hopeless about hardcore porn spam

[stillwaters]

I spend A LOT of time on the horrible hardcore porn spam I unfortunately receive. I think someone maliciously submitted my email to a bunch of them a few years ago, I am not sure. I can't change my email for business reasons.

Anyway, it has gotten to the point that they are all using international ISP's now: Korea, Germany, Russia, etc. I can't afford to make international phone call complaints to the international ISP's and their abuse email addresses certainly produce absolutely no results.

Often they use web hosting companies in the USA so I go after them as best as I can. Today I spent a lot of time on the phone with Network Solutions who is the domain registrar and hosting company for 2 different ones I received today.

I've tried to work with Network Solutions in the past with no success but I hope todays round will produce a response.

Sometimes the content refers to children & young teenagers. I went the FBI reporting route and the missing children reporting route, etc. with no success.

I spoke with a lawyer today about making new law and setting some precedents. I want to sue these people if at all possible.

The subject line of some of them are unbelievably vulgar & graphic. When I open my inbox I am greeted by these disgusting subject lines. To me this is a form of harrassment and more. To report the spam I have no choice but to open the email and some of the contents are beyond belief and I can't help but have to see the photos. It is all an extremely unpleasant battle.

Now I started receiving some in an email account that I have carefully protected and never had problems with for years.

Will this ever end? I am a peaceful person by nature but I am at the point that I could do violence to these people if I knew where they lived.

My son on a few occasions was accidentally exposed to some of it. That was most regrettable.

ANY SUGGESTIONS ??????????????????????????

[DavidT]

To report the spam I have no choice but to open the email and some of the contents are beyond belief and I can't help but have to see the photos.

14495[/snapback]

This part of the problem can be eliminated, depending upon the features of your email software. For example, I use Pegasus, and by default, it won't show me any of the graphics or even HTML if I don't want it to. I usually tell people to avoid using Microsoft email products (Outlook and Outlook Express), partly for this reason, and partly because most of the people who create email worms target those products (and there are plenty of other good reasons not to use them).

Given your description, it sounds like your software isn't configured and/or able to offer you those features, so I'd suggest a change. Also, I hope you're aware that as you open those emails, most of those images are being loaded from the spammers' websites, and that there are codes within the links that tell the spammer that you opened the messages, so that validates your address for futher abuse.

dt

[stillwaters]

Dear David,

THANK YOU so much for your advice. However, how do I obtain the links to the web hosting and image hosting without the HTML graphics displayed? Would I still be able to view the HTML source code? Also, you are absolutely correct about when I open the email that I am probably tipping them off to my valid email, BUT then, how would I get even the full headers and how could I report the spam & fight them? If I come to the point that I am exhausted from fighting & want to give up that I just delete them everyday and not report them? (but still have to live with the horrendous subject lines).

ANOTHER QUESTION:

From WHOIS I obtained the following info. This guy has A LOT of different websites that host the images for a lot of the porno spam. This particular site, AKIANAPOTKASI.ORG was in one I received today. I am fairly certain that his contact info is bogus and his email address bounces.

How can I get to him/them? How do I find out who registers his website domains? Who hosts him? etc.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Domain ID:D104682794-LROR

Domain Name:AKIANAPOTKASI.ORG

Created On:27-Jul-2004 08:23:31 UTC

Last Updated On:27-Jul-2004 08:41:33 UTC

Expiration Date:27-Jul-2005 08:23:31 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar:R48-LROR

Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED

Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED

Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Registrant ID:ODN-580921

Registrant Name:Sergey Katchenko

Registrant Street1:PO BOX 52134

Registrant City:Moscow

Registrant State/Province:Not Applicable

Registrant Postal Code:35723

Registrant Country:RU

Registrant Phone:+7.9058527623

Registrant Phone Ext.:43

Registrant FAX:+7.9058527623

Registrant Email:dave8491094[at]email2me.net

Admin ID:ODN-580921

Admin Name:Sergey Katchenko

Admin Street1:PO BOX 52134

Admin City:Moscow

Admin State/Province:Not Applicable

Admin Postal Code:35723

Admin Country:RU

Admin Phone:+7.9058527623

Admin Phone Ext.:43

Admin FAX:+7.9058527623

Admin Email:dave8491094[at]email2me.net

Tech ID:ODN-580921

Tech Name:Sergey Katchenko

Tech Street1:PO BOX 52134

Tech City:Moscow

Tech State/Province:Not Applicable

Tech Postal Code:35723

Tech Country:RU

Tech Phone:+7.9058527623

Tech Phone Ext.:43

Tech FAX:+7.9058527623

Tech Email:dave8491094[at]email2me.net

Name Server:NS1.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER.ORG

Name Server:NS2.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER.ORG

Name Server:NS1.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER2.ORG

Name Server:NS2.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER2.ORG

Name Server:NS3.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER.ORG

Name Server:NS3.KALEINC-DNS-SERVER2.ORG

[StevenUnderwood]

THANK YOU so much for your advice. However, how do I obtain the links to the web hosting and image hosting without the HTML graphics displayed? Would I still be able to view the HTML source code?

