Spam Mail

[Deverill]

This has nothing to do with TCH specifically so I put it in the Open Discussion forum.

 

Has anyone else noticed a boatload more spam lately? I use Gmail for 99% of my emalis and they have a spam folder that drops messages older than 30 days. I usually have from 3400 to 4000 emails in there, meaning around 100 per day.

 

Today, and it's been high for about a week, I have 6430 in there which means I have on average 214 per day! Egads, don't these guys have anything better to do? It also seems evenly spread out among the addresses I use so it's not like they "broke the code" I'm using to hide emails on websites from bots.

 

The good thing is that only 3 or 4 per day get through the Google filter, but it sure makes it impossible to go back and check for false positives.

 

The bad thing is that I've not changed anything such as putting email addresses on web pages or signed up for a get-rich-quick thing so this seems to be just a natural increase in spam. The sad thing is that it must work for them or they wouldn't do it so there must be a lot of suckers out there.

[TCH-Dick]

We have been seeing a large increase of spam over the last few weeks. On average I personally receive over 500 spam emails a day. The most annoying part is that I they are starting to use a single image for the entire message which makes it hard for my spam filter to pick up on.

[TCH-Tim]

Don't think I'm up to 500 a day yet, but I'm definitely getting a lot. New tricks seem to be helping them get through SpamAssassin, but Thunderbird is slowly learning what is junk and what isn't.

 

While we're on the subject, comment spam on my personal blog has gone way up, but Spam Karma 2 is doing a fine job of holding it all back.

[chatbug]

Hmm... maybe technology for spammer has improved?

 

It's sad, but now seems like we need to use the ...username [at] domain (dot) com... to hide it from the spammers. They might eventually get smart enough to decode those?

[TCH-Bruce]

Problem is you are never going to be able to hide your email address from a spammer. If you have a domain you WILL get spam. No if, and or but about it.

 

It wouldn't take someone very long to attempt every possible email address you can think up for your domain. Most people are lazy and use their name and most names are common (to someone). Unless you had an email address like 6BNW-99WZ@yourdomain.ext and who could remember that or would want to give it out to someone you are going to get your share of spam.

[TCH-Tim]

It wouldn't take someone very long to attempt every possible email address you can think up for your domain.

Huge dictionary files in several languages are easy to come by. A spammer just needs to combine those with a list of domain names and a little script to put them together in different combinations, and it doesn't matter how you obfuscate your email address.

[Deverill]

That's true Bruce, and even with that weird address the random character generators will send some spam through. It's almost a lost cause - I'm just thankful for the filters that work as well as they do.

[Samrc]

The most annoying part is that I they are starting to use a single image for the entire message which makes it hard for my spam filter to pick up on.

 

Yes. On our main address for the office which is unrelated to TCH, we have a heavy-duty filter on our email server, then a secondary filter on my computer for spam, a junk mail filter and finally a rules filter inside Outlook. Today alone, our main address has received 64 of these image spams that have gotten through these traps! I usually get 30-40 per day that make it through all the filters, but this week I've had a dramatic increase.

 

If the intent of spammers is to annoy, clog systems, interfere with business and generally cause a waste of time and money then they are on a high right now!!

[TCH-Don]

My gmail addy is not listed anywhere

I only use it to help people directly.

And yet I get spam, I have to wonder if google responsible?

Like when I had a hotmail addy and did not use it, it was full of spam in just a few days.

[chatbug]

I guess a source for spammers to get email addresses is those forward mails. After 10 forwards, I would guess there's about 200 emails inside the foward. Maybe spammers get their hand on such forwards eventually and can discover your otherwise unpublished email address?

[Deverill]

Don't forget, Don, that a lot of spammers are using dictionary attacks to guess names. They modify it of course, so they may use Don123 or HappyDon or any number of permutations, but it's such big business and they trash all failures so it's worth it to let their computers just sit and churn out trash.

[Prel]

Hi,

 

I observe that in the week ends the amount of spams increases, about 200 the 350 of friday for monday in some accounts.

