03 - 04:38 PM

I could sympathise with Hotmail, but they're doing a crappy job of filtering my spam. I'm typically getting a couple of dozen or so a day, of which only one or two get filtered.

Unfortunately my Yahoo account has just been found too. They're *very* good at detecting spam though, so it doesn't inconvenience me much.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST
Date: 06 May 03 - 04:45 PM

Is there a way to keep the porn and lose the spam? Porn is very entertaining, I had no idea of what you ladies considered fun until i watched it :)

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Bill D
Date: 06 May 03 - 06:52 PM

if you have pop-up filters and don't follow the commercial porn,but stick with free, happy erotica, you can do JUST fine..*grin*

(Oh, sure there is good (relative term) and FREE, non-sleazy erotica...do the math...multi-millions of web sites and attitudes--not everyone is posting flashing red-and-yellow banners with posed crap with professional oiled-up blond Hollywood types wanting $19.95 for access to the 'good' stuff..*grin*...)

On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen any good, useful Spam. I have heard of Spam carving contests, though. Maybe carving Spam into erotic figurines.....hmm.......

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 03 - 01:29 AM

There is a clear distinction between art and porn. This is a site I like for the representations that are apparently in the "Italian style."

Even some of the art sites have pop ups. They're difficult to avoid. I don't know if this page has them, because my firewall catches 99% of them. I think I stumbled onto this page via here, but visit this with the usual proviso--not all links on this last page are equal. But there are some very nice ones.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,pdc
Date: 07 May 03 - 01:52 AM

I subscribe to the Langalist online tech letter run by Fred Langa, who is a first-class computer wizard. He recently mentioned a program that uses a new type of spam prevention (Bayesian), uses practically no resources, is FREE, easy to install and configure. The website (below) states the following:

"K9 is an email filtering application that works in conjunction with your regular POP3 email program and automatically classifies incoming emails as spam (junk email) or non-spam without the need for maintaining dozens of rules or constant updates to be downloaded. It uses intelligent statistical analysis that can result in extremely high accuracy over time.

K9 learns from it's mistakes and becomes better and better at being able to identify spam. More importantly it learns to recognize what you consider to be spam.

K9 is for standard POP3 email accounts only. It does not support Hotmail, AOL or any other kind of webmail type systems."

I found it very effective, and it's worth a try. Here is the website:
Spam filter site

let me know how you like it. Also try the Langalist newsletter -- it comes in a free or a subscription version! I think since I just quoted Fred, I should give him a plug.
Langalist tech letter.

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: GUEST,Sarah
Date: 07 May 03 - 04:13 AM

I use the web mail facility Mail2web.com - put in all my account details and pull all the titles of my incoming mail straight off the server without downloading. I can then delete the obvious spam, check the possibles without downloading and leave the real messages on the server to download when I finally open my mail programme. I was away last weekend and had 70 messages (3 of which were genuine) when I got back.

Cheers
Sarah

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: dermod in salisbury
Date: 07 May 03 - 06:06 AM

Interested to read the comments about virus like worms which hi-jack your address lists to send rogue e-mails. I had an odd experience of this sort last week. It began with an e-mail from something called 'friendgreeting'. Opening it made the screen appear to shudder then spattered coloured laugh words across the screen. The delete key didn't work, but simply closed outlook express and left the message lying in the In box. Thereafter, I started getting failed delivery e-mails about messages I have never sent. I noticed these related to people I have exchanged genuine e-mails with in the past, so my address list was clearly being tampered with.

How do you get out of this kind of fix? With difficulty. I messaged my ISP postmaster (British Telecom) who have not replied to half a dozen messages seeking advice. The Outlook Express help file says that the address list is automatically generated when you reply to any e-mail and cannot be deleted.

My improvised solution seems to have worked, for the time being. I managed to delete the problem e-mails by temporarily moving genuine messages to another file, then using the Select All facility, which enabled the delete key to work.   I also found that address lists can be deleted if you access it from the pc start button and accessories, rather than through the Outlook Express toolbar.   With all addresses and rogue e-mails now deleted, the problem appears to have gone away.

I should say that, as point of contact for a music society, my e-mail address is accessible through local government websites. Obviously, there will always be some risk in this.

The above might help others if they have a similar experience.