The HTML source code would provide the links to the graphics, since that is where they come from in the first place. The source, when rendered by your software is told to go to location x and retreive picture y and show it in location z.

Also, you are absolutely correct about when I open the email that I am probably tipping them off to my valid email, BUT then, how would I get even the full headers and how could I report the spam & fight them?

Since you have not provided the software you use to view your emails, we can not provide specifics. However, to get any of this information safely, you should be disconnecting from the internet or opening it in some other secure way.

If I come to the point that I am exhausted from fighting & want to give up that I just delete them everyday and not report them? (but still have to live with the horrendous subject lines).

The messages will ebb and flow like the tide. I originally started with spamcop for the same reasons you state, my 7 year old daughter started "noticing" some of the messages being sent to her address before I had had the chance to clean them out. I decided on using the spamcop email system as a first stop and I also do not have the email download automatically any longer. I do that manually after I have checked the spamcop inbox.

I do the spamcop reporting (full or quick, depending on time and other factors) but that does not track the graphic file locations, which I can see as being beneficial in the porn type spam. You can get the full source during the reporting and use that for additional reports.

[Wazoo]

Some previous discussion about looking for the upstreams of other sites ...

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=388

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2012

For any specifics on what you can do on your system, you need to state just what tools and applications you're using.

That said, this is going to the Lounge.

[turetzsr]

To report the spam I have no choice but to open the email and some of the contents are beyond belief and I can't help but have to see the photos.

This part of the problem can be eliminated, depending upon the features of your email software.

<snip>

I usually tell people to avoid using Microsoft email products (Outlook and Outlook Express), partly for this reason, <snip>

14497[/snapback]

...Outlook Express has long had an option to view only the text content of e-mails (Miss Betsy, I think, can give us the details -- in fact, she probably already has in another thread). Outlook 2003 also has this capability. So does Yahoo!Mail.

[Miss Betsy]

In OE, right click->Properties->Details->Message Source (bottom)

However, if you can ever get a lawyer to sue for sexual harassment in the workplace, I would join the suit. It was porn email that drove me to spamcop. There is no selection about it at all - your email address is published on the web somewhere (google it and find out) and the spammers' spider software found it.

I think that I would have an identity (also in OE, but don't ask me how - I just followed the directions) for my business email separate from my email address that my children accessed. Most ISP's give you at least 2 email addresses.

In fact you could have an entirely different program for the children (such as Thunderbird or Eudora) to read their email in. If I were a parent nowadays, I would let them see once what it is like, explain why I think it is not something for them to see (in terms of the same reason we don't litter or eat garbage although others do), and explain that they are to use this other email. besides which if it is your business email, you don't want them messing around in it anyway. Of course, that depends on the age - I am thinking older. For young ones, I can't imagine why they would be on the computer and in your business email. (Just out of curiosity, how old do children have to be to have email correspondents? I know they can use the computer very young, but even five year olds are not very good on the phone and I can't believe that they would really 'need' an email address of their own.)

Miss Betsy

[DavidT]

In OE, right click->Properties->Details->Message Source (bottom)

That's how you view the source, but I don't think that's what Steve meant when he wrote:

"Outlook Express has long had an option to view only the text content of e-mails"

What he means is that there's an option that will turn off the viewing of embedded (or linked) graphics, HTML, etc., so as to render an email harmless even when you first retrieve and open it. Is there such an option?

dt

[turetzsr]

In OE, right click->Properties->Details->Message Source (bottom)

That's how you view the source, but I don't think that's what Steve meant when he wrote:

"Outlook Express has long had an option to view only the text content of e-mails"

What he means is that there's an option that will turn off the viewing of embedded (or linked) graphics, HTML, etc., so as to render an email harmless even when you first retrieve and open it. Is there such an option?

14521[/snapback]

...Yes, that is what I meant but it could be that I misremembered what I had seen posted previously and in fact I was referring to viewing the source of each individual e-mail rather than an option to make that the default for all e-mail.

[StevenUnderwood]

(Just out of curiosity, how old do children have to be to have email correspondents? I know they can use the computer very young, but even five year olds are not very good on the phone and I can't believe that they would really 'need' an email address of their own.)

NEEDS are a lot different to a 7 year old

My 7 year old (going into 2nd grade) regularly gets email from her friends at school and from her various coaches (soccer, girl scouts, etc). They are more intrigued with any form of communication than actually getting a message across. I have signed up her address for a couple of email lists that she is interested in as well (Veggie Tales, American Girl, etc). And I monitor all messages, of course.

