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outlawspam

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I am going nuts!

I have been using the internet for nearly 20 years and I am familiar with the stupidity of spammers. However, two months ago, I began to experience a deluge of spam that I have never seen before. For two months I have been receiving AT LEAST twenty emails from some [censored], the name of which is Medic Canada. On looking for information about this [censored], on the internet it appears it has been around for a long while.

The whole thing is absurd. I am hardly likely to use a service that has emailed me about 1300+ times in two months.

I have given up reporting these emails on Spamcop as it takes up too much of my time and even when I have done this, they just carry on coming. Also, when Spamcop reports the spamming to the ISP providing the webspace used by the spammer, Spamcop sometimes advises the ISP does not want to receive any communications {complaints) about the spammer/webspace.This is bewildering - why on earth should any ISP adopt this attitude? (The very fact that the ISP is saying this indicates that complaints have already been made).

I use a Yahoo email and these spams go straight into the Trash, but nonetheless, I strongly object to feeling as if I am under siege. Why on earth are the [censored] responsible for this stupidity allowed to continue? Yesterday, I received eight, all sent together, during the night, and then during the day, four together, then six together, then two together and then another six. This is ludicrous.

Can anyone throw any light on this nuisance?

Thanks

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Can anyone throw any light on this nuisance?

I get these all the time (russian pharmacy scam emails). They captured/harvested your email address from the internet and added it to several different spam lists. As some of these scam domains are now from china, they are spamming you as much as they can just hoping for a customer.

As they do not filter these harvested spam lists, and your email address is in them, when they spam from their spamming list you will receive a spam email from each list you address is on. So if they are comming in groups of four emails at a time, then you can bet that you are on at least four of their lists.

Unsubscribing from those spam emails will only comfirn you received them. You should not open these emails in full HTML view (use txt view) as this will send back the tracking indicator (a 1x1 pic image used for tracking) and comfirm the email address which will be added to more spam lists.

Yes, sometimes the domain hosts seem like they just don't care as they refuse spam reports. Which is why when I review these scam spammed sites I add the spamming IP in the review.

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Thanks for this.

What I do not understand is:

(1)I have never given my email address on the internet so I would love to know how they obtained it!

(2)Surely, even with their limited common sense, if after sending over 1300 emails in 2 months I have not responded, its obvious that I am not interested so why do they carry on like this?

(3)Following (2), can't they see that even if a person was foolish enough to think about using the service, this constant deluge of emails would obviously deter them? In sum, rather than getting customers they are ensuring email recipients will not respond.

(4)The last thing they should do is antagonise possible customers so don't they check the lists for duplication?

(5)I have ignored these emails but feel disappointed that using spamcop has not, apparently, done anything to stop them. As I said earlier, this particular spammer appears to have been around for years and is a well-known nuisance - why has nothing been done? Is there anything more I can do?

(6)In my opinion, the ISPs hosting the spammers' websites are contributing to the problem - isn't it possible to blacklist these to reduce their customer base?

And yes, I had ANOTHER eight of these emails in the night and I've just had another eight in the last few minutes. I've never had a problem like this before with spam even though I've been using the 'net for so many years.

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Thanks for this.

What I do not understand is:

(1)I have never given my email address on the internet so I would love to know how they obtained it!

(2)Surely, even with their limited common sense, if after sending over 1300 emails in 2 months I have not responded, its obvious that I am not interested so why do they carry on like this?

(3)Following (2), can't they see that even if a person was foolish enough to think about using the service, this constant deluge of emails would obviously deter them? In sum, rather than getting customers they are ensuring email recipients will not respond.

(4)The last thing they should do is antagonise possible customers so don't they check the lists for duplication?

(5)I have ignored these emails but feel disappointed that using spamcop has not, apparently, done anything to stop them. As I said earlier, this particular spammer appears to have been around for years and is a well-known nuisance - why has nothing been done? Is there anything more I can do?