Dermod

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 03 - 09:55 AM

Demod -

You probably have a virus on your machine and you need to get it removed. The measures you've described may have limited what it can do, but in all likelihood it is still there, so whenever you put a new address in your book, it may attempt to start sending. Until you remove the virus, you - and all your contacts - are at risk.

For an initial check, go to any of the major anitvirus manufacturers' sites and look for a "scan your machine" link. Norton Preinstall check page is one good one. (http://security.symantec.com) This site will check your machine and send you to a subsite appropriate for the web setup you are using, where you should find a "Scan For Viruses" link which you should use immediately.

If a virus is found, the site should identify the virus and give you instructions for removing it. If you have trouble with the removal isntructions, make a note of what virus is indicated and do a web search (Google or other) or, if necessary, come back here and ask.

If you are using email it is essential that you have a good antivirus (AV) program on your machine. Any decent AV program should have told you the message was infected so you wouldn't have opened it. Once opened, the virus may have placed infected junk almost anywhere on your machine – which now may require fairly complex removal. What you have done so far has probably not removed any virus already on your machine, or prevented you from spreading it to others.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 03 - 10:07 AM

John,

Can you think of any way to scan one platform from another in the same machine? I use the Win2000 side of my computer the most, and as of this week, the ME side simply won't boot up. Since I get there through the Partitian Magic program, I can't boot automatically to that side with a disk in the floppy drive when I turn on the machine. My Win2000 knows the ME side is there (as is illustrated when I run system tools and it offers to defrag the ME/Pavilion side of the hard drive). Is there any way I can send Norton around that same route to check for and remove or isolate any viruses? My daughter uses that platform sometimes, and uses chat a lot, and I'm afraid she downloaded a virus in there.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 03 - 11:51 AM

SRS -

If your AV is in your Win2K partition, it should be able to scan the WinME partition. The virus signatures are generally the same regardless of what OS (for Win2K and WinME, at least) you have "turned on," so just scanning the WinME disk/partition from Win2K should be sufficient. If you find a virus that's already "installed" and need to do something sophisticated about removal (like a RegEdit) you of course should be in the applicable OS.

You could, of course, use the Norton link in the thread above and let them do a remote check - if you want to scan from the OS for that partition and can access the web in "ME" mode.

If you go to the Norton site at http://security.symantec.com it will probably immediately flip you to a sub-site corresponding to your current OS and browser setup, so you need to go there with the OS you want checked active, and bookmark separately for each OS you have, since the sub-sites may(?) be different.

I haven't used Partition Magic recently, but older versions allowed you to add a line to a boot floppy autoexec.bat or config.sys file to "activate" Partition Magic for a floppy boot - as I recall it was just a "Set Device=" statement to turn on the Partition Magic "interpreter." (Normal Windows "rescue disks" probably don't have these files unless you have an old CD drive, tape, or SCSI devices; but they can be added easily.) I don't have documentation for current versions, but you should have if you're using it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: dermod in salisbury
Date: 07 May 03 - 02:07 PM

JohnInKansas

Many thanks for your advice. Unfortunately the Norton link won't help because I have IE4 and it needs IE5. Microcsoft's site won't help, I have just looked at it, and it has stopped supporting IE4, and you must have IE5 to use its online download facility for upgrades. I have probably been my own worst enemy. My machine came with McAfee pre-installed, but McAfee wouldn't accept a UK address for registration. So I binned that and bought Norton on a CD Rom. The CD Rom player on my three year old Compaq packed up about a year ago. I have never bothered with it because I considered it is only needed for games. I have been under the illusion that Norton is still working on my machine. It certainly appears to make virus scans on request. I ran one after experiencing my problem and it declared my machine to be virus free. But most likely it needs the disk in place to function. Probably my best bet is to tie a stone round my system and find a deep pond. But the miser in me says there must be life in this machine yet. But I do not wish to be a problem to people I e-mail. Some hard decisions seem imminent.

Best wishes

Dermod

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 07 May 03 - 02:58 PM

If your Norton is as old as it sounds, it's quite a bit out of date with the development of viruses, trojans, and so on. New ones come down the pike continually, and if a new one comes along that your Norton (in its advanced age) doesn't know, you've got no protection.

That reminds me, I've got to run my Norton and download the current virus definitions; it's been a week or so.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 03 - 03:20 PM

One more time:

If you have IE4 you probably are still running Win95?