My 3 year old's address is used by me to trade updates on my friend's son (born the same day). I do let him email his grandparents and other relatives from time to time. He likes to type.

I mostly grabbed these to reserve them when they were born, so both these kids have had an email address their entire lives. They also have their own computer, so are not the norm, either. Both have been playing with keyboards since they could crawl (the old IBM click keyboards without cord were interesting for long stretches).

[turetzsr]

<snip>

My 3 year old's address is used by me to trade updates on my friend's son (born the same day).  I do let him email his grandparents and other relatives from time to time.  He likes to type.

<snip>

14525[/snapback]

...And the results are recognizable English? That's awesome!

[stillwaters]

Thank you everyone for your help.

1) I am on Yahoo and have always preferred doing my email online for many reasons but I guess I am going to have to download them and open them when I am offline.

2) Yahoo does block the HTML graphics but then I can't access the HTML source code to gleen the web hosts, image hosts, etc. At least I don't think I can.

3) By the way, Someone mentioned "taking this to the lounge" ????? what is this?

4) I followed the links about "UPSTREAM" and I am sorry but I don't get it.

5) Can anyone help me find out about the following. He hosts MANY domains containing the images in the porn spam. I do not know how to track him and his contact info is bogus. I am dying to get this guy. I can't even figure out who he registered this particular domain through ???????????????????????????

<snipped long list of data, as it was a repeat of the data seen in stillwaters' last post containing contact data .. so if you want to see it again, slide back up a couple of posts <g>)

[stillwaters]

I found his registrar. It is Intercosmos and I will be contacting them tomorrow!

[turetzsr]

<snip>

1) I am on Yahoo and have always preferred doing my email online for many reasons but I guess I am going to have to download them and open them when I am offline.

...That may not help. Do you know of a way to download your Yahoo!Mail without first opening the individual e-mails you wish to download?

2) Yahoo does block the HTML graphics but then I can't access the HTML source code to gleen the web hosts, image hosts, etc. At least I don't think I can.

...Looks like you are correct -- I tried it and Yahoo replaced the images with its own "blank" images of the same size as the ones it replaced. I see no way of getting the original link addresses without turning on the "View Images" capability (which is what you want to avoid).

3) By the way, Someone mentioned "taking this to the lounge"  ????? what is this?

<snip>

...Basically, it's a request to a moderator to move this thread to a forum (the "Lounge" forum) different from the one to which you originally posted. This was done, by the way.

[DavidT]

1) I am on Yahoo and have always preferred doing my email online for many reasons but I guess I am going to have to download them and open them when I am offline.

Ah...I didn't think of that...sorry. OK, here's a suggestion. Buy a SpamCop.net email account ($30/year for the first, half price for additional accounts) and use the "popgate" method offered in the account setup to have SpamCop retrieve items from your Yahoo mailbox every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Then you could choose to either access your mail using the SC webmail interface, or download them to a good email program (such as Thunderbird, the new Mozilla email client), or you could use the IMAP function of Thunderbird or other programs to manage the messages.

The additional benefits are that most of the spam would wind up in the "Held Mail" folder at Spamcop, and then you'd be able to deal with them selectively, or in batches....your choice. I've paid for two accounts for my family, and am recommending this to anyone else who complains about how much spam they receive.

3) By the way, Someone mentioned "taking this to the lounge"  ????? what is this?

That's the name of one of the other forums here...click on the "SpamCop Discussion" link near the top of your screen (just under "INVISION POWER BOARD") to get a full list of all the forums.

dt

[StevenUnderwood]

...And the results are recognizable English?  That's awesome!

14527[/snapback]

I never said that, that's why is is only to immediate family.

He can type "chrs 12/3" (his version of his name and age (3 1/2)) lol

[turetzsr]

...And the results are recognizable English?  That's awesome!

I never said that, that's why is is only to immediate family.

He can type "chrs 12/3" (his version of his name and age (3 1/2)) lol

14534[/snapback]

...That looks pretty much like recognizable English, to me (especially for a three-year-old). I'm still in awe! <g> I guess genius runs in the family. <big g>

[Miss Betsy]

My 7 year old (going into 2nd grade) regularly gets email from her friends at school and from her various coaches (soccer, girl scouts, etc). They are more intrigued with any form of communication than actually getting a message across. I have signed up her address for a couple of email lists that she is interested in as well (Veggie Tales, American Girl, etc). And I monitor all messages, of course.

That's what I thought. They would like to read messages and occasionally reply to trusted correspondents, but would be unlikely to be surfing or in chat rooms without supervision. If they had a good spam free address (and if it is compromised, Dad could change it with the 'good' contacts), then they would likely 'never' stumble into something they shouldn't - especially if the rules are clear. It is when they get older, that parents have to let them explore - and the rules are what to do if there is problem.