(6)In my opinion, the ISPs hosting the spammers' websites are contributing to the problem - isn't it possible to blacklist these to reduce their customer base?

And yes, I had ANOTHER eight of these emails in the night and I've just had another eight in the last few minutes. I've never had a problem like this before with spam even though I've been using the 'net for so many years.

One of your friends who has your email address has been hacked

Another possibility is when you post it goes through a number of servers to get to 'addressee"

test this here

http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/visual-tracert/

A SpamCop tracking URL of one of your spams would spot what's happening better

e.g

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z5962979711zc...e303d8931e5187z

In this case it is two compromised accounts spewing spam neither ISP want to do anything about it!

I'm pretty sure that bot Austria and Germany have laws where when I tell them to blaclist my email address and NEVER send me email has potential legal consequences?

BLACKLIST MY email address xxxxx[at]spomcup.nut
FROM YOUR SERVERS abuse[at]ispgateway.de abuse[at]aon.at
I do not give your companies permission to ever send me any email EVER!

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[...]

So if they are comming in groups of four emails at a time, then you can bet that you are on at least four of their lists.

Ain't necessarily so.

At least one type of spammer sends from two (or more) different places in the same hour, I think in the hope of avoiding block lists like Spamcop's that use the sending server's IP address.

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Ain't necessarily so.

You are absolutely correct, I was trying not to turn the reply into a spam sending tutorial.

As 'michaelanglo' said, these spammers will often use several different email providers (or compromised/spoofed email accounts) at the same time to send their spam in order to avoid being suspended before they have their spam lists sent and maximizing their spam sends.

Note: the sending email address is almost always fake, spoofed, or compromised (hacked) and the spam sender has no intent on using it again as its subject to being suspended by the provider, and is why SpamCop reports the spam sending IP address it its provider.

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<snip>

(2)Surely, even with their limited common sense, if after sending over 1300 emails in 2 months I have not responded, its obvious that I am not interested so why do they carry on like this?

...If you were being spammed by a reputable firm, they might not. However, that is an oxymoron (spam and reputable). It would cost them time and effort to do what you are suggesting and that just isn't in spammers' playbooks.
(3)Following (2), can't they see that even if a person was foolish enough to think about using the service, this constant deluge of emails would obviously deter them? In sum, rather than getting customers they are ensuring email recipients will not respond.
...Spammer thought patterns don't work like that! To a spammer, only volume matters because the internet is a "free" resource (to them) and they know that most people are smarter than they are and won't fall for their stupidity; more spams -> more eyes on the spam -> more customers (0.01% of 10,000 is 1 but 0.01% of 10 million million is 100,000,000). The fact that they turn off 99.99% of their "victims" thousands of times doesn't hurt them very much at all.
(4)The last thing they should do is antagonise possible customers so don't they check the lists for duplication?
...See my answers, above.
(5)I have ignored these emails but feel disappointed that using spamcop has not, apparently, done anything to stop them. As I said earlier, this particular spammer appears to have been around for years and is a well-known nuisance - why has nothing been done? Is there anything more I can do?

<snip>

...SpamCop never stops spam. The best SpamCop can do for us victims is to put IP addresses from which spam comes on the SpamCop blacklist, where users of the blacklist (which would be e-mail providers or ISPs) can refuse or redirect the spam to a separate place than your Inbox. The only other option I can think of that is available to you is to complain to the "upstream provider," if you are able to determine who that is.
(6)In my opinion, the ISPs hosting the spammers' websites are contributing to the problem - isn't it possible to blacklist these to reduce their customer base?

<snip>

...If you mean SpamCop's blacklist, no, SpamCop only blacklists IP addresses, not ISPs. You could suggest this idea to your e-mail provider and ISP.
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(1)I have never given my email address on the internet so I would love to know how they obtained it!
As 'petzl' said - "One of your friends who has your email address has been hacked."

and posting it on the internet in a caesural message opens it up for harvesting by spam bots trolling for email addresses. And they also somehow harvest email addresses from provider lists as I regularly receive spam where every address is from the same network (like MSN) and in alphabetical order (IE: name[at]... name1[at] name2[at]..) And they can also purchase a spam list of harvested addresses off the internet complied for email marketing.