There is a Win95 center at Microsoft that you might be able to get into, at Windows 95 Center where you could prowl around to see what you can do to keep/get things working. Since IE4 was the common Win95 version, that site might let you in - at least to get an upgrade(?). The site says it has a utility you can download to let you search the Microsoft Knowledge Base, and if you can get in to download that it may(?) let older browsers in.

IE5 was the default version for Win98, and even if you start with IE5 SR1 it requires several hours worth of downloads to get it to currently acceptable "secure" condition. The current version is IE6 SR1, and it is significantly better than previous versions, particularly in security areas. I would expect that any machine worth messing with should be able to run IE6 - but of course you have to be able to get into the upgrade site(s) to download the update. You'll need to look at system requirements to be sure you can run it, if you can figure out a way to get there.

If you happen to be running Win98 and for some reason installed IE4 on purpose(?) uninstalling Internet Explorer in Control Panel - Add/Remove Software should revert back to the Win98 default IE5.1. (You can't actually uninstall IE from Win98, but you can go back to that version by telling it to uninstall.) Unfortunately you may need your installation CD to complete an uninstall.

If you're sure that your CD drive is mechanically dead, you should be able to get a replacement for $30 or so (US), and they're not that hard to install. If it's a program screw-up, you'd probably be best off getting local support.

Even if your Norton is running, if the virus signatures it's using are more than a month old it is not protecting you from the "currently active" threats. The symptoms you described most commonly come from the KLEZ_32 virus which has only been widespread for about a year - and keeps coming back in new "variations." There are several others that can produce the same symptoms though.

A three year old machine that was current when you got it should be capable of being upgraded to useful performance, but if it was a "bargain basement" machine at the time, you might be better off replacing. Advice from someone who can look at what you have would be most effective.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 03 - 05:58 PM

John,
I have a "rescue disk" for Partition Magic, but that's for starting the computer in general. I have to get through the Partition Magic bit (which works okay) and then boot in the ME side--and that's where it kicks into booting from the ME side. I need to use a recovery disk for ME at that point.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 07 May 03 - 08:09 PM

SRS -

It sounds as though what you really need to do is to add the Partition Magic startup to a Windows ME startup disk.

You should be able to create a Startup floppy directly from the Windows ME install disk - even if you can't get Win ME up. (You may have to hand edit some things to point to the WinME partition.) You then need to add the Partition Magic startup to that floppy, since otherwise WinME can't read the "Partition" that Partition Magic made. There may be a Partition Magic utility on your machine to make/add to startup disks.

If there's a problem with getting it all on a floppy, you can probably use a ZIP disk (if you have one) or put it on a CD (if you have a burner) although you may have to reset your BIOS to look at the ZIP and/or CD drives as boot drives.

The WinME partition should appear in Win2K Windows Explorer as a "Drive:" D:\ or E:\ or some such. If you can "see" (read the files on) the WinME partition while you're in Win2K, scanning that "drive" from Win2K should find any virus infection. If Norton in Win2K says the WinME partition is clean, you can be pretty sure that the WinME problem lies elsewhere.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 May 03 - 10:36 PM

Good ideas, John. I do have a zip drive. And a CD and a DVD. And a regular floppy. Tons of ways of getting stuff into the system. For now, I'm going to do a complete backup of the Win2000 side, then I'm going to reboot with the ME CDs. Probably have to redo the entire computer, but every so often the housecleaning is useful. I'll set up ME for the kids, with their games, and I won't bother to put the productivity software in over there. I'll keep that one small, and do all of the heavy lifting on the Win2000 side.

Say, have you seen those nifty little thumb drives they have now? Someone was suggesting one of those in lieu of a zip drive for my computer at work. They don't hold as much as many zip disks, but they do hold a lot, and all you do is plug them into the USB port. They do require a password (good idea). Since I don't have a reachable USB drive on my computer at work, I'd have to crawl under my desk every time I wanted to use it (though I did get a 1:4 splitter recently, and it's a little closer than the back of the machine). There are many manufacturers of the drives, and many of them are much less expensive than the one I've linked to.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Spam and Porn - how to get rid of it?
From: stevetheORC
Date: 08 May 03 - 02:48 AM

Hi John
Thanks for the link to the Norton site good to know that the puter is virus free.
Cheers Mate
De Orc