General discussion

  • Creator
    Topic
  • #2174809

    Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

    Locked

    by jdclyde ·

    EDIT NOTE: added details at end.

    Half of the SPAM I get day in and day out is from a disposable Hotmail.com address.

    They brag about SPAM protection for the USERS when you sign up for a hotmail account, but don’t do anything about stopping their accounts from causing a lot of the SPAM out there.

    On a prefessional basis, would anyone use a hotmail account for work? If they do, then what is that saying about their company and they way they do business?

    What do you think? Would blocking hotmail.com be a bad thing? I get closer and closer everyday.

    **** ADDED DETAIL **********************
    Running Domino on Linux, so any products that run on the server would have to work with this. Sorry, not a M$ shop.

All Comments

  • Author
    Replies
    • #3335989

      Spoofed mail

      by cactus pete ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Most of the mail sent as spam is not actually FROM hotmail.com – it just appears to be.

      Spammers fake the return address most of the time.

      • #3348743

        right, spoofed

        by fitzmark ·

        In reply to Spoofed mail

        you’re really talking about filtering on the from header that includes the word hotmail, and not actually “blocking” hotmail. If you actually block the hotmail sending ips, you will probably find that it is not actually coming from there 99% of the time.

      • #3347885

        A mixed bag

        by deepsand ·

        In reply to Spoofed mail

        Like any other business, the spammers target Hotmail because that’s where the customers are.

        The larger the size of the client base, the higher the probability that any list of randomly generated user/account names will yield valid user/account names.

        Such lists are used as BOTH recipients and spoofed senders.

    • #3335906

      Well I use mine at work

      by tony hopkinson ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      for personal stuff, but I bet you wouldn’t give a toss. Nor should you to be quite honest. I’ve worked at places where this is not allowed. If you are talking about just disallowing .hotmail.com and hotmail.co.uk on your business servers I can’t see a problem at all. I do all business related work through the company email, if nothing else it’s on record. I’d be very suspicious of anyone who told me they were doing company business thru hotmail.

      • #3348888

        Actually,

        by deepsand ·

        In reply to Well I use mine at work

        a lot of small businesses DO use Hotmail, owing to the fact that it’s FREE of any explicit cost.

        They do, of course, overlook the implicit costs of reduced productivity, increased risk of having thier system(s) corrupted, etc..

        • #3349639

          But does that

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Actually,

          affect how seriously you take someone? If they are using a hotmail account for professional use, just how professional are they?

          When you get internet access, your ISP gives you at least 5 addresses. If this is a small company the five is enough. If not, there are still many affordable ways to get e-mail that are much more reliable.

          Or am I way off base with this line of thinking? I make a point of not looking down on non-techs for not knowing tech, otherwise they wouldn’t need people like us, but I think this is different?

        • #3349623

          The way it is, for now

          by deathtoliberalism ·

          In reply to But does that

          The internet is still too new for a lot of people out there, and to them hotmail is a great convenience, and some even think it makes them look professional to be linked up with microsoft. They don’t look at things the same way that you or I necessarily do.

          I tried to block hotmail at work, and too many people complained of lost business correspondance, so for now, it stays.

        • #3349616

          Thanks

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to The way it is, for now

          for taking the time to respond with the ideas.

          Even if your not saying what I WANT you to say, it still helps keep the objective on track. Which is to provide my users with a valuable tool that helps them do their jobs better so the company can make lots of money so I can get a raise and some new toys.

          I am not one to try to restrict what the company allows (think web radio, oh well)

        • #3349597

          Another way to handle it…

          by ole88 ·

          In reply to Thanks

          is to send a number of these UCE messages to the hotmail.com spam address and see if you can get them to change their policy. If they are spoofed messages, hotmail (and Microsoft) are large enough to try tracking the spammers down and go after them.

          I am not saying that you want to send EVERY ONE of these messages back, just what you can afford to timewise. The more the better, but every little bit counts.

        • #3348163

          Good idea

          by erikpaladin ·

          In reply to Another way to handle it…

          I’m using Hotmail just for fun and if i get some SPAM i will report them as SPAM at hotmail so the guys at hotmail can use my input for their filters. The SPAM email can be analysed so you can get the IP adress from the sender from the sendmail logs.

        • #3335807

          That’s just not effective

          by curlergirl ·

          In reply to Thanks

          Blocking the entire domain hotmail.com not only will undoubtedly block some email that your users want to receive, it’s just not an effective way to fight spam. As pointed out by someone else, most of these addresses are spoofed anyway, so the spam isn’t really coming from hotmail.com at all. I used to think the way you are thinking until I did a lot more research and got more experience in dealing with the actual sources of spam on a day-to-day basis. What you need is an effective anti-spam software solution and the cooperation of your users in not signing up for email notifications on web sites where their address is likely to be distributed. You also need to make sure that your email server is as secure as possible, can’t be used as a relay and will not forward email from non-authorized senders.

        • #3348346

          Outlook in the Office.

          by bagmaster50 ·

          In reply to The way it is, for now

          If you’re using MS Office 2000 or better at work, make everyone use Outlook and configure the same filters on all workstations. And notice I didn’t say Outlook Express

          This way you can configure thier antivirus to scan all incoming and out-going email.

        • #3349580

          Just how Professional

          by industrial_controller ·

          In reply to But does that

          I use free email accounts for testing purposes and “off the record” communication. No one has questioned my professionalism as a result.

        • #3349499

          use of hotmail;

          by jcbrooks_bs9 ·

          In reply to Just how Professional

          I use hotmail for work related purposes for two reasons. One i have bounced around the country quite a bit in the last ten years and got tired of changeing e-mail addresses to all my contacts evrytime I switched ISP’s and secondly the price is right.

        • #3347890

          Non-judgmental

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to But does that

          As several of my clients use Hotmail, for legitimate purposes, it would be illogical of me to assume such is not true for other Hotmail users as well.

          For many, paying an ASP for e-mail service is simply not, in their minds, cost justified.

        • #3347789

          I want to keep e-mail addresses independent of ISP

          by bob21 ·

          In reply to But does that

          I use hotmail for business, and netzero & yahoo for personal messages to keep my addresses permanent independent of the ISP. It’s not good for maintaining long term contacts if the address changes whenever the ISP changes. I have changed from dialup to cable to DSL & back to cable and don’t worry about someone from 5 years ago not being able to find me.

        • #3347664

          idea is fine

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to I want to keep e-mail addresses independent of ISP

          but why use hotmail for business?it’s the least secure, most commonly used for spam, and least respected email service available.

          I have no respect for any company that uses hotmail as business address.

        • #3347298

          Agree

          by gunnar klevedal ·

          In reply to idea is fine

          I agree with you when it comes to companies and business. Hotmail adresses and WEBmail is too easily discardable. Privately though, in Sweden you can walk to the public library, and send some mail, that ain’t crucial.

          gunnar@ChicagoRollingThunder.org

        • #3347651

          you know Admin has gone to your head when…

          by sgt_shultz ·

          In reply to But does that

          to poster: check out the free redbooks and other wonderful technical articles on exactly how to implement security including filtering spam on dominio mail servers from http://www.ibm.com ibm would love to sell you services. ibm very interested in fostering domino on linux. if you are running on linux they may be helpful for free. point you in fruitful direction. you ought to make some exploratory phone calls imho and check out the website most thoroughly there is a ton and formums.
          i’m sorry but it does not compute to me that you run domino and linux but are asking this question.
          imho my job as admin is serve and protect, in that order, and i think you can finesse a better spam protection than banning website from router…
          i use hotmail at work to debug internet and email. to use as an address when i don’t want to register my work email address for something. for when i need to easily get at my email from anywhere as i travel. for poor mans file transfer. it is a useful tool. to ‘maintain’ it as a freebie i do have to go there and check and delete mail occasionally. so you would bum me out and all the users around me since i share so if they *want* to understand and use the concept of pop3 vs web based mail. they also understand about spoofing and about why spam is dangerous on unpatch boxes and stuff because i repeat it gently, clearly, kindly each time and it sinks in eventually. i think the root cause of admins who have this perspective of saying user too dumb for this or that AND not educating the user as part of the fix should take a look at this and see if it is working for them. maybe they think that having more information about IT than the users makes them more special so it follows that if users have less information they are less special. so glad to see you think you should cut that out. i think we should start erroring on the side of overinforming the users.
          i should start a new thread:
          You know Admin has gone to your head when you:
          -have a password of GodLike
          -ban aim
          -don’t allow users to install software themselves
          -ban hotmail.com
          etc

        • #3333719

          The problem with this is

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to you know Admin has gone to your head when…

          That I am NOT the NOTES admin. The options you speak of are not open to me, and the person that they are open to couldn’t care less.

          So to try to support my users, I am looking for other things that I CAN do.

          -My users do install software.
          -My password is “IamGreat”, not “GodLike”.
          -My users think aim is a toothpaste.
          -I only asked for feedback on the idea, and looking for a better solution if someone has one.

          If you would have ever read ANY of my postings you would see I am an advocate for supporting the user, not being the IT Nazi. But I guess that would have taken a little more effort than a drive by flaming does. Any positive Ideas, I would love to hear them.

        • #3244218

          I gotcha

          by teamdave ·

          In reply to The problem with this is

          I’m fortunate enough to administer a small company network w/less than 100 users, and my primary focus (after securing the network from damage and theft) is maintaining an affable relationship with my users. So I pretty much let them do as they please, and when something happens, I take the time to explain what it was they caused and why it happened, and they mostly shy away from it in the future. Of course, this would be impossible in a larger company, I know from experience….But to answer your question, jdclyde, the only solution I’ve found is a front-end anti-spam/anti-spyware appliance and software that runs nicely on Exchange 2003. Otherwise, you are stuck with installing antispyware and Outlook spamblocker on each system – which I used to do. Counterspy and Symantec have been my choices.

        • #3349547

          I’ll take you word for that

          by tony hopkinson ·

          In reply to Actually,

          Most people try to keep me well away from customers LOL

          Tony’s a great guy, but he can be somewhat blunt, was the reasoning.

        • #3347883

          Don’t get me started,

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to I’ll take you word for that

          unless you know of a way to stay in business without customers.

          They’re not unlike women — can’t live with them; can’t live without them.

        • #3333665

          That isn’t how I heard it

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Don’t get me started,

          Can’t live with them and can’t shoot them, so get a dog and go fishing.

        • #3333628

          Works for me.

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to That isn’t how I heard it

          Especially the dog.

