Discussion on:

A new front opens in my war on spam

is click on one of those "unsubscribe" links...because now you've just told the spammer
that your email address is indeed a "live one"! Just delete them and go about your day.

I only bother with the 'Unsubscribe' option if I'm reasonably certain the sender is a legitimate business that probably follows acceptable practices. If you haven't heard of them, don't bother replying. Set the filter and move on.

here lately Hotmail's filters are under attack by a new spam reality. They are getting through somehow - I'm guessing because they actually finally have legitimate product names in the subject line. Surely it isn't that simple to blow through their filters!

In the distant past, I've actually signed up to known spammers just to test Live.com's filter ability, and was surprised at how well it held up to spam, despite this. For some reason both Yahoo and Live! have met with a certain amount of failure in filtering lately.

I suspect that the spammers are imbedding non-printing characters in their text. This would allow them to bypass filtering. Microsoft should disallow ALL non-printing characters, as well as Wingdings, etc. They may be cute, but could be a way to bypass the filters.

Dave

that in the blocked portions of the body - the block diagram is the same; perhaps that indicates a pattern they could use also. I mean, if you have all these reports of junk on what looks like a legit header, I'd think the body of the email would make a difference. Perhaps it is because they only look at the header information. You post leads me to believe this is so. Thanks for you input to the discussion!

From a few newsletter/advertisers - but then they were previously approved sources. A good rule of thumb, is to read the unsubscribe link at the bottom of each e-mail to see if it explains why you are getting it in the first place. If they are actually legit, the explanation will help rattle the memory for why there is a subscription.

Many times I've wanted to unsubscribe from Cisco's emails - but I know I've been getting them every since I took my CCNA, so I put up with it. However, I thought everyone knew not to click "unsubscribe" to an illegitimate email spammer. That bit of advice has been around a while.

I wish the author all the happiness in the world, it is always makes me pause to reflect when they leave the TR fold.

Soemhow my personal email address has ended up on a propert mailing list, and I get numerous emails from estate agents (real estate agents for teh USAians amongst you).

After the first email from a new agency, I reply with an email stating that any further emails from them will invoke a 100 invoice for my time in having to deal with them. I explain that failure to pay said invoice will result in court action, using this case as precedent: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20068927

I am just about to send final reminders fro two subsequent emails to one agency, and will see if they pay up

Peter - welcome to the wonderful world of Spamvertising (advertising using barely legal or possibly illegal e-mail strategies). Never unsubscribe from an unknown source - it simply indicates to the spammer that you are watching your inbasket. They may unsubscribe you but they will add/sell your e-mail address to dozens of other 'helpful' marketing entities and the cycle starts again.

You have 2 choices...
1. Change your e-mail address to something new and tell your legit contacts, or
2. Enable spamvertising blocks or switch to a spam filter that is effective against spamvertising

FYI, spamvertising is mostly image based marketing. Often the message is made up of many images (even the text) to defeat antispam content scanners. Spamvertisers buy, use and discard e-mail domains (once they are black listed) in their campaigns. They run professional marketing campaigns that track deliveries rates, open rates, click through rates, etc. - they are paid to pollute your in-basket. The good news is that their messages are detectable and blockable.

Disclosure - I work for perfectmail.com and we stop spamvertising. If you run your own mail server, try our free edition (www.perfectmail.com). Otherwise, turn up the spam filters and never unsubscribe to an unfamiliar list.

Now, for junk snail mail... look for junk advertising material that has a return envelope with pre-paid postage. If you get one, tape a brick to it and mail it back to the advertiser.

The volume of spam in my email has increased dramatically recently. My ISP has no idea - I don't think they are complicit, but I have no longer have any faith in their 'spam filters'

Has anyone else experienced being subscribed to a ton of mailing lists by a seemingly real person using your email address? I'm assuming it was accidental (as I have no idea who this person is but the name is uniform across lists). I really wish sites would use verification emails before deluging you with unwanted list mail...

That name you see as common across the spam could be someone with a malware infected computer. His or her address book (or that of someone else they know) has probably been forwarded to the malware originator, who then sells the addresses to spammers.

I agree with the previous posts. "Unsubscribe" is nothing more than declaring "Hey, here's a live e-mail address that actually responds!!".

I use the Junk Mail feature in Outlook to block the sender and put their mail in the "Junk E-mail" folder.

I've also seen a significant increase in these kinds of e-mails.

These scum change their sender and IP addresses frequently. Why bother blocking an address that's going to be abandoned by the sender anyway?