The 'Lounge' (although it says it is for anything not to do with spam) is where posts go that don't actually address spamcop reporting problems or spamcop email service problems or mailhosts problems. That's so that people searching for answers don't have to read irrelevant discusssions.

'Upstream' means the business that provides internet access to the customer you are complaining about. If that doesn't make sense, I will try to explain it better.

There is little one can do about porn sites per se without getting into censorship debates. However, unsolicited email can be dealt with. The main problems are jurisdictional and the cost of time and money to prosecute. I have often thought that porn spam would be a good place to start to establish precedent for people to be able to insist on blocking. The problem again is with the principle. It is not conTent, but conSent which is the only safe criterion to declare an email as unsolicited. Any other definition opens doors for all sorts of abuses that are much worse than spam.

Miss Betsy

[Wazoo]

stillwater .... though I can't speak for this particular Registrar ... most of them that I've dealt with have various status messages in use for certain actions. In general, the following data;

Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED

Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED

Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED

would normally suggest that the Domain is already whacked ... the "owner" has been denied access to delete, transfer, or update this Domain ... so it's on "hold" .. i.e., this Registrar has in fact taken some action. How much impact this has had on your spammer is hard to say, for example, stories abound about folks like Ralksy that burn 5 to 50 Domains a day and still the spew flows.

Upstream ... you sit at the house in front of your computer. You command your computer to dial up via a modem (or you've got cable/DSL and it hooked when you turned the computer on) ... the system you connected to is "your upstream" ... let's call that ISP (Internet Service Provider) Smallville's Best ... Smallville's Best buys bandwidth from Bigtown's Finest ... so Bigtown is Smallville's upstream. Bigtown's Finest buys bandwidth from Qwest, which makes Qwest Bigtown's upstream.

(At this point, "upstream" actually turns into 'peering' and 'adjacency' .. where the major backbone providers have agreements about carrying traffic for/from other networks / bandwidth providers.)

So the point is, you start by complaining to Smallville's Best .. they do nothing.

The next complaint goes to Bigtown's Finest, complaining about both the spew and Smallville's lack of action.

The next level of complaining goes to Qwest, but then you're back to dealing with an issue of a customer of a customer which has its own set of issues and time involved.

Now that you've defined your scenario as dealing with the web-based form of Yahoo, I could suggest sending you to http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/ which would then allow you to use Outlook Express to actually receive that e-mail and allow a whole slew of other options .... but I'm not sure if you could get it installed successfully, from some of the other items you say that are over your head. (Go ahead and prove me wrong! That'd be great <g>)

[moonbroth]

It was porn email that drove me to spamcop.  There is no selection about it at all - your email address is published on the web somewhere (google it and find out) and the spammers' spider software found it.

14518[/snapback]

I don't think that's necessarily true. My wife's email address has never appeared on the web, and she gets porn spam (a dozen or so a day, all blocked by the ISP spamtraps, SpamBayes and Outlook's own junk mail filters). I think many of these come in via dictionary attacks against major ISPs.

Cheers, Nick

[Miss Betsy]

That's true - there are dictionary spammer collections also. It does help to have an email address that isn't easily found by them (using numeric characters in the middle like m00n6r01h).

Miss Betsy

[stillwaters]

I am so grateful to all of you for your help.

I have A LOT of information to absorb and to put into practice. Some of it I finally understand such as "UPSTREAM" !!!

Have accomplished much since yesterday. Spoke with the Registrar and they are going after him for the bogus contact info. They also recommend that I file a formal complaint through ICANN which I had already started on yesterday thank goodness.

2 of the IP's from todays porno spam were from Videotron.ca I spoke with their abuse department (long distance call to Canada, ugh! wonder how much it will cost!). They were very helpful.

??? They claimed to have been having problems with some of their customer's computers being purposefully infected with a special virus (unbeknownst to the customer of course) and the spammers using the computer/IP to route their spam through to avoid tracing. She said that is why I have been getting the same spams from the same spammers from all over the world (Korea, Germany, Russia, etc).

???????? Is she correct? Is this true? She seemed very nice and sincere.

What a nightmare! Quite a learning curve as well.

Again, thank you all.

[DavidT]

??? They claimed to have been having problems with some of their customer's computers being purposefully infected with a special virus (unbeknownst to the customer of course) and the spammers using the computer/IP to route their spam through to avoid tracing. She said that is why I have been getting the same spams from the same spammers from all over the world (Korea, Germany, Russia, etc).

????????  Is she correct? Is this true? She seemed very nice and sincere.

14645[/snapback]

Yes, this has been happening with certain email "worms" for quite some time now.

dt

[Miss Betsy]

I hope that the 'nice' lady also said that when they are alerted to the fact that their customer has been infected, that they shut them down until they get their computer cleaned up so that other people don't get the spam. Some ISPs will be helpful with advice on how to do clean up.

Miss Betsy