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The more spam emails we submit, the more we get!


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Remember that reporting alone will do nothing to reduce the amount of spam you receive.  It's primary purpose is to feed the SpamCop BL.  It's secondary purpose is to send reports to the source of the spam with two differing goals...

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I agree the reporting feeds the BL and helps the ISPs weed out the spammers. I found an added tactic particularly effective in addition to Spamcop. When I received phony Viagra spams I sent those to Pfizer's Legal department for lawsuit consideration (they sue people using the Viagra name to promote their knockoff drug or nutrition). The spams immediately ceased. When I received phony Microsoft software spams where the cost is so low it is obvious the software is an illicit copy, I send the spam to Microsoft Legal. Within days the spams cease. Hmmm... wonder why. It adds a new dimension to reporting.

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Just the two cents on my experience with Spamcop, which was different from yours.

For at least a year, probably more, I was reporting all spam to Spamcop and was seeing my spam load increase. It had been increasing before Spamcop as well, and for that period I was questioning (like you) whether reporting was doing any good or even possibly the cause of it getting worse due to retaliation.

The worst spam load I received to my personal Hotmail account was well over 50 a day around the end of 2003.

Then my spam load went down considerably, and now it's down to one or two a day. I've heard that Hotmail has made some improvements, so possibly that's the reason. But I have a sneaky feeling (or at least I like to think) that my faithful reporting has gotten me on some spammers' "Crazy-guy-that-will-report-us" list.

I should note that I've always reported not only to spamcop, but also to other appropriate addresses, such as webcomplaints[at]ora.fda.gov for the Cialis ads and hotline[at]mpaa.org for the DVD ads.

Cheers,

Dan

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I receive many more spam than I used to. I also take extra precautions when using my email address. For my web sites, I use a mysql database to store my email address and if someone wants to send me an email from my site, they must use the online form and select my name from the list of users. Can this lead to abuse of my email address? No, not the way I have it setup. It actually goes to an email address which then forwards to my regular address and I am able to tell if it is coming from the web site or not.

Recently I noticed a persons name in the subject or body of the spam I have been receiving. I then received an email from legitimate site about an account created under that name. I can only assume that some idiot does not know his real email address and has put mine in, thinking it was his.

I went to the legitimate site and tried to login, but it failed. I then submitted a request to reset my password and I received an email shortly afterward with the new password. I then logged in and was able to get account info and learn that this idiot lives in the same city that I do. He only used cross streets as his address, but he did put other legitimate info in his account. It is obvious he screwed up and put my email address instead of his own.

This occurred less than two weeks ago. I am now getting 30 to 40 spam emails per day with his real name in the subject or body. This leads me to believe that the reporting has increased the number of spam I have received. Although I could be incorrect in this assumption, I still report all this email as spam.

Is it spam if someone else accidentally or purposely submits your email address to a site, instead of their own? I say yes because as far as I am concerned I say all email submissions for a legitimate site should do the “3 way handshake”. For those who may not know, that is what I call, submitting your email and then getting an email from that site asking you to verify you are the owner of the account, before they start sending you email.

Although a received legitimate email, not spam, with this users name, all the email received in the last week have been spam. I didn't start reporting it until last week.

So as for this post, I do believe that the spammers do put identifying code in their spam to identify reporters and then use this info to send more spam to that person.

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So as for this post, I do believe that the spammers do put identifying code in their spam to identify reporters and then use this info to send more spam to that person.

I agree with you on this part.

However, IMHO, it would have been better to complain loudly and frequently to the site owner and his ISP about what has happened. Occasionally things do get broken. I started receiving regular emails from a legitimate site. It took me several emails to several addresses, but eventually I got an apology and a thank you for bringing it to their attention. If they weren't using confirmation emails, perhaps you could have at least planted the seed that this was a dangerous practice not to.

Miss Betsy

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  • 2 weeks later...
I totally agree with your attitude.  In this day and age, there are no 'innocent' senders.  There are only 'ignorant' senders who, unknowingly, contribute to the spam problem instead of being responsible netizens.

I can't comment on your procedures because I don't run a server, but they look comparable to other sysadmins who successfully block spam.

Miss Betsy

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I'm trying to educate myself a bit by browsing these posts, but I thought I'd mention that every 3 or 4 months for a year or more I would get a bunch of Netsky viruses sent from the same (after tracing) email at a consulting firm in Sweden (effekt.se). My ISP won't allow viruses through anyway (hasn't yet), but from my perspective it's still spam, so I sent a polite message to that email asking for it to stop on the assumption one of their PCs had been compromised.

Then I got some more spam, and I found emails on their web site for all the executives in their company and sent the same polite request to all of them (the spam name was not on the list). Nobody bothered to reply to me, but I haven't seen any more messages for a few months. Next time I'm reporting however.

Incidentally, I'm new on the forum, but I had another issue in another topic, and I have been selecting "enable email notification of replies", and I had replies on the other topic, but received no email notifications. Something I'm doing wrong?