    • #3335877

      You get what you pay for!

      by deepsand ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      MANY small businesses use Hotmail because it’s free, easy to establish any number of anonymous accounts, & just as easy to walk away from.

      Furthermore, most of the users are neither knowledgable of the risks inherent in e-mail, nor inclined to become both informed of such risks & proficient and diligent in avoiding such.

      Add to the mix the dirty little secret that MSN shares it’s subscriber base with “affiliates,” and you have the perfect hunting ground for spammers.

      Until such time as Hotmail becomes a provider of e-mail service first & foremost, as opposed to an advertising platform, it will continue to be a menace to us all.

      I feel your pain.

      • #3348736

        Configure it right–it won’t be shared

        by frank_s ·

        In reply to You get what you pay for!

        One Hotmail address I’ve had for about 3 or 4 years never gets any spam. I give this address to very few people (friends and family only) and it has an unusual name with numbers and letters. When I set it up originally, I unchecked all the option boxes. So it seems to me that unless you tell them OK, Hotmail/MSN doesn’t share addresses.

        • #3349653

          Hotmail….

          by ccassino ·

          In reply to Configure it right–it won’t be shared

          I had a hotmail acct a few years ago. I never gave the address to ANYONE. I went in a week later and my inbox was loaded with junkmail.

          jd, you need to look at the headers of the message, then go from there.

        • #3347889

          Then vs now

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to Configure it right–it won’t be shared

          I did the same for one of my clients when setting up multiple Hotmail accounts in 2001.

          They are still inundated with spam!

          It had been reported, in industry circles, that MSN was then sharing their “customer” file with “affiliates,” without regard to user preferences.

          Of particular note is the fact that the accounts designated as “female” consistently receive more spam than do those designated as “male.”

        • #3347787

          That’s right. Hotmail is safe if you keep it that way.

          by bob21 ·

          In reply to Configure it right–it won’t be shared

          I have 2 hotmail accounts. One is used whenever I have to give out an address online. It is full of spam. The other is used more privately. It gets almost no spam. Maybe 1 or 2 per month of those random messages. I have images turned off and they get referred back to hotmail as spam. For neither account did I ask to receive any extra information or offers.

        • #3333625

          NOT always user controllable.

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to That’s right. Hotmail is safe if you keep it that way.

          The accounts that I referenced where and are used solely for legitimate business purposes; they all began receiving copius quantities of spam immediately following their activation.

          The same is observed on certain MSN.com e-mail accounts.

    • #3348714

      I used a hotmail account – now Gmail.

      by rononline ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I used a Hotmail account for some time with Outlook Express, due to the fact that I travel a great deal spending a few months to a couple of years in each place, and with this arrangement I don’t have to keep distributing change of address notices.
      Hotmail are no longer supporting remote sending by OE etc.
      I now use Gmail with OE and its working just fine.

    • #3348655

      nope

      by jaqui ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I deny any @msn, @ microsoft, @ yahoo, or @ hotmail
      email addy’s.
      bounce them back to originating server.

      no more spam in my inbox.

      • #3349295

        Got that right

        by dafe2 ·

        In reply to nope

        We use Brightmail as well…..but just denying those you mention keeps a lot of garbage out of the inbox 🙂

        • #3349259

          well I also

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to Got that right

          deny anything other than plain text formatted email.
          no multipart alternative, no html.
          no email with attachments.

          that clears a huge amount of spam also.
          most spam is multipart alternative, to enable colours and images.

          for me, email should only be plain text.

          what is brightmail?
          an anti spam tool?

        • #3348752

          And you’ll be missing half of all legitimate emails aswell

          by techrepublic.com ·

          In reply to well I also

          I don’t know what business you’re in, but blocking other than plain text would mean us not missing over half of our customer emails.
          I would guess this definitely is not an option in most businesses.

        • #3349592

          my opinion on it

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to And you’ll be missing half of all legitimate emails aswell

          since email is meant for text messages, why do I need the multimedia crap in a text message?

          I don’t want advertising in email.
          I don’t want pictures or coloured text.

          plaint old black and white text…well since my system is defaulted to cyan on black …

          I’m not going to pay for your data transfer wastage by sending html email.

          yes those html formatted emails use more data transfer and cost you more money.

          since my business email signature states that only plain text email accepted, anyone that can’t read deserves to get undeliverable message.

        • #3349561

          Small business, obviously

          by mr l ·

          In reply to my opinion on it

          Clearly you do not administer email for a medium or parge business…else you would be told to rescind those text-only rules, and you would have to live with it.

          Saying “I said plain text, if you can’t read you don’t deserve to send email to my Fortune 500 multi-billion business” will accomplish one thing and one thing only for the manager of that email environment…that being…to allow him the chance to update his resume.

          Cheers

        • #3349559

          Lost opportunity

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to my opinion on it

          And someone looking to be a client of the business sends mail to you when their IT department configured all the Outlook clients to send mail in HTML by default…. Now they think you can’t receive mail, why would they want to do business with you?

          We must work with the lowest common denominator, unfortuantely, and keep it as safe and steady as possible.

        • #3349732

          it’s called bounced message with a notice

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to Lost opportunity

          notice being plain text only.
          html formatted email is not accepted.
          second email html formatted gets your domain reported as a spamming domain.

          any company that thinks costing people more to communicate with them is good is not a company that I’m worried about.
          they STEAL from people by doing so.

        • #3349721

          Poor implementation

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to Lost opportunity

          So any spoofed mail coming in as a particular domain is reported as spam for that domain.

          Bouncing mail back to spoofed messages is a waste, and typically scares the crap out of average users whose address was spoofed.

          Another scenario:

          Senior partner of the law firm representing your company writes to the CEO of your company. His mail, by default, is set to send as html. This guy doesn’t read the bounced message before having sent out another message to your CFO.

          Important information and questions are missed, filing deadline is not met, your company is either in contempt or out millions of dollars.

          Sure, it’s an exageration, but who do you think takes the blame when anything like this happens?

        • #3349553

          You tell it brother!

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to my opinion on it

          I loath html e-mail.

          If you want me to see your pretty advertising, include a link that I can click on IF I CHOSE.

          Too many scripts can be run in html e-mail, so I NEVER accept as html for myself. Unfortunately I can’t enforce this for the users as I am the Net/sys admin, not the e-mail admin. So instead I get the joy of going around the state to clean up the systems when they are so clogged with malware and viruses that you can’t even run just e-mail.

          Waa hoo!

          M$, you are a bane on my existence with all your auto crap.

        • #3349440

          I agree, plaintext better

          by dr dij ·

          In reply to You tell it brother!

          I use plain text email but only at home.

          Then you avoid any possibility of ‘mouse-over’ scripts activating or automatic scripts running off retarded windows / outlook flaws like buffer overflows.

          I see real bizarre spam emails with ?UTF-8=.. and things like that, will never know what they are 🙂

          While I use outlook at work, I’ve turned off scripting. Then I get the outlook window that states something like ‘due to activex in email it may not display correctly’. This is in an ad email from Oracle who should know better, and an IM security firm (who especially should know better!). Try this yourself and you’ll see that scripts are actually executing in these garbage emails. I tried viewing the source but it was so complicated the script could have been anywhere. Could have been a real penetration attempt.

          BTW brightmail is an anti-spam SERVICE. Does more than a simple program could. There are several of these, they use multiple a/v filters plus have networks of spam responders & honeypots to say it is spam before it is sent to you.

        • #3349729

          Dr Dij, utf-8

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to You tell it brother!

          is the newest encoding for plain text, and only windows doesn’t support it completely.

          utf-8 will also allow multilanguage support far better than the old ascii standard.

          applications will translate utf-8 into ascii as well as from original language into your default language, if you have support enabled.

        • #3347882

          Brightmail

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to well I also

          is and ASP which specializes in spam filtering software for use on enterprise e-mail servers.

          I use USA.net, an ASP specializing in e-messaging servise, for serveral of my e-mail accounts. USA.net uses Brightmail, along with user defined black/white lists, for the detection & disposition of spam & possible spam.

          Folowing their having been recently purchased by Symantec, it is to be expected that their rules engines will eventually be incorporated into Symantec’s Internet Security Suite.

        • #3347819

          asp..

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to Brightmail

          on a linux box…
          possible, but messy.
          use real professional products, like a compiled cgi done in c or c++

          instead of m$ Awfully Sh:{}y Product

          I don’t install support for m$ .asp, nor frontpage extentions.

          neither meet any recognised international standard.
          as a matter of fact they both only meet m$’ requirement of sucking more money out of people that beleive advertising implicitly instead of thinking for themselves.

          can ya tell that an asp product ain’t a good suggestion for an open source os person?

        • #3347802

          Huh?

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to asp..

          Quite frankly, it is neither obvious that your post was intended as a response to mine, nor clear in its meaning.

          Please clarify.

        • #3333606

          Thanks, Jaqui

          by dr dij ·

          In reply to Brightmail

          I guess windoze is pretty stupid if it doesn’t support a common standard for int’l email. They’re probably mostly spam tho in my case.

        • #3333553

          ???

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to Thanks, Jaqui

          ASP (Application Service Provider) is NOT .asp, which is what Jaqui referred to.

          Brightmail has nothing to do with .asp.

      • #3347785

        You lost a client./customer.!!!!

        by bob21 ·

        In reply to nope

        So Jaqui if I was a customer or prospective customer you would never hear from me. I would be angry with you and never do business with you. I never fail to flame a company (by e-mail, postal, or phone as necessary) that bounces my mail back because of my domain address. I get very indignant.

        • #3347671

          even

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to You lost a client./customer.!!!!

          if I stopped bouncing hotmail from the domain list,it would still get bounced for illegal SPAM formatting.

          hotmail only sends that spam format html email.

          so why should I care if someone gets pissed cause thier spam got rejected?

          anything but plain text is spam.

    • #3348577

      Other consideration

      by cactus pete ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I work for a law firm. many of the higher executives correspond with colleagues and they don’t care from which account an email comes – personal or business. They don’t differentiate between being at work and drafting an important meail, or being at home. So blocking certain domains may get you into a lot of hot water ith management.

      We have two Tumbleweed.com products, MMS and Mailgate which remove most spam.

      • #3348508

        Bingo

        by jellimonsta ·

        In reply to Other consideration

        Our CEO, CFO and Owner all correspond with individuals who use hotmail or yahoo accounts. Regardless as to whether it is personal or business, if you disrupt this correspondence, you can land yourself in hot water. IMHO.