(2)Surely, even with their limited common sense, if after sending over 1300 emails in 2 months I have not responded, its obvious that I am not interested so why do they carry on like this?
It's the sent count that matters. And if they are being paid by the batch or email why would they want to stop or limit their income?

(3)Following (2), can't they see that even if a person was foolish enough to think about using the service, this constant deluge of emails would obviously deter them? In sum, rather than getting customers they are ensuring email recipients will not respond.
They are hoping for the one gullible user who will think the spam was meant for them and does not consider that its to good to be true. For spammed sites, its the sending count that maters.

(4)The last thing they should do is antagonise possible customers so don't they check the lists for duplication?
Again, its the send count... as they have nothing to do with the site other than getting paid to send the spam, they don't care. And the site is hoping for that one gullible user who will think the spam was meant for them!

I have ignored these emails but feel disappointed that using spamcop has not, apparently, done anything to stop them. As I said earlier, this particular spammer appears to have been around for years and is a well-known nuisance - why has nothing been done? Is there anything more I can do?
SpamCop can not stop or prevent the spammer from jumping around and using several different email providers for sending their spam. SpamCop reports the associated sending IP address of the spammer to its provider. It's the email provider associated with the spamming IP who needs to take action.

Does SpamCop make a difference. From a casual spam reporter who uses SpamCop to report received spam I think it does. I was receiving up to and over 300 spam emails to my accounts daily and I have been reporting them for some time now and it has gown down to around 30-50 a day, sometimes less. Is it always effective, maybe not, does it make a difference, I think so!

(6)In my opinion, the ISPs hosting the spammers' websites are contributing to the problem - isn't it possible to blacklist these to reduce their customer base?
One needs to consider the ISP terms of use - as they are Not sending the spam from their domain, so the ISP can not take action on something which has not happened. Reporting the offending spamming IP and hoping it gets suspended from sending more spam is the only thing which can be done, aside from reporting the reply to or contact email address to the provider.

Ether way they will just jump to a different email provider to send that one-time-spam message to their list.

And yes, I had ANOTHER eight of these emails in the night and I've just had another eight in the last few minutes. I've never had a problem like this before with spam even though I've been using the 'net for so many years.
Over time as the spammer gets tired of jumping around to different providers this spam from the sender will decrease as they will grow tired of the lengthily process needed just to send their spam. then the will sell it or give it away and a new spammer will arise!! And the process starts again...

All is just my option and how I see it...

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Thanks for this.

What I do not understand is:

(1)I have never given my email address on the internet so I would love to know how they obtained it!.

...

Oooh, "never" is a long time and I think you might find you have given it up at some time - if it's an old address. Google your e-mail address and repeat the assertion if you don't find it "out there", somewhere, in clear, perhaps inadvertently in a public profile. It only takes one instance for it to be (eventually) harvested - "they" have all the time in the world and don't seem to be concerned about "freshness" at all, it is all about volume. If it is a new-ish address, then, as has been said already, the likely sources are someone else's address book on a compromised machine or a hack of provider accounts (both are known, verified, mechanisms). Not understanding can lead to unnecessary anguish, distrust and (perhaps) misplaced blame. It's just that the "I NEVER gave it out" is so often disproved by a simple search, time and again. Tell us you have made that simple search.

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To add to what the others have said, sometimes spammers even get lucky by correctly guessing your email address when generating "random" lists of email addresses.

Spammers don't care that you might not be interested in the content of the spam they send out or that they've inconvenienced innocent bystanders by using names and email addresses without proper consent: all they're interested in is sending their rubbish.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I posted an email in the forum explaining how I had been receiving many hundreds of spam emails from

Medic Canada for months and these were often 20 or 30 in just a day.