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I'm trying to educate myself a bit by browsing these posts, but I thought I'd mention that every 3 or 4 months for a year or more I would get a bunch of Netsky viruses sent from the same (after tracing) email at a consulting firm in Sweden (effekt.se). My ISP won't allow viruses through anyway (hasn't yet), but from my perspective it's still spam, so I sent a polite message to that email asking for it to stop on the assumption one of their PCs had been compromised.

Netsky.p forges the From: and return path (just as spammers forge the From) so chances are you have asking the wrong people if you are using the email address.

You are allowed to parse the email (though if your ISP has changed something in the headers you won't get the correct IP address either) thru spamcop. I am not sure whether you can report them thru spamcop or not. Although the rules changed from not being able to report, the last I heard people were still not able to.

Incidentally, I'm new on the forum, but I had another issue in another topic, and I have been selecting "enable email notification of replies", and I had replies on the other topic, but received no email notifications. Something I'm doing wrong?

Sorry I can't help with this part.

Miss Betsy

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Incidentally, I'm new on the forum, but I had another issue in another topic, and I have been selecting "enable email notification of replies", and I had replies on the other topic, but received no email notifications. Something I'm doing wrong?

Do you have a spamcop email account? Have you checked in the Held Mail folder for them? At one time, some spamcop systems were on another blocklist which would cause these types of problems. Although, we also just had an upgrade the the forum software so perhaps that notification is working no longer.

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Incidentally, I'm new on the forum, but I had another issue in another topic, and I have been selecting "enable email notification of replies", and I had replies on the other topic, but received no email notifications. Something I'm doing wrong?

The real question now is .... did you "subscribe" to more than one item .. amd are you receiving "any" notifications? While going through the Forum, I see that some of your postings have been "moved" ... amd I know this action breaks the "e-mail notification" thing.

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Netsky.p forges the From: and return path (just as spammers forge the From) so chances are you have asking the wrong people if you are using the email address. 

You are allowed to parse the email (though if your ISP has changed something in the headers you won't get the correct IP address either) thru spamcop.  I am not sure whether you can report them thru spamcop or not.  Although the rules changed from not being able to report, the last I heard people were still not able to. 

Sorry I can't help with this part. 

Miss Betsy

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Now I'm getting the notifications (I received yours). I presume only one is sent until one replies, and perhaps in the first case I mistook a notification for a common reporting notification and missed it. In any case it seems to work now.

Regarding the virus spam... I obtained the source address by doing a spamcop trace, not by the forged one.

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The real question now is .... did you "subscribe" to more than one item .. amd are you receiving "any" notifications?  While going through the Forum, I see that some of your postings have been "moved" ... amd I know this action breaks the "e-mail notification" thing.

23370[/snapback]

Oh! I see. Perhaps posts that are considered to be in the wrong section should be moved after notifying the poster?

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Now I'm getting the notifications (I received yours). I presume only one is sent until one replies, and perhaps in the first case I mistook a notification for a common reporting notification and missed it. In any case it seems to work now.

Yes, notification sent advising of a new post. Nothing more until you visit the site to read the new stuff.

Oh! I see. Perhaps posts that are considered to be in the wrong section should be moved after notifying the poster?

A "Move" these days leaves a link in place, so any and all can "follow" along to the "new" place. If I "Merge" a post within an existing Topic, then I'll (normally) PM the poster to advise where it's now 'hidden'.

These actions taken when things are off-topic ... such as this particular discussion in a Topic started about the volume of spam e-mail.

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Regarding the virus spam... I obtained the source address by doing a spamcop trace, not by the forged one.

As a technically non fluent person, I have learned that knowing the correct terms are /very/ important in posting questions and comments.

I think that what you obtained from the spamcop 'parse' (not trace) was the email address of the abuse desk or IT department of the IP address from which the virus came. The virus email could have come from any number of 'email addresses' on that system and, in fact, only the administrator of the IP address can tell which computer on his system sent that email. In fact, one can use several different email addresses to send and receive email on one computer.

Rereading your comments it does seem that you understand what is happening, but saying that the 'spam name was not...among the emails on their web page' sounds clueless. What you meant was the email address that spamcop found to notify the administrator of that IP address was not on the web page. Any one of those email addresses that did appear on the web page could have been on the computer that was infected or, perhaps, none of them.

Even though you consider virus email to be spam (others do also), it is still a special class of unsolicited email and needs to be distinguished from the unsolicited commercial email sent by spammers by identifying it as a virus, not spam. In fact, spam is just the nickname for unsolicited bulk email and doesn't have a precise definition that everyone recognizes. It is unsolicited bulk email regardless of content that is the problem. However, some definitions include any unsolicited commercial email which is not entirely accurate because some commercial outfits welcome 'unsolicited' email for information or orders of their products or services.

Apparently, someone listened or you would still be receiving the viruses. Often, corporate IT departments have a difficult time in informing their bosses that they have a virus. Some bosses do not understand and tend to think that it is the IT Department's fault and are not cooperative about allowing the IT Department to 'fix' the problem. And some ISPs do not want to upset customers (or perhaps can't reach them) and won't stop outgoing mail until they do. So it sometimes takes a few days to get a virus stopped.

Miss Betsy

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