        • #3349390

          Well, not looking to restrict anything or anyone

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Bingo

          Just trying to tie down the damn spam.

          I have a spam filter that quarantines about 500 spam per day, but still get quite a few through.

          Will have to just add another layer of anti-spam.

          Thanks for the input all.

        • #3349386

          Stopping spam

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to Well, not looking to restrict anything or anyone

          The best thing to do is to keep the email address from getting into the spammers’ handsin the first place.

          Don’t publish email address on web sites. Don’t submit to websites. use throw-away addresses when possible. Etc, etc…

        • #3349367

          I saw a script before

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Stopping spam

          where you could put your contact e-mail on your web site and it would open in their e-mail, but it wasn’t in a form that bots could gleem them.

          Anyone know what I am talking about?

          We have a sales force, and they REQURE that all of their addresses are available to the public.

          Any ideas?

        • #3349351

          I know what you mean

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

          I haven’t seen it in years, actually. I don’t even remember which webdev guy showed that to me. But it IS possible. I’m sure it just involves burying the actual address in a database, and using a pointer.

          Otherwise, you can put a pic of the text up, but not the actual text of the address.

          However, this will only help prevent future users’ addresses from being spammed as much. Once it’s out there, you’re screwed. It can be sold and resold until you’re swimming in spam.

          So we have that mailgate appliance in place. This way it’s not outsourced [postini was a close second for us] and the users can control what is or isn’t spam.

          In front of that we do an sbl-xbl lookup. This cut out volume in half. The next filter reduces the leftovers by 75%.

          So, what’s that in math… we actually receive 1/8 of the mail that is sent to us…

        • #3349256

          one option

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

          is to use the no-spam format for addys on a website.

          jaqui AT x-mail DOT net

          remove spaces and translate the at to @…
          then bots can’t get email addys from it.

          don’t use mailto links, use email forms that call a script when submitted is a better option.

          then the sales people can give thier addy out when they reply.

        • #3348745

          Javascript

          by fitzmark ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

        • #3349620

          Will give that a try

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Javascript

          Thanks!

          It is just depressing.

          I have a spam filter that blocks about 600 SPAMS a day, and I still get about 20 per users that still get through (120 users).

          And of course I can’t get them to STOP CLICKING ON THAT “REMOVE” LINK. GRRRRRRR.

        • #3349635

          You can always use a web form to send mail

          by grover99 ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

          That way, the form knows where to go but the sender doesn’t know the email address. Prevents harvesting. Only drawback is if the user mistypes their return email address in the form.

        • #3349581

          another script

          by allmedia.jda ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

          I see someone already posted a script that will “hide” the email address but I thought I’d share this one also. Seems slightly easier to use to me.

        • #3349551

          too easy

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to another script

          a bot can easily put these together again.

          Anyone else have another idea?

        • #3349428

          Use a meta tag

          by i_am_hellion ·

          In reply to another script

          Not sure how effective this is but is something I always use when not wanting email addresses to be harvested from a web site.

          I never get spammed from these sites with this on it.
          The company I work for during my day life recently had concerns from a newly developed web site and once this was implemented it seemed to reduce the concerns.

          Glad to help today and not stir anyone up …. LMAO

        • #3349418

          meta use

          by cactus pete ·

          In reply to another script

          The robots.txt file is only good for stopping bots that play by the rules.

          But it does keep your address from getting into a search engine and harvested off of yet another site.

        • #3347533

          hide that email address

          by lompnaz ·

          In reply to I saw a script before

          I use javascript to “hide” email address. Google “email scramble” and you should find a ready to use script.

          It doesn’t stop people who are prepared to click on the link then copy the address, but harvesting programs don’t see through it.

          I never publish email addresses on the web unless the client insists.

          I too would block hotmail out of choice, but it ain’t commercially viable!

        • #3348764

          Try Mailwasher

          by tony_c_nz ·

          In reply to Well, not looking to restrict anything or anyone

          I am employed by a small business that now has very little spam (guess we are lucky!). The amount of spam reduced considerably when we installed Mailwasher (a FireTrust product). I tried it on my home pc, and was so impressed we now have it at work. It screens email on the server, allowing the receiver to view in part (or in full, with / without headers) BEFORE it is downloaded, and determine if the mail is spam / virus / just plain dodgy.

          A reporting system allows you to add suspect addresses to a spam database, so that in future any further from that address, or domain, is automatically identified as spam (being in a database it helps all users of the programme, not just you). Programme is very adaptable to users requirements, and allows addresses to be black or white listed.

          Features: options to delete (from server), bounce, or blacklist (or all three if you so wish). Bouncing the email gives the impression your addy is not an active one and hopefully helps keep it off spammers lists! Although this compounds the problem of unnecessary mail, I believe it is justified. Spoofed addresses are usually picked up immediately, so the message will not bounce.

          As a customer, I will often use a Hotmail addy for an initial on-line inquiry until I am sure I can trust the site.

          Have recently switched to g-mail, and found that brilliant, not only because I have 1GB storage, but if I should not be able to access my account for more than 30 days, I know they will not have closed it on me (they allow nine months). I have used it for a few weeks now, AND NOT ONE BIT OF SPAM 😀

          http://www.mailwasher.com to look, to download for a free trial (30 days). I think it is about $UDS40 to buy…. well worth considering IMHO, though not sure how effective this will be where the email traffic is very heavy.
          Cheers
          Tony

    • #3349144

      I’m considering blocking that too

      by av . ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I already have yahoo, mindspring and MSN blacklisted. If any of the addresses from these sites are good, I whitelist those. It keeps lots of spam from getting to people’s inboxes.

      • #3348787

        Hotmail blocked for the last 2 years

        by philj2o ·

        In reply to I’m considering blocking that too

        Hotmail is the single biggest source of spam and virus laden emails *trying* to enter our organization. Will MS ever wake up to this and take some positive action??

      • #3347778

        What do you do about new customers?

        by bob21 ·

        In reply to I’m considering blocking that too

        So how does a new client get on your “white” list if you block his initial attemps to communicate?

    • #3348789

      Opps, please don’t do that

      by christineeve ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Hi,
      I live overseas and hotmail is my preferred way to log on anywhere and contact my family back in the US. I’ve had the same email address and IM name for years. My family knows it by heart and it’s easy for them to remember.

      Also, of all the spam I’ve ever received, it was never from a valid email address, i.e., AOL, juno, hotmail, it was ALWAYS a spoofed address.

      If you block the email address or domain, you’re not really blocking the spammer, you’re blocking the spoofed emailer/domain.

      • #3349727

        the spam

        by jaqui ·

        In reply to Opps, please don’t do that

        I did get from hotmail, yahoo, msn were all from valid email addresses.

        use webmail service from less well known provider to avoid getting blocked.

        my email that I hand out to most people for personal contact is:
        jaqui@somethingorother.com
        ( provided by myownemail )
        silly thing, with 5 active email addresses, in the last year I have only gotten 3 spam messages.
        from a personals list from somewhere. bounce the messages and haven’t seen one again.

    • #3348788

      Not so fast

      by sacre ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      While your own staff may not have any legitimate reason for using a hotmail account, it is unreasonable to place any such restrictions on your clients, especially individuals. It would be bad for business if emails coming in to ask for support are bouncing.

      I’d recommend using spamassassin or something similar.

    • #3348786

      They re not worried

      by vilela70 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      If they dont do anything to stop those anoying spamers, I agree to BAN HOTMAIL from serious networks!

      • #3347774

        How can they do that?

        by bob21 ·

        In reply to They re not worried

        How can they block a spoofed message that did not originate from them?

    • #3348783

      Block

      by graeme ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      as others have noted – along with all the other “free” addresses. We particularly note that Yahoo is the worst.

      DO NOT bounce (as suggested elsewhere). It serves no purpose except to clog the Internet’s overall bandwidth. The originating address was probably spoofed.

      • #3349703

        Agree – don’t bounce

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to Block

        I get quite a bit of bogus bounce message: the message really bounced from some site (AOL, etc) but were never sent by me. I have a short domain and spammers like to use it. I don’t send out ANY email with it and there is no relaying, etc. I had nothing to do with the original message (spoofed sender) yet it comes back to me. In a way the bouncers are spamming ME!

    • #3348781

      Using “mail options” for Hotmail

      by maryvee21 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Hotmail can be set up so that you will only receive mail from addresses in your contact list. Anything that is identified by Hotmail as “junk” will be put in junk email folder and you won’t ever see it unless you go to that folder. You can even set it up to where junk mail is deleted immediately upon arrival in that folder or is kept for a short time. Where you see the tabs for “Today”, “Mail”, “Calendar” and “Contacts” you would click on “Mail” then choose “Options” to the right of those tabs.

      • #3349608

        Talking about recieving FROM hotmail

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to Using “mail options” for Hotmail

        I am not worried about hotmail users getting spammed, it is the spam that comes FROM the header hotmail.com.

        I am aware that almost all spam is spoofed, but I just see the majority of the spam that gets by our spam filter says from hotmail.

      • #3333627

        made the options.. still getting them

        by a1deydreams ·

        In reply to Using “mail options” for Hotmail

        I use hotmail for peronal mail as it is a throwaway system… have set up the filters to send junk to junk mail.. even reoprt all junk as junk.. I get loads of spam.. even the bounced undeliverable mail.. I never sent to addresses..I know that someone in the long line of correspondance circle has my email in their system and it is comprimised by a trojan or virus.. eventually I will get all my mail from someplace else… but for now many people and some educational sites I need have the hotmail account listed.. when I no longer need those accounts I will get rid of the hotmail.. I never open.. just delete the spam..

    • #3348780

      depends on how good your antispam setup is..

      by maxsecdsl.pipex.com ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      the ‘from’ is usually spoofed anyway, and shouldn’t be relied upon by you anti-spam system.

      Same could be said for yahoo.com etc etc.

      have a look at spamassassin for a nice cheap & very good solution to this, otherwise you’ll be check ip-locations and blocking everything outside you continent like verizon do (bad idea btw).

      • #3348770

        Take a Look at BusinessMail

        by colinp ·

        In reply to depends on how good your antispam setup is..

        A great product we use is called Businessmail (www.netcplus.com) which has an amazing antispam system for not a lot of money. It is also a very versatile mail programme.

      • #3348769

        Take a Look at BusinessMail

        by colinp ·

        In reply to depends on how good your antispam setup is..