 

In the days of week around 70.

 

I use SpamAssassin, E-mail Filter the Cpanel and option Control Spam the Outlook level High.

[Bob Jones]

I've noticed that my main Yahoo Mail address has just recently begun receiving about 200 spam messages a day. Fortunately, the Yahoo spam filter gets it all.

 

What disturbs me is that I created an e-mail address for my TCH account and immediately began receiving spam. And I don't see how the crude Horde or SquirrelMail filters can be configured to stop it.

 

Note: I've enabled SpamAssassin, and while I have no idea how it interfaces with either of the two available e-mail programs, I'll see what happens with it.

Edited May 29, 2006 by Bob Jones

[TCH-Tim]

Hello Bob and welcome to the forums.

 

You'll want to use SpamAssasin: cPanel --> Mail --> SpamAssasin.

 

Initially I like to set it to modify the subject line by adding **SPAM** (or whatever) and then have Thunderbird filter those messages to a spam folder. That way I can tell how high or low I need to set the filter to be effective.

[TCH-Thomas]

Welcome to the forum, Bob.

[makaveli]

joining this a bit late but my g-mail is becoming full in the spambox of emails offering MS office for 80% off and theres the old "medical problem" ones...

this all without giving it away.

 

I will admit these people who forward "send this to 20 people today or you will be cursed for life" types, dont help the problem by opening up a huge list of contact details, im just happy gmails and spam assasin on TCH works and this rubbish does not enter my inbox.

 

i will say it provides a laugh reading it

 

glass teach sandwich. circumstances disease possible. got easy arms foot,

gym wonder allow proud. nothing come board idea drew did?

gym fascinate interest considered changed? disappoint know ground somewhere corner better. taught second thank with using?

did reached gym. as better least.

girls action perhaps word news

 

anyone know why its randomly silly words, somthing to do with keyword search? or is this to try and evade the spam filter?

Edited May 29, 2006 by makaveli

[TCH-Bruce]

Welcome to the forums, Bob.

 

If you have changed your default email address in cpanel to something other than :fail: I would recommend that you change it back. This will eliminate a lot of the Spam.

[Deverill]

It is to put so much non-spam words in there that the filters won't notice it. To us it looks like gibberish but to the filters it's a long discussion of something non-spammy our buddy is sending us.

 

Another thing they are doing that the filters are trying to keep up with is sending the message as a graphic. Your email reader renders it but it has no words that can be filtered on.

 

If only they'd put that much energy toward solving the world's problems!

 

Edit: By the way, I'm p to 6713 spams in the past 30 days on Gmail.

Edited May 29, 2006 by Deverill

[TCH-Don]

Welcome to the forums, Bob

Yes setting your default mail to :fail:

will stop all the spam to random address at you domain.

I set up forwards for forums and sign ups like theirsitename at my domain

and forward to my real address so I can keep tack of any that get spam, and then just delete the forward that gets spam.

 

I too get some spam om my Gmail, but not bad.

[rmessnerjr]

The biggest reason spammers keep doing it is that people actually respond. Sales statistics, compiled over decades, show that out of 100 contacts a sales person makes there are 10 responses. Out of the 10 that don't tell them to get lost, 2 sales are made. Do the math now. If you're a spammer and you can send out just 1 million messages about your "product" you'll statiscally make 2,000 sales. OK. Cut that statistic in half. 1,000 sales aren't bad for 1 million messages sent.

 

I guarantee you that most of them send much more than that in a typical day.

[Samrc]

WOW! I can't believe that email would get that high of a response. I hope not.

 

Junk Snail Mail gets a 2%-6% response depending on the topic. When we did insurance stuffers in credit card bills, we averaged a 4% response rate with 3% stick after 3 months. But the key was the TRUST factor that we had with the client. The offer came in a credit card bill they already carry. This was not a cold call from a company they've never heard about.

[MellyBelly]

I get a ton of spam in my gmail account! I started using my pop3 account instead so I didn't have to log in and see it everyday LOL.