Spam Has Increased 100 Per Cent

[cissp]

I've had a Spamcop paid email account for about four months now. In addition to my Spamcop email account itself, I have two POP3 accounts forwarded from my ISP, as well as a Yahoo account. Since I've had the Yahoo account about 6 or 7 years, I suspect the bulk of the spam I receive is from that account. At any rate, I used to receive between 25 to 30 messages in my Held Mail folder a day, and between 3 to 5 spams in my In-Box a day. Within the last week or so, the number of spams received daily in my Held Mail folder has increased to approximately 60, although the number in my In-Box has remained about the same. The only correlation I can make is that not quite one month ago, I started reporting all Held Mail as spam (after reading some recommendations via this forum). Previously, I was just reporting the spam in my In-Box ("Quick - Report Immediately and Trash") as a mole, and simply deleting all mail in my Held Mail folder.

I am starting to suspect that reporting emails as spam was not such a wise idea. Because of this, I am considering two possible actions. One, do not report any mail (whether within my In-Box or Held Mail) as spam. Two, delete the old, existing Yahoo account, and start using a new one in its place to be forwarded to my Spamcop account. I think the filters in place with the Spamcop service are doing the job, and I can live with the small handful that make it through my In-Box on a daily basis. I will just delete those, as well as the ones in my Held Mail folder. Unless someone can give me a documented reason to continue what I've been doing, this is the action I will probably take.

Thanks,

Chuck

[Miss Betsy]

If you do change your yahoo address, try using numbers in the middle, ch05ck, that helps keep the dictionary spammers from discovering your email address.

However, spam does seem to go in cycles. If you are not getting that many in your inbox, you might want to wait to see if it drops off. Also, you might try turning the munged feature off - that encourages listwashing. Though some say that doesn't help since the listwashers just about equal the ones who will add you to the new list they sell.

I am not quite sure about the quick reporting/mole discussion, but if you reported the spam that comes into your inbox, so that you can see who the reports are going to, that would still be worthwhile and doesn't take much time for 3 to 5.

Miss Betsy

[Wazoo]

I'm not at all convinced that reporting from your InBox vice your HeldMail should be handled any differently by the SpamCop parser ... but, I'm willing to be told different ... It seems to me that any report you make would go out under your account, and as you say you went the "mole" method, there'd be no outgoing report ...????

there have been some other conversations about the thoughts that the SpamAssisin filter isn't working as well as some folks think it should, some focusing on the Beysian filterg that JT says is not turned on, but is looking at ... JT's request on this was to post some hard numbers .. basically looking at the percentage of good to bad catches ... but this also presumes you've even got that filtering turned on ..??

That said, as Miss Betsy indicated, you have no control over just which spammer's list you end up on, nor which one of those lousy suckers just recently sold a list to yet another lowlife, which could account for your recent increase ...??

[cissp]

Since my original posting a few days ago, these are the actions I have taken:

Deleted my Yahoo account, an account I've had for six or seven years which was being forwarded over to Spamcop and was the bulk of my spams.

Disabled the forwarding of mail from my primary account with my ISP. I don't access it, and besides, I'm using a secondary account with my ISP as the "primary". My ISP won't let me delete the primary account and promote the secondary, so I told them fine, I'll just let the email in the primary go unread and unchecked.

Stopped reporting spam via Spamcop, whether via the In-Box or Held Mail. I'm still not convinced that even reporting as a "mole" is protecting me from retaliatory emails from spammers. So now I just delete everything I see as spam, and/or blacklist senders or their domains.

I will set up another Yahoo account to use just for on-line business and transactions, as well as newsletters and memberships. I will also take Miss Betsy's advice in the naming convention for my user name, to help defeat spammers from dictionary guessing my address.

Actually, I liked a service I used briefly last year, which featured disposable email addresses. That way I could associate one of these disposable addresses with a specific website to help me determine who was selling/passing on my email address.

If things change for the better regarding the reporting of spam via Spamcop, someone please post a notice via these boards. I'm sorry to say that in my four months of reporting all spam in Held Mail and my In-Box, this only served to double my daily totals of spam.

Thanks,

Chuck

[turetzsr]

Hi, Chuck,

<snip>

I'm sorry to say that in my four months of reporting all spam in Held Mail and my In-Box, this only served to double my daily totals of spam.

...But, beware: that may be a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy!

[Wazoo]

post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy

Too funny, having just seen the same episode, I too saw the amazing coincidence in that phrase ....

But still mainly baffled by the "mole" status that sends no reports, but reports are blamed .... but I see now that I still don't have the answer to ... once a mole, always a mole, as far as reporting from here, reporting from there??? cissp alleges that spam reported from one box is under "mole" status, but mail reported from the Held box isn't ...????