        A great product we use is called Businessmail (www.netcplus.com) which has an amazing antispam system for not a lot of money. It is also a very versatile mail programme.

      • #3349605

        We do manufaturing

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to depends on how good your antispam setup is..

        And because of the tonnage involved (cement products) we only do business with our state and the two or three that neighbor us, so outside the country really would not affect us on a business level.

        But I am still not looking to block ANYTHING from ANYWHERE that could be legitamate.

    • #3348778

      The ultimate solution to spam is even more drastic, but easy

      by filip_declercq ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Maybe I’m wrong, but I think my solution is the best and easiest way dealing with spam, but needs a worldwide change.

      My proposal: only allow mails that contain a digital certificate, issued by a trusted certificate authority that certifies the identity of the mailer (so: not only certification of e-mail address). Unsigned mail can then be interpreted as possible spam.
      Sounds easy, but needs a worldwide adoption to work good. But: adoption could go fast, if e.g. Microsoft would integrate this into their new release of Outlook (Express).

      Identity verification doesn’t have to be expensive: Thawte does it for free. Besides this, it could be a nice job for the government. The Belgian government for instance (where I live) has started the issue of digital identity cards, which makes digitaly signing possible. (more info: e.g. on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/eid/ )

      Final step in this process (for ultimate success) is changing legislation: spam has to be illegal and prosecuted. This would be the hardest step, I think.

      Maybe I’m dreaming…

      • #3348767

        Good idea but won’t work

        by th7711 ·

        In reply to The ultimate solution to spam is even more drastic, but easy

        Totally agree the concept. However, human like to cover themselves in Internet and a lot of shadow ISP is not regulated in some contries. It takes a lot of effort to enforce/implement. For example, HK has started to issue digital ID card with e-cerf and promoted the usage for two years. The penetration is still limited.

      • #3349600

        spam illegal

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to The ultimate solution to spam is even more drastic, but easy

        It already is in most if not all of the US.

        That doesn’t stop some scumbag from setting up their server in another country that doesn’t have laws to stop that and remotely control it.

        They need to take it a step further and prosocute ANYONE involved with it at any level. From gleaming the addresses, to selling the lists, to using the lists. Jail time, not a fine. Give them a boy friend that will be a real friend in the end, if you know what I mean.

        • #3348004

          ANYONE?

          by fresnotech ·

          In reply to spam illegal

          Spam is a federal crime, thanks to the CAN-SPAM act passed a couple of years ago. It’s not working, but it’s trying. If everyone was prosecuted, there would be a couple of small problems.
          1)Some people who “spam” are legitimate, in the same way that you might get a cold call during dinner. Instead of prosecuting them, there needs to be something like the do not call registry, or in this case, the do not mail registry.
          2)Jails are overcrowded in this country already. If we are going to send everyone to jail, there won’t be much room for murderers and such.
          3)Some people who end up being the sender of spam are really just exploited machines which are spam zombies, sending out mail without the user knowing it.
          4)It would be nearly impossible to charge people in another country with something that is a crime in the US, or UK, or whatever country, when it’s not a crime in their home country.

        • #3333717

          Extradition

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to ANYONE?

          If you commit a crime in one country, as long as you can be brought to that country you can be charged.

          Even if that crime was done from your computer where it is legal, you still committed a crime once you sent your spam to areas where their are laws against it. Just need to make sure their aren’t extradition laws before you can think you are safe just by crossing a border.

      • #3349700

        They’re doing this now

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to The ultimate solution to spam is even more drastic, but easy

        problem is spammers register for certificates also – actually more than legitimate places. it doesn’t stop them sending out spam with certificates, just validates who the sender is. Tho it does make it easier to then block those certificates that are sending spam.

        • #3332886

          You’re right, but

          by filip_declercq ·

          In reply to They’re doing this now

          It’s indeed not enough to have a certificate that validates the e-mailaddress. It has to be linked to your personal identity. If you then only accept mail from that kind of e-mailaccounts, things should work fine.

          But alas, still needs a lot of work all around the world…

    • #3348766

      Don’t have a problem blocking Hotmail.

      by myron_s ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Should I get a flurry of junk from hotmail to my company network then I’ll just block the lot from Hotmail. Simple as that.

    • #3348762

      Just do it!

      by munezrhep ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      There are more reliable e-mail service providers out there. Change then.

      I think I heard of Hotmail. But never tried because most of us use the famous ‘y’….mail and others too!

      Block Hotmail.com if:
      – you can prove that they don’t/can’t do anything against spam.
      – it’s annoying (in the sense). if you can’t take it anymore.

      Else…I don’t know why you chose Hotmail.com =)

      • #3349598

        Chosing hotmail

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to Just do it!

        I am picking on hotmail because about 60% of EVERYTHING that gets by our spam filter has a hotmail header.

        I do not need viagra or a mortgage or a date with a lonely housewife. Got enough problems with my own wife, let alone put up with someone elses wife.

    • #3348754

      IT’S ABOUT TIME

      by jdelasaux ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Since Congress is totally in the dark about Spam, and the Internet gurus/governors refuse to install an address authentication system such as AMTP … let’s get with it.

      I guess we will just have to start punishing some of the more outrageous ISP’s ourselves.

      If we all blacklisted Hotmail in our own email programs’ Rules, the outcry might get someone’s attention.

      I, for one, am outraged at the condition that those in charge of the Internet policies have allowed the spammers to degrade the Internet to.

      • #3349699

        They’ve made notification emails useless

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to IT’S ABOUT TIME

        the spammers have effectively made any kind of business notification emails useless, as if it has a link or message to do something, you cannot trust it even if it is valid.

    • #3348730

      SPAM Blocking

      by cholmes ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Hotmail.com & msn.com are already blocked in my domain, as well as the *.info, *.biz & *.tv

      I haven’t blocked AOl becuase we have several people that use AOL from home to send themselves reminders, etc….like me!

    • #3349691

      Hotmail Blocked

      by jk91 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I’ve been blocking hotmail for a while now. I’ve yet to look at a log and see that a legit email has been blocked from hotmail (whether actually from hotmail or spoofed). If a business is using hotmail accounts it probably isn’t one we care to communicate with.

      • #3333497

        And you made that decision…

        by stevebuck ·

        In reply to Hotmail Blocked

        to block Hotmail from the company all by yourself? What kind of business does your company do? Is your CEO aware of your actions and the consquences it could be having on biz? What leads does your sales force follow if they are blocked? You don’t get business leads from any hotmail accounted customers? (Well good for you.)
        Our MIS cannot block one single mail here because it could be a false positive, and that especially includes Hotmail. Yes, many people and small businesses outside of North America use Hotmail for legitimate business. And why not? It is free, has a 250MB mailbox, makes linking with MSN Messenger easy, and has a secure SSL login that can be accessed from anywhere. Do these Hotmail users deserve less of your respect? I cannot believe that IT people in this forum are allowed to take it upon themselves to block any domain from their company servers, especially when it is obvious that most here have no clue as to the real origin of SPAM to begin with. Anyone can have a “Hotmail FROM header”, without having a real Hotmail account, or Yahoo, or 163 or whatever are the favorite return addresses of spammers. But if the SPAM is not really from Hotmail’s servers, what use is it blocking the domain name except to block that name only? Why blame Hotmail? Hotmail is an easy target for spammers, but the spammers don’t need a real Hotmail account to send their SPAM (and Hotmail servers wouldn’t allow it anyway). All they need is some poor shmucks open relay or virus infected SMTP engine to send as many million messages as they want, completely undetected. If you really get a SPAM from Hotmail and the originating IP is a Hotmail server, then report it!! Hotmail will terminate that user’s account almost immediately, because contrary to what is believed, MS hates SPAM too.
        If you do a little research you will find the most effective method to fight SPAM is by “graylisting”. This uses the fact that a legitimate mail server will retry on an initial delivery failure, while a SPAMMER will give up on the first try. It will introduce a slight delay to mail delivery, but known good mail can then be “whitelisted” for future speedy delivery.
        http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/05/20/mail_filtering.html?page=2

    • #3349676

      Check a few thing B-4 you block

      by mollenhourb9 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      If you are getting SPAMmed to death by hotmail then hey, block it. Just check one thing first. How many of your companies customers are using Hotmail? Does the CEO’s wife email him using Hotmail (or does the CEO’s husband…)? Are the hotmail accounts spoofed.

      I was blocked from emailing my own mother (from my home account) by Earthlink, because somebody spoofed by Charter email address, even though I had firewalls, virus protection, and a few “trick” entries in my address book. Earthlink thought I was spamming them. The real tip off was when I spammed myself.

      Once you’ve checked all those things, go for it. I suggest you also put something on your company web site telling potential customers that they will not be able to get in touch with you via Hotmail. You DO NOT want to the the “network admin who brought our customers to their knees”.

      • #3349593

        Good post

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to Check a few thing B-4 you block

        Thanks.

        It does bring out all the main reasons NOT to block.

        Anyone who has read my posts before will know that I am not a big advocate of the IT NAZI, and it isn’t my intention here.

    • #3349674

      Not that disposable

      by mbaumli ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I still have a single vendor who does have Hotmail.com as a domain. Yes there are people who do use free email services as their email provider.

      Even so doing, I deal with a massive amount of spam and killing hotmail would probably make about a 5% or less dent of the overall total. After spending months tinkering with a Lotus Notes Filter, the only thing that I realize is that Spam is every evolving when it comes to being blocked. What may work flawlessly one way may not work at all the next day.