Well, it continues. Last night, in just 6 hours I received 11. Apart from the fact that a complete imbecile

would realise that sending hundreds of the same email to me in a week or so is hardly likely to make

me change my mind about using the site, I cannot understand why the ISPs they use allow this amount

of traffic. Presumably the sender is a new subscriber, so I would have thought an ISP would be

monitoring the possibility of spamming when the account begins. Apparently not it seems...

I see from Spamcop reporting that aruba.it frequently appears as an ISP involved in this spammer's

activity. So why doesn't anything get done? I went through a period of reporting each spam, but gave up

as it took too long in view of the number I was receiving and that there was no reduction at all in

the number.

Is there ANYTHING I can do to stop this (other than change my email address which I do not want to do).

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Is there ANYTHING I can do to stop this (other than change my email address which I do not want to do).

Changing addresses only temporarily stops it until they figure out your new address. What I did to stop those was to stop any direct replying, cause the mail server to check the spamcop blacklist, and submit all reports.

If you have control over your email server, the blacklist was probably the most beneficial one I did because it would stop emails repeat IP addresses. The blacklist does have some hidden email addresses that can cause some IP addresses to appear on the blacklist before your turn comes around. That said, if a email does get past the blacklist, then your submission might be the one to cause the IP address to be listed.

After time of server rejections (usually a few years), the spammers will give up on your email address.

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Perhaps some observations from a grizzled old combatant might be of interest:

Apart from the fact that a complete imbecile would realise that sending hundreds of the same email to me in a week or so is hardly likely to make

me change my mind about using the site,

They are not interested in whether you change your mind. They have zillion of e-mail addresses to spam, and they don't really care whether any of them responds except to place orders (which are handled elsewhere on a website, thus "disconnected" from the actual mail operation). These lists are so large that spammers can't be bothered to track their response or non-response individually (except for a few who engage in "list washing" of chronic complainers). To use an analogy, the guy who puts leaflets under your windshield at the shopping mall really doesn't care whether you read them or not, he just wants to pass them out and get paid for his efforts.

I cannot understand why the ISPs they use allow this amount of traffic. Presumably the sender is a new subscriber, so I would have thought an ISP would be

monitoring the possibility of spamming when the account begins. Apparently not it seems...

Signing up in good faith for an e-mail account and then using it to send spam is not really the way it gets done (as you say, the spammer would then be easily detected). I think much or most of the spam sent to day goes by a technique known as "direct-to-MX" from subverted users' machines (hence all those viruses out there today). The spam is sent outside the ken of the ISPs mail facilities, so it becomes harder to detect.

I see from Spamcop reporting that aruba.it frequently appears as an ISP involved in this spammer's

activity. So why doesn't anything get done?

Pick one or more: (1) ignorance, (2) insufficient resources devoted to curing abuse problems, (3) incompetence, (4) apathy, (5) predisposition against "anti-spam zealots," (6) complaisance or even (7) willful collusion with spammers. The ISP is not under any obligation to do anything with repots it might get from SpamCop.
I went through a period of reporting each spam, but gave up as it took too long in view of the number I was receiving and that there was no reduction at all in the number. Is there ANYTHING I can do to stop this (other than change my email address which I do not want to do).
I don't think SpamCop claims to be able to reduce your personal spam load; what it does do is to provide you with a means to report spam, and to join your reports with others to identify recalcitrant spam sources. As a SpamCop user, I don't submit my spam reports to reduce MY spam, I submit them to reduce EVERYONE'S spam (by identifying miscreant addresses so other ISPs can more easily detect and deal with incoming spam).

After 15 or so years of educating myself on the spam problem, I've come to the conclusion that the best thing to do with the spam you get is to report it and move on. I don't reply to spam messages, and only in exceptional cases do I even talk to the "upstream" ISPs. I don't want to burn a bearing over every dick pill shill I get, because there will doubtless be many more coning in the future.

-- rick

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