After marking enough of them junk, the filters at Microsoft get better and better - usually over a span of a few weeks; but this new "campaign" is taking longer. However, this is the first time, I've seen legitimate product names in the subject line, even though the blocked content always has the same pattern. Maybe MS will realize the body content will be a match, so they can adjust filtering to that. I assume they use some kind of auto intelligence for their filters; they used to be the best.

As far as Outlook goes - I use Avast's spam filter, and it has been one of the best I've used in years.

marking a message as 'junk' makes your ISP do anything.

the posts here about the formats that defeat spam blockers makes a little less annoyed with my ISP

marking the email as junk DOES make a difference - however in the case if my ISP - they are switching to GMAIL server now, so they now have that option to mark as junk on the server based email.

So if marking junk works in GMAIL, then it will for my ISP as well. We just got this service, so it will be a while before I can pass judgment. We still have Postini which was probably one of the worst filters ever, but I noticed it slowly inexorably got better and better at filtering spam, fortunately the GMAIL filter does double duty after that, and then when I download the messages using Outlook for archival reasons, Avast does another spam filter job, that is probably better than those other two.

I keep forgetting I'm one of the few who doesn't use a web-based e-mail client, one of the few who still downloads his messages from the ISP's server directly into a local client.

for legal reasons. If you do online firearms transactions, it is a requirement. Nobody will interact with you unless you have a verifiable address. I didn't notice you had any mistaken perceptions Palmy!

I'm just trying to offer alternate data to the problem, I guess. Yes the spammers use obfuscation, but with the right tools, my position is that you can minimize the volume of junk.

If you read most privacy notices, they include accepting the sharing of your personal information ONLY WITH PARTNERS THAT HAVE RELEVANT INTERESTS.

OF course that can include anyone, so by sharing your email address you are also accepting their desire to sell your name, and SELL they do, at very high costs.

With a background in marketing, I have both bought and sold countless names and numbers over the last 15-20 years. Even most ISP's have a sharing disclaimer that APPEARS to be them saying they won't share your name or info, but if you read further it is often the absolute opposite. Most ISP's you sign with have you accept an agreement that gives them permission to openly sell or share your info with their selected partners too.

News feeds are no different, it's just a marketing tool, not free info from wanna be reporters trying to make a name for themselves. Often the company or website they blog for will allow them AirTime because they generate followers and followers are marketing dollars.

The link tries to direct to an internal TechRepublic URL, not out to the Internet

I get a "page not found" error.

Hallo,
I get even on spammers by throwing pebbles into their machine.
I keep one message from each spammer, when I have time I do some research on each of them (the most frequent one gets the highest priority).
I compile an excel sheet that contains whatever info (like phone number, VAT number, address, ....).
Randomly I surf to the spammers site (not by clicking on the link in the mail, but by copying the url from my excel sheet) and place an order, pretending to be one of the spammers that are on my list.
This way one spammer gets an invoice, order confirmation, or any other notification for an order he doesn't know about. There are two possibilities:
- he pays for something he doesn't need
- he starts actions to cancel the order (or even return the shipment) this is the ideal scenario because it causes both spammers to waste time to get the deal undone.
I have "companies" where I placed over 100 orders (the ones where I can perform the order by a script (just a few keystrokes)). This makes them doubt every order they receive, because it could be a real order or just a fake order placed in the name of an other spammer.

I must say that I was saddened to read this article where a very intelligent writer for such a well respected source of technical knowledge does not know that using the "unsubscribe" button only confirms that your e-mail address is valid and therefore game for other sites to use on their spam list. Never, never, never use the "unsubscribe" button in an e-mail. Rather mark the domain or address as a spam address and let your e-mail program or provider filter it out.

Maybe time for another primer on lessening Spam and junk e-mail should be released here on TechRepublic

I gave up on spam filtering. It's not all that effective. I found a very effective tool for deleting spam at the server level. It's called MailPurge and can be found on Google Play. I use it on both my Android tablet and phone. It works great for me.

I don't know if this works but costs nothing.I was told to make my first Address AAAA@aaa.com and the malware trying to use your address book will try to send four or five times and then give up without searching the rest of your addresses,Neil RYAN

http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/8245

...is to grab any 'contact us' email addys from the offending companies, and subscribe them to various services from other offending companies.

I don't know if this actually DOES anything, but I can dream, can't I?

...I am talking conference and event organizers - both commercial and professional, of course all 'dangerous spam' goes to 1 of 3 concatenated spam filters

Peter Cochrane