      • #3349640

        How I turned > 1000 spam / day into <5 spam / day

        by doctordisk ·

        In reply to Not that disposable

        Unfortunately, I didn’t foresee spam in the early nineties when I put my company e-mail address on my company web-site.
        I also opened doctordisk AT hotmail DOT com which I used while away from home until I set up web-mail access to my drdisk DOT com DOT hk server. Since then I mainly used it for occasional private stuff.
        Also, in the early days, I naively entered my “real” e-mail address when downloading stuff.
        When spam first exceeded 200 / day I bought MailWasher, which worked really well, except that I now think it was a mistake to turn on “bouncing”.
        The one trouble with MailWasher was that I still had to at least glance at the headers of the mails marked for deletion. After a while I was having to have a “quick look” at over 500 spam a day in case there was “real” mail therein.
        I noticed that my “paid for” Hotmail account (not a “free” one) never got more than one or two spam in the Inbox any day and most days it got none.
        Eventually, after four days in the same fortnight at over 1000 spam, for my own sanity, I made the decision to abandon my company address. I set up a “vacation” type system that answered the first e-mail from any given address and referred them to my web-site to get my new e-mail address. There on my web-site the new address was given using extra spaces and AT and DOT (as shown above). My old company account is set to forward the mail it answers to my hotmail address but to delete any susequent mail from the same sending address.
        A filter in MailWasher sorts all mail forwarded to my hotmail address from my company address so that it is very easy to check before deleting.
        The first day this was in operation it was forwarding over 500 per day, but the drop off was very rapid. Within a month it was less than 50 a day. Now there is only a trickle. Meanwhile every decent person who sends real mail looks at my website, follows the directions and sends again to my hotmail account.
        Now, a few months later, I get lots of real mail to my hotmail account and one or two spam. One day last week, 5 spam arrived.
        My plan is to leave this system working for about a year, and then to close down my company account altogether.
        My e-mail checking time has now decreased from over three hours hours per day down to only 15 to 45 minutes depending on how many I actually need/decide to answer.
        These days I like Hotmail!

    • #3349668

      Hotmail is the pest of the internet

      by hdanielb ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Not only because used as disposable to send spam: MS also use their msn messenger service as a hook to make people take a hotmail account. Users beleive by default that they can?t get messenger without hotmail. (using passport.com)
      Once this account is known by messenger contacts it is used as a regular email address, and sometimes is difficult to enforce use of corporate email accounts, without depending of hotmail.
      Also difficult to filter its access thru the web; it can be accessed thru several domains like login.passport.net, g.msn.com, etc.
      Besides, if you try to enforce the use of a non-ms email client, sometimes you can?t get rid of emails thru hotmail. Some little “poppers” services (hotmail popper, frepops, etc. ) can help to hold email transactions exclusively inside your corporate, or favorite email client.
      All this makes very difficult to block emails from hotmail, because great part of users contacts have an account. The only real approach to solution is blocking every email that is not in contact list, and taking them to a bulk email folder, which users should inspect periodically, with an extra training in order to take real emails from there.

    • #3349666

      Agreed

      by myers-j ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I agree 100% and gone that route. I had to back off though because too many legitimate e-mails from hotmail were not getting through.

    • #3349645

      Go for it.

      by hgordon ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I’m surprised that you are even taking the time to “considerate” it. Just do it. It is a 100% positive for every one in your organization who receives e-mail.

    • #3349629

      Hotmail/Yahoo

      by vegac ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Most of my users use either Hotmail or Yahoo at work. They are both bad news when it comes to SPAM however at times they are needed in our daily work.

    • #3349627

      Microsoft Intelligent Message Filter

      by deacon336 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      A more useful way to handle SPAM for us was to install Microsoft’s Intelligent Message Filter. It has eliminated ~95% of our SPAM from all sources.

      If you are running Exchange Server 2003 with Outlook XP or 2003 clients it is a great solution and the price is right (free). It is easy to discard true SPAM and put the “gray” items in the user’s Junk-Mail folder for review. BUT, I strongly suggest that you read the documentation carefully so you do not throw away mail you want to keep.

      FWIW, I now know that approximately 75% of all e-mail we receive is SPAM.

      This link is to the download page at MS.
      http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/imf/default.mspx

      • #3349625

        IMF Works Great

        by texasjetter ·

        In reply to Microsoft Intelligent Message Filter

        We were using McAfee’s Spam Assasian which worked ok for a while. But it degraded to only catching ~65% of spam. I changed to the Intelligent Messaging Filter and it gets 92% of the spam with 0 false positive. I recently change the upper end of the filter to reject anthing above 5 and that has dropped over 10,000 spam messages in just 5 days. Considering I only have about 65 users I think that is significant. I have gone from getting 60-70 spam in my Inbox down to 6 or 7 a day!

    • #3349619

      We are not a small company and have used it

      by stillcatchingup ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      We have used hotmail and yahoo accounts in the past, because a company we did daily business with used a spam blocking company that black-listed our ISP. It took our ISP over 4 months to prove that the SPAM was not coming from their site and was able to get their name removed.

      Just something to think about.

      • #3349578

        been there

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to We are not a small company and have used it

        done that.

        Was black listed on a CBL list, and it was a beotch to stay off it for more than a day at a time for about a month.

        It has been about two weeks since we have been listed.

    • #3349615

      no problems with hotmail

      by tthompson0007 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I dont have many problems with hotmail spam. My firewall filters out 99% of the spam.

      • #3349569

        And your firewall is what?

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to no problems with hotmail

        Just a hint, for this to be helpful you need to share the solution you found.

        Thanks!

    • #3349613

      We use a spam appliance that ended all our probs

      by jimy ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      We use a spam appliance called DoubleCheck that eliminated the problem completely. Also gives admins and mgmt the ability to report on usage, block viruses, etc.

    • #3349591

      ASSP

      by scminter ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Try ASSP. It is FREE and it blocks spam at the SMTP level. That way spammers spammers smtp software might think the addresses are bad and remove them.

      I’ve been using it for months here and it has been great. I only have 100 mailboxes though so I don’t know how well it will scale.

    • #3349584

      Poor strategy

      by itdood ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      A spammer would never actually use a hotmail account to send SPAM FFS. I’m thinking if someone sent out a few million emails from their hotmail account it just might violate their TOS??

      For our org, much of the recruiting we do is online, and many candidates use free email services to communicate with us, so blocking one of them would hurt business.

      Blocking or black listing based on the Domain name itself is a very poor anti spam strategy. It’s not a best practice in the least because given viruses and SPAM, up to 70% of all SMTP connctions have a spoofed FROM: address. You’ll be chasing your tail and hurting users.

      If you are running an email server and wish to implement anti-spam techniques you should look into DNSBL or RDNS at the edge. That will block about 75% of all spam at the connection which is very nice. The connection is 550-ed so there’s no data exchanged.

      From there, pass on what’s left to a dictionary/isolation type filter.

      With that approach, you’ll achieve about 98% blocking of SPAM with very little false-positives.

      There’s surfcontrol, ironport, brighmail, postini to name a few vendors. You should isolate your mail exchanger anyway, you could use Symantec enterprise gateway at the edge which also uses DNSBL and does virus filtering before it even hits the local MTA and stores which offloads your local email and provides better services to your users.

      • #3348369

        Hot mail was blocked by RBL

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to Poor strategy

        a few years back all the MS servers on hotmail were blocked by the RBL because they were sending out huge amounts of spam. It’s cool that a volunteer org could shut down M$ for irresponsible conduct. They do not block by domain name but by TCP#. Until win XP end spammers could not easily spoof TCP#s from, installed TCP/IP stack did not support this. Now they can (see grc.com). But they have to use their own email pgm, not the ISP’s, so that’s why ISPs are blocking direct email much of the time from their networks. Still, unless M$ fixes this or other effective cure is found, we are in for major spam overflow internet meltdown.

    • #3349583

      That’s not a bad idea

      by dbucyk ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I’m with Telus and I hate it for what they say they can do.

      They say they are also trying to eliminate spam or at least reduce it and I have had to use Outlook Express and configure some mail rules to just delete it, but I still have the odd one come in and yes, it’s from either hotmail or some other person.

      Blocking hotmail is actually a good idea. I have no use for them either. They do give you a chance to set up an email account with them, but, with all the viruses and spam that come from hotmail and MSN messenger, I wholeheartedly agree that hotmail is a nuisance and has to be dealt with accordingly.

      • #3347961

        spam and viruses

        by fresnotech ·

        In reply to That’s not a bad idea

        I understand that there are some people who send out spam and viruses from free email accounts, and particularly hotmail, but most of the time the spam or virus is coming from an email zombie (someone infected, but doesn’t know it) or the address is spoofed. I have never gotten a virus from hotmail, and I get very little spam to my email account, so unless I was originating the spam or viruses, they don’t come from my email address, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of people out there that have me blocked because I use Hotmail.

    • #3349579

      AppRiver

      by jcptech ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I use a very cost effective service that is no sweat to setup and 98-99% effective. I work at an educational institution so my prices are a bit lower, I pay approx. $800 for 120 email accounts a year. AppRiver blocked 130,000 junk mail and additionally filtered out over 3000 virus infected emails. The time it saves me and everyone else it more then pays for itself. I looked into linux box filter which is free but I’d have constant work to do, I’ve looked at software that has definition updates like AV but it’s more trouble and money then AppRiver. If you have your own email server it would be worth checking it out. http://www.appriver.com/

    • #3349575

      Try stopping at the source

      by deback2u ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Everybody talks about spam but who really is doing anything about it. It’s not Hotmail that is causing the emails, it’s the spammer. Why not make the proliferaters suffer? I believe if bandwidth was reduced based upon IP addresses the email multipliers would be more selective in what they pass along and may even offer up the idiots who think volume is better than content. Why not look at the source instead of the result?

      • #3349568

        Outstanding…BUT

        by mr l ·

        In reply to Try stopping at the source

        Great idea…not new, but great nonetheless.

        Now…please tell us all how to go about doing that.

        • #3349563

          Still working the details

          by deback2u ·

          In reply to Outstanding…BUT

          The trick is finding the perpetrator. I figure working backward will force people to keep identifying where the originator is located.
          My suggestion is to drop back one level at a time e.g. T3,T1, then drop baud until it reaches 110. You cannot stop someone from using the internet but you can surely slow them down.

      • #3348367

        Not such a great idea

        by dr dij ·

        In reply to Try stopping at the source

        The majority of spammers are faking domain but not always the TCP/IP address. However with windows XP it is now possible for them to fake from TCP/IP address also with the default TCP stack. ISPs could block outgoing packets with TCP/IP address from not in their subnet but this is extra cost and not likely to do this unless pressured to. They’s switch to faking TCP/IP if we block certain TCP addr. Not that it wouldn’t temporarily help tho.

      • #3348239

        Idea

        by choppit ·

        In reply to Try stopping at the source

        I don’t know what the restrictions are currently, but how about also capping the number of outbound mails per day and lowering the number of possible recipients.

    • #3349573

      No Hotmail, No way

      by mr l ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I manage 13,000+ desktops and the Notes environment that supports them as well. Try blocking the hotmail domain and then permitting on an explicit basis. You can do this for all major spam-factory domains (yes I know they are spoofing…just easier this way), yahoo, msn, aol, etc…

      Great tool to implement this? Several, we use Trend, but any “Name” player in the space will handle this simple level of filtering for you.

      Have someone who “needs” all the junk allowed through? With Trend or any other competent product for Domino you would be able to drop that internal user into an exceptions list the eliminates the spam filtering functions. (NOTE, make anyone who wants onto this list fight tooth and nail to get there…and make sure that they or the person insisting you put them there outranks you…else say NO, loudly)

    • #3349567

      Reply To: Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      by caleb38 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am the I.T. manager for a company of about 50 people. We have several Yahoo retail websites hosted by Yahoo! and were inundated with SPAM. Out of frustration and desperation, I installed a program called Qurb, a whitelist program, at the client level. This program is easy to use and manage and works great. We’ve been running it now for about two years and I’ve never looked back. More importantly, I still have a job!

    • #3349566

      Whitelist magic

      by caleb38 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am the I.T. manager for a company of about 50 people. We have several Yahoo retail websites hosted by Yahoo! and were inundated with SPAM. Out of frustration and desperation, I installed a program called Qurb, a whitelist program, at the client level. This program is easy to use and manage and works great. We’ve been running it now for about two years and I’ve never looked back. More importantly, I still have a job!

    • #3349560

      Free email provides great service

      by bakpkg ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Way too many people are confused by spam. I have used hotmail since MS set it up and would be lost without it. It keeps my personal and business email accounts free from spam as I never give them out to the sites that request I register (ie the one your on now for example). I use a whitelist filter on the hotmail account which lets me delete junk in mass. Secondly 99% of the spam I get is spoofed so blocking the return address is a waste of time and blocking a domain like hotmail makes even less sense. For all you admins who only want you users using the business address to sign up with are just asking for the spam you get. The accounts are free and have generous sizes so use them to catch the spam. As for sending the spam to the hotmail support staff, I have done this but unless it is a phishing attack I don’t as they are swamped and will only tell you the address is spoofed. As for blocking domains I guess we should block Paypal, Ebay, Citibank, Suntrust, Regions, etc as I have been spammed and hit with phishing attacks from all of the them also.

    • #3349543

      Just DO IT!

      by beau ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      We’ve had hotmail, yahoo, excite, and aol.com blocked for over a year now. I work for a company with 1500+ users and we werer processing more than 1500+ messages per day from just these domains. We also stood up the Symantec SMTP Gateway (http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/products.cfm?productid=164) . We haven’t seen spam in months!

      Good luck with that.

    • #3349517

      Nope, You’re in Good Company

      by simontew ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      My brother works for T-Mobile, the German-based cell phone carrier. More than a year ago they blocked all incoming mail from Hotmail accounts.

      No doubt there were a few irritated friends of staff members who found they were no longer welcome. On the other hand, as you say, who uses Hotmail for business? And, if you’ve got a complaint, you can send it via their website so they won’t have annoyed many customers.

      Here where I work we have to quarantine all suspected spam for a few days in case it turns out to be real emails. The email team have had to pay for huge upgrades to the Exchange Server so they can store the spam during quarantine. If you can stop the spam hitting your firewall in the first place, by blocking Hotmail, you’ll reduce the amount of storage you require.

      Only problem I can foresee is Are any customers likely to try to contact you from Hotmail accounts? If so, you’ll have to balance out the benefits of reducing your email storage space against the potential loss of goodwill from customers who get blocked.

      -Si

    • #3349504

      Hotmail for work

      by codejock ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Yes, I have clients who use Hotmail accounts strictly to test inbound mail when it looks like the POP3 server is acting flaky.

      I very aggressively filter spam for my own domains. I use Spamhaus’ XBL and SBL to block connections from known spam IPs.

      Hotmail is the bane of your existence. I’ve found the majority of spam spattering my domains comes from the Asia-Pacific and Latin America/Carribbean address blocks.

      If the connection originates from either an APNIC or LACNIC IPv4 address, the server closes the connection with a status 550 “Connection attempt denied from banned IP. Use Web form at [domain’s contact us Web page address]”. We haven’t found a spammer yet who will manually enter their message into a Web form.

      Most spam we see have forged headers. We don’t even bother sending a bounce message. The mail flows into a folder which gets reviewed before getting dumped to the bit bucket. If the mail is legitimate, it gets forwarded to the user.

      Now before I get lectured about how one shouldn’t just unequivocally ban whole IPv4 address blocks, let me remind detractors of the policy of the following:

      1. We do no business with companies or customers in Asia, Australia, NZ, Latin America or the Caribbean.

      2. We offer an alternate means that allows legitimate customers and businesses to contact us other than e-mail.

      3. The Internet is an interconnection of thousands of *private* networks and systems. Your freedom of expression ends at my network boundary. I am under no obligation to accept your connection just because you want to make it. Your use of *my* resources is subject to *my* policies of acceptable use. My AUP excludes unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail. If APNIC and LACNIC ISPs continue to choose to host spammers on their systems, I’ll continue to choose to deny connections on my SMTP port to them. Network closed. Go away.

      Some customers follow anti-spamming advice and get disposible accounts from hotmail, gmail and other services like them for e-commerce purposes. We haven’t cut off those domains yet. If we started swimming in spam from them, we’d ban the sender domain and explain that their customers need to vent their spleens at the provider.

      • #3349471

        Asian IP ranges

        by jdclyde ·

        In reply to Hotmail for work

        Could you post what ranges of IP’s you deny?

        I am in the same boat that we barely go out of the state, and Never out of the country accept Canada, and everyone knows they don’t count (I hope you either have a sence of humor or are not from Canada or both).

        Thanks!

        • #3333711

          Here you go

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Asian IP ranges

          Sure, all IPs that start with the following are prevented from making connections on port 25 at the server.

          Similarly, mail headers are scanned for origination or relay through the blocks that start with the same numbers.

          60.
          61.
          139.
          200.
          202.
          203.
          210.
          211.
          218.
          219.
          220.
          221.
          222.

          Make sure any filters check only the start of the IP address in a received line. You don’t want to ban an IP because they have one of those numbers elsewhere in the IP address (friend of mine did that and blocked a major client until he fixed the filter).

          Let me know how how much it cuts down on APNIC originating spam. I’d be interested to know whether you see significant reductions, as I have.

          P.S. I am Canadian and have a sense of humor. 🙂 Don’tcha know, we’re just a branch plant for the US, eh? 🙂

        • #3332613

          Couldn’t determine where 139 comes from

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Here you go

          60. China
          61. India
          200. COLOMBIA
          202. AUSTRALIA
          203. AUSTRALIA
          210. AUSTRALIA
          211. Japan
          218. China
          219. Japan
          220. Japan
          221. China
          222. Japan

          The rest using http://www.dnsstuff.com were easy to find and I have clearance from the boss to block these.

          Can you help me determine where the 139.0.0.0 range is from? Need to show that before I am allowed to block.

          Thanks! between the e-mail masking on the web sites and this, I should finally be able to make a dent in the crap coming in.

          NOTE: as a Canadian, didn’t you misspell humour? Someone might think you were a damn yank or something. lol!
          (thanks again)

        • #3332381

          Those are BIG IP ranges

          by stevebuck ·

          In reply to Couldn’t determine where 139 comes from

          and in fact you will ban my IP address as it is in the 211 range. (I am in Taiwan, not Japan.) Korea also has part of the range in 211. So, although your boss may sanction your actions, in effect you will end up in your own little Canadian intranet, but we will never have any mail exchanges brother. BTW, I did a quick whois on 139.1.1.1 and found that range up to 139.1.255.255 is in Germany according to the ARIN database. I just feel blocking IP ranges like this is a knee jerk reaction and you really should research better ways of handling and blocking SPAM.

        • #3334268

          Read the original post

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Those are BIG IP ranges

          Yes, they are broad. Before criticizing, read the original post it was based on. I provided the basis of why those IP blocks are used.

          To acknowledge the technical point, 139.x.x.x should not be on the list. It’s not part of our denial filters. Again, we don’t do business with Germany so the likelihood of receiving e-mail from that part of the net is remote. I point out, again, we provide alternate means for legitimate interested customers to reach us via our Web form.

          Your reply contains several baseless assumptions. I would characterize it as a “knee-jerk” reaction to the reply with the IPv4 blocks I provided without having read the original post.

          1. I am the boss. For my own domains, these IPv4 blocks (except 139 as noted) are denied connections to port 25 in accordance with RFC 2821 with a 550 error.

          2. The effect of creating a Canadian intranet is baseless. We accept connections from mail exchangers elsewhere in the world. Read the original post before you spout off.

          3. Thousands of spam messages were analysed for patterns in origination IPs. We’ve received thousands of spam messages from KR, JP, CN, and TW.

          4. I don’t care if you can’t reach us by e-mail. You get a 550 error telling you an alternate means of communication. What part of we don’t do business with APNIC/LACNIC countries did you miss in the original post?

          5. I don’t care how you feel about blocking IP ranges. “Feelings” are not a primary basis for deciding action. I care about results. Blocking those ranges has resulted in such a drop in spam that what little is getting through can be adequately managed by the limited human resources I have.

          6. Spammers do NOT pay for the bandwidth, added storage, and processing equipment I MUST procure to deal with their garbage. They don’t pay for the personnel time wasted having to filter through or delete their crap. They don’t care that I have to buy larger drives. They hose the entire Internet with their fecal matter hoping some of it will stick. Obviously enough does to make it apparently lucrative (though I think the returns are diminishing, hence the increase in volumes seen recently). Filtering is having an effect.

          Further, you don’t pay for it either. If you think the policy is so unfair, then you’re welcome to put your money where your mouth is and pay for it. Then you can dictate to me what my policies are.

          7. To restate something from my original post, “Your freedom of expression ends at my network boundary.” I’ll even go one further, “My staff expresses themselves in a manner consistant with my policies or they find somewhere else to work.” Censorship can only be performed by governments and not private individuals or companies.

          8. I don’t force my views on ISPs in Korea, Taiwan, China or Japan or anywhere else. If an ISP chooses to host spammers on their systems, then I choose to block them.

          (Oh and since you don’t have the statistics at your desposal: we have not received a single piece of legitimate e-mail from servers in the APNIC IPv4 address block for 2 years. Not one. Chew on that.)

        • #3334267

          Error

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Those are BIG IP ranges

          Disregard this post. TR fired an error on the original post. It was a duplicate because both made it through.

        • #3333278

          Good solution for some

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to Those are BIG IP ranges

          My company manufactures concrete pipe and other similar products. We will NEVER do business with anyone but our state, and the states that are directly connected to us (and that big place up north of the border, can’t remember what it was called…..)

          So blocking e-mail from other countries would never impact me where I am now. The only problem is my current firewall won’t allow blocking by a range (I can’t believe it either) so I will be looking to add an access list to our router to drop them.

          We literally get about 600 Spam messages EVERYday, and only half get blocked out by our spam filter.

          Short of commando raids on spammers, this seems like the next best option.

        • #3333167

          That big place north of the border

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Good solution for some

          Hollywood North
          Canuck Country
          The 51st State
          The Great White North
          Land of Igloos and Mounties
          The Northern Discount Drug Store
          Thunderin’ Tundra
          Snowshoe Country
          The Nation Hudson’s Bay Company Built
          Taxation Town
          The True North Strong and Free
          Molson’s Mooseland
          Home of the Two Solitudes
          Poutine Palace

          Last but not the least, Canada (meaning “village” – isn’t that what they called the place they stowed Number 6 in “The Prisoner”?)

          And to those of us living here, it’s “Home”. 😀

        • #3334265

          Don’t use 139

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Couldn’t determine where 139 comes from

          139 is Germany. Don’t use it. It should not be part of the extracted list. My apologies.

        • #3334264

          Re: Canadian

          by codejock ·

          In reply to Couldn’t determine where 139 comes from

          Humour, neighbour, flavour, eh?

          American English is pretty much the standard for the Internet. In courses I took regarding Web design and development, instructors said that most people who learn English as a second language and use the Web tended to learn American English (something about being the lingua franca).

          I could write my replies in French but that would create a whole different set of problems. / Je pourrais ?crire mes r?ponses en fran?ais mais cela cr?erait un ensemble diff?rent de probl?mes.

    • #3349485

      Sender Policy Framework

      by ndynamics ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am fighting the other side of the coin on a daily basis. As more and more IT admins block entire domains and implement spam filtering poorly, I have to answer more and more end user complaints about email not getting through to the recipient. Nobody bothers to check for false positives in their junk mail folders any more.

      Blocking entire domains is NOT the answer. We have to fight the spammer’s abilities to spoof addresses. The sender policy framework (SPF) looks like it might really address this problem. We need to get Microsoft, AOL, and a few other big guys on board with this standard. Once it gets support from over half of the ISP community, plus Exchange Server, it has the potential to nip this problem in the butt. You have to know what you are doing to properly configure SPF, so start reading up on it.

      I use MailEssentials from GFI with Exchange Server. The 10.1 release has SPF filtering capabilities. Any domain who has bothered to implement SPF records in DNS is totally stopped at my filter if the address is spoofed. Virtually 100% of the time. Many of the big ISP’s are already supporting SPF.

      I’m sure SPF has limitations, the biggest one being admins who don’t know what they are doing trying to configure it. I am not positive it’s foolproof, but I haven’t been able to think of a way around it yet.

    • #3349477

      Hotmail’s Efforts to Reduce Spam

      by greyseal96 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I’ve had to sign in numerous times lately at their little screen that they use to verify that you’re a human and not a spam program. I got annoyed at this and wrote a message to MS about it. Basically, we’ll just have to put up with it. If it works, that’s cool, but I’d have to be extremely optimistic to believe that…Here’s how they responded:

      Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail Technical Support.

      This is Cris and I am writing in response to your issue on your account that seems to repeatedly require verification of your identity. I appreciate the feedback you sent us and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.

      The characters you are being asked to enter is part of the Human Interactive Proof (HIP) validation process we have implemented to verify valid users and to help stop both incoming and outgoing unsolicited mail (SPAM). This security measure helps make it very difficult for spammers to employ automated programs that use the Hotmail system to send unsolicited e-mail.

      We’re continually evaluating the process to ensure that we limit the number of customers receiving multiple challenges and are already taking measures to help improve this process in upcoming releases.

      It is possible that you may receive challenges on a regular basis and we ask for your cooperation by filling out the text when prompted, as you will be helping us in our ongoing fight against SPAM.

      Please allow me to share with you the facts and tips about the HIP validation process:

      1. It is possible to receive multiple challenges within a day or every few days. This will be dependent on the amount and types of messages you’re sending. However, this should diminish over time.
      2. You need to correctly enter the text on the screen to be able to access your account. If you have any concern seeing the picture and your computer has speakers, please click the “I can’t see this picture” link. This will bring up an audio file that will play the numbers and letters you are supposed to enter to ensure what you’re entering is correct.
      3. If you are writing a message that has an attachment, you will need to re-attach it to your original message.

      Again, I want to thank you for your cooperation and we’re confident that you will see the benefits that this process adds to your overall Hotmail experience.

      If you have any other suggestions or concerns, please feel free to write back and we’ll be happy to assist you.

      Thank you for your continued support.

      Sincerely,

      Cris B. Jr.
      MSN Hotmail Technical Support

      • #3332273

        WEBmail has cons and pros

        by gunnar klevedal ·

        In reply to Hotmail’s Efforts to Reduce Spam

        Right now I have 3 mail accounts, one that blocks attached executables, and two that don’t. Two are WEBmail, one is an account on an Exchange server. All three have some sort of SPAM blocking / filtering. One of the SPAM solutions is FRONTBRIDGE, don’t know what it costs, but it works. Their Service filters all external mail, completely transparent to the end users – with no hazzle. It would be a pity to block a complete domain of senders – you might miss something you might have liked. And besides – there are a lot more domains out there.

    • #3349457

      Reply To: Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      by bhamm ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Look at the hidden headers and block anything that comes from a cable system. You’ll find that reduces your email way down.

    • #3349455

      I’m close also

      by scooterb ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am constantly monitoring my mail server and see that many of the spams that come in do come from Hotmail accounts. And yes, I do use anti-spam software, but the fact that it actually hits the server causes it to have to use CPU time and effort. I don’t think it’s worth having to utilize my servers time and horsepower to decide if I really want it sent through. Why not just stop it at the firewall and be done with it. I have come very close to blocking it before, but haven’t. As the days go by and more and more comes in, I get allot closer. I don’t think I would apologize to anyone either.

    • #3349421

      Block it. Then white list the few you want.

      by unclejohnh ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I have blacklisted several of the common spam domains. The few ligitimate clients that use any of these services I add to a white list to allow them through.

      Might not be practical for a big shop with a lot of clients using these services. But works well for our small shop. Only had about a half dozen clients that I didn’t catch from our address book that had problems.

    • #3349411

      One word – Barracuda!

      by /usr ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I just installed mine and I love it! It runs Linux and it prevents 97% of the crap out of our Exchange svr. It AV is better that Symantec, so I chucked that junk too. I’m very happy in the month I’ve run it so far and It’s blocked only 8 or 9 ligitamit messages out of the 114,168 its blocked since Jan 20.

      I had a couple of issues upon set up, but I’m very pleased now.

    • #3348387

      Not in my box

      by 1davis1 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      99% of the spam I receive is not from one of the free accounts, but always has weird domain names and user names. It has been a long time sine I received any for hotmail.

    • #3348309

      Not for us

      by choppit ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Blocking hotmail etc. definitely would not work for us. Because a large proportion of our customers (end users) are paranoid about making their spam problems worse, they will only use hotmail/ disposable addresses for contact. I’m not too worried though as our ASSP server generates very few false positives.

      We actually have a bigger problem with customers (end users again) who won’t take phone calls unless they see a CLID.

    • #3348300

      Do not Block Hotmail’s domain – here’s why

      by lkarnis ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Hi:
      Do not block e-mail where the sender says they are comming from hotmail.com. I did a quick check of my anti-spam software and here’s what it said… since Feb 2, 2005 we have 236 e-mails from people purporting to come from hotmail.com. However, they came from 224 unique IP addresses and it is likely that few (if any belonged to hotmail.com). Of the 236 e-mails we received, we rejected all but 89 as spam. In a nutshell, simple strategies like blocking senders DO NOT WORK.

      Larry

    • #3348175

      SPAM Prevention = Multiple Steps

      by scott.geiger ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Stopping or limiting SPAM takes multiple steps and functions and applications. I run a qmail mailserver, but I have added:

      1. RBLSMTP checked against multiple rbl,cbl and xbl sources. After putting this in place my SPAM receipts dropped about 50% – 70%

      2. SpamAssassin (an Apache Project). With SA I only mark messages that might be SPAM. Then my users can filter. with SA I can also black-list and white-list addresses as well.

      3. Whitelist Recipients – If the mailbox doesn’t exist on my server – message is rejected (you could also just drop the message which could prevent phishing attacks)

      4. Injection limits – this can be done with iptables on linux and also with a patch I have on qmail. If I start receiving a large (my definition) quantity of messages from one source I can throttle down on the receipt.

      With Domino, you can probably run some RBL checks, and if you are not you should. You may also be able to employ SpamAssassin as well.

      So other items which I have seen mentioned on the qmail discussion list but have not implemented because there is still a lot of debate about them

      1. Domain Keys
      2. SPF

      Gmail seems to be using DK, so that may lend some validity to it. We’ll see.

      Scott Geiger

    • #3348170

      QUESTION- Reverse DNS LOOKUP

      by jdclyde ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Shouldn’t that be stopping the spoofed e-mails?

      • #3348107

        Not really

        by cactus pete ·

        In reply to QUESTION- Reverse DNS LOOKUP

        You’ll still block mail from someone sending from their laptop at Starbucks – Starbucks will relay your mail through T-mobile automatically…

    • #3348167

      You are NOT alone!

      by guardianbob ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Hey,
      Canadian branch here. I have to tell you that you have no choice. In our case we have to block ALL emails from YAHOO, HOTMAIL, GEOCITIES, and ovewr 79 other domain. Yes, the whole domain! We have a list of 3286 spammers and 126 domain blocked by our mail server.

      In a week we receive over 7000 spam emails. And this is without the user having rights to the internet! Imagine with every user surfing!!

      In our case it’s not fun cause most of our distributors and contributors come from the USA and so do the spam! We thought of blocking every single emails from USA except our collaborators but we can’t do this cause we keep legitimate consumers from emailing to us.

      So my point is: Is this another of the US gov scheme that makes them money and that’s why they don’t give a thought about it? Or is it simply lazyness and procrastination like we all know we’re very good at?

      These are my two cents and YOU ARE RIGHT, spamming is a plague and those big corporation are not helping by letting these people polute our lives! After all, money talks and bullshit walks!!!

    • #3348125

      took my problems off the server…

      by minstrel ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      current studies show that spam is now the number one problem affecting our enterprise. mine comprises 95% of my emails, and had my email server crawling- and all it did was email, spam and virus checks. I am now the happy owner of a Barracuda hardware spam/virus solution (it runs linux), and can tell you that this was the best money i have spent in several years! i am not certain if they support domino, but i am sure someone in the hardware spam solution does, and they are inexpensive, fast, and often quite tunable… quit losing sleep trying to put bandaid s on what you have (and trust me, i spent months on this route first), and get a solution! my next step is to remove exchange… ;~) and replace it with a unix clone!

    • #3348022

      Some companies don’t know better

      by server queen ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      There are actually some DSL providers who set up small business customers with MSN as their ISP automatically, which means they only get Hotmail addresses. A customer that knows enough to ask for a different ISP can get real email addresses provided instead, but a lot of really small businesses – think of, say, a carpenter setting his business up on the Internet out of his home office – don’t know any better.

      I’m kind of hardcore about blocking. I block a LOT by default, then when we get complaints, we unblock selectively. Block it and see who squeals.

      • #3333550

        Not merely a matter of not knowing better

        by deepsand ·

        In reply to Some companies don’t know better

        Oft times it is a matter of sheer economics.

        For many SOHOs, paying for “real” e-mail represents a significant cost.

        And, for businesses that need a large & variable number of addresses on demand for incoming only, free services, such as Hotmail, are the logical choice.

    • #3347969

      Blocking Hotmail

      by fresnotech ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am a networking person who has to deal with the spam issue, but I haven’t always been. I use Hotmail as one of my main email sources. It is the one that I give to clients, who aren’t related to the company I work for, when they need help with something. It’s easy to remember, with no numbers or underscores or anything else like that.

      I don’t send spam. I never have. Heck, I don’t even forward jokes. I hate chain letters, and if one comes my way, I break it. I am so far due for close to 1000 years of bad luck, will never find my true love, and will never have a lot of money. Darnit! If only I had forwarded that message to everyone I have ever known, or even thought about knowing, I would be a billionaire.

      I understand the desire to stop spam, but blocking a full domain like that isn’t going to help much. There are many people who use it legitimately, and do not clog up the email networks with spam. If you did block it, you could possibly stop a lot of legitimate mail from coming in, even though it doesn’t look like it.

      To stop spam, have you looked at SpamAssassin? Or PostFix. We run both SA and PF on one of our servers, the one sitting on the outside edge of our network. It is the first thing that any piece of mail comes to, and it is the last thing that any piece of mail goes through on it’s way out. We get spam, but it goes into an account, setup on our mail server, whose only purpose is to get mail that is forwarded from the postfix machine for us to peruse and, if legitimate, forward off to the user it should go to, or to bounce back to the sender, with a request to investigate the IP that is sending the mail. If we get a lot of spam, we block the offending IP. It still gets into our “trash” account, but it doesn’t hit the user, and the advertisements are seen by one person, instead of the people that the spammers are trying to get it to.

      This solves most of the spam issue, and also serves the purpose of allowing us to catch emails that aren’t sent to the right address, because our users can’t remember their darned email addresses. If it is mailed to our domain, it gets here, and we find out who it belongs to.

      BTW, Postfix and SpamAssassin are running on a Linux machine

    • #3347857

      Snotmail

      by john ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I have been administering several networks for the past 12 months, and have completely blocked Hotmail.
      set rules on the server that have the accounts and on the proxy server.
      Zero mail from Hotmail, it is glorious

    • #3347609

      No hotmail

      by derek schauland ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      I am already blocking Hotmail.com. We use a service based filter called postini and I have it blocking hotmail.com email by default.

      It can allow certain addresses through and block the majority and is user configurable, so this doesnt seem to hinder anything and cuts down on the spam by a good amount.

    • #3333442

      I not only block Hotmail but also .NET

      by zczc23119 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      The whole concept of .NET services

      Please indulge me for a moment and let?s look at a few user/admin fundamentals.

      1. What a user is permitted to create, they must also be able to modify, or delete or view (after security validations are met.)

      Firstly I hope you agree with the above, because if you don?t your not an administrator of a enterprise or Network.

      Could some one please tell me how to achieve the following?

      After I create me hotmail account, how do I delete it?
      After I place a credit card in my passport, how do I remove it?
      After I supply alternate email accounts, how do I view them in fact how do I view ALL the information that is contained in my .NET passport?
      How do I delete an alternate email account that is in my .NET passport?
      What information does get passed to others if I elect to sign in with my. NET account?

      For all those XP Professionals there is a really nice security setting in ?Local Security Settings?, ?Security options? ? Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET passport for Network authentication?

      I always enable this option.

      Bottom line ? If you a company you have a company mail box for company purposes. You also have a PC and massive investment in technology for company purposes ? why have a hotmail address in a company environment?

      – If you are at home, your ISP will provide you with at least 1 email address free, I have 4 address which I use for different priorities and I can log onto Web mail anywhere in the world with no space restrictions.

      Why do I need a Hotmail address?

    • #3332610

      and another reason it’s a bad idea

      by cactus pete ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Does your HR department allow people to email into the office about days they expect to be absent? What about an employee who is out of the office [on vacation] who is asked an important question… they decide to write in to the boss from a hotmail account…

      The scenarios where legitimate communications from hotmail.com occur abound.

      • #3332605

        really?

        by jaqui ·

        In reply to and another reason it’s a bad idea

        then why does microsoft passport aka hotmail
        insist on using html formatting for email?
        if it’s a legitimate email it will be plain text format.
        no pictures or coloured text.
        no attachments.

        plain text.

        • #3332599

          No Way

          by jdclyde ·

          In reply to really?

          I need my pretty coloured text and pictures and attachements.

          I can’t really stress to the boss (who I am too sick to call but not too sick to log into MSN and write them a letter?) of just how sick I am?

          While it is remotely possible there are valid reasons not to ban hotmail, their are many valid reasons to ban it.

          In conclusion, I do not think I will do the hotmail ban. I did do the country banning of China/Japan/India/Colmbia/Australia, so it will be interesting to see how the logs look in a few daze.

        • #3332384

          Pure text IS available in Hotmail

          by stevebuck ·

          In reply to really?

          and that was the default when I got my Hotmail account 10 years ago. MS may have changed the default for new accounts, but creating pure text mails in Hotmail is just a matter of selecting the tool pull down menu and making sure ‘Rich-Text Editor’ is not turned ON. The message will be created with content type text/plain. I have to agree with you half way Jaqui, that I really prefer to use and receive plain text messages and newsletters like TR in plain text. But, I could never accept banning mails that have HTML, since 99% of all legitimate mail I receive are in mixed text/HTML format.

    • #3334116

      block it

      by rocket_scientist ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      i’d have no problem blocking Hotmail. Maybe if enough of us did it MickeySoft will up its efforts to secure it better

    • #3333802

      blocking hotmail

      by noel.moyes ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Go ahead and block it. The mere fact that they are using it means they are not using the company system, for whatever reason, and are bypassing your security and filtering settings.

    • #3334866

      .NET services out of control or always read the fine print

      by zczc23119 ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Once upon a time I had a .NET passport with 1 hotmail addresses in it and my credit card details were in place to provide billing purposes for ninemsn premium, whilst I loved the product it is far too ahead of its time and required over 200 exceptions to my software firewall to function. Express purchase was then in place and my credit details were abused by people who had access to shaded information, dependant on that particular provider and I lost over AUD3000.00, because I clicked on a button without reading the individual privacy policy for that provider – My misstate.

      Now I cancelled my subscription to nine msn premium which was built on ***************@hotmail.com….and indeed this address is no longer valid.

      However the duplicate details have been transferred to my alternate hotmail address ##############@hotmail.com, and my partners email address ????????????@hotmail.com, however in the latter the credit card details are not present.

      Now I am faced with 2 problems.

      I cannot cancel my hotmail account #########@hotmail.com as in my .NET profile is the duplicate cancelled ninemsn Premium account still with billing information in it, and I want to cancel that hotmail address also but the system wont allow it – as there is a cancelled ninemsn premium service in place including billing information.

      My partner cannot cancel his hotmail account ???????????????@hotmail.com as I granted a second user and details of a cancelled subscription to ninemsn premium is present.

      No one seems to be able, let alone me to cancel ###########@hotmail.com and my partner ???????????????@hotmail.com as .NET services have gone made and I have no faith in them.

      After investigation and reading the fine print. I am NOT permitted by the aggrement I entered into to cancell my account untill 90 days grace period elapses after the signing up of the service…In essance its my error. Always read the fine print

    • #3352509

      Serious people don’t use free e-mail

      by angry_white_male ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      We block the entire Yahoo domain – as well as a few others. If anyone is considering to do real business with us with a Yahoo mail account, odds are they’re not a player.

      For our customers – there’s a form they can fill out on our website.

      And we don’t even give people the courtesy of an NDR. Why should I make my mail gateway work harder or eat up bandwidth on my T1 to tell someone to get a real mail account?

      • #3350239

        Says you.

        by deepsand ·

        In reply to Serious people don’t use free e-mail

        I’ve some serious clients who would seriously disagree with you.

        If pressed to, they might even seriouly considered inflicting serious harm on you.

        Your’s may be a “real” business, but you’ve obviously got a real problem with both your atitude and knowledge & understanding of the way real people think and act.

        • #3349968

          Narrow sighted

          by paul681 ·

          In reply to Says you.

          Wow, and what do you say about people who shop at discount stores and not the Macy’s of the world.
          We to have some customers that use Yahoo and yes, they are Real players.
          Thinking like yours is going to cost the company eventually.

        • #3351077

          I’m assuming that …

          by deepsand ·

          In reply to Narrow sighted

          this post was directed at twilson, not myself.

          It is quite instructive to view here, & in other discussions, how many people, from which one would expect better, make snap judgements based on the flimsiest evidence & for the most irrational of reasons.

    • #3247465

      Barracuda

      by /usr ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Man it works great! It runs linux and it does not eat my Exchange svr overhead. It blocks 6k to 11k messages a day.

    • #3245637

      Reply To: Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      by the admiral ·

      In reply to Am I the only Admin looking at blocking hotmail.com to stop SPAM? (edited)

      Your not the only one. Anything from Hotmail immediately goes into the shredder without even being looked at.

      Dominofiles.com has agents that are pretty good at whacking SPAM as it comes in, so you can look there.

Viewing 65 reply threads