Pornographic spam from my own address!

[Dianthus]

Hi. This is the first time I've used this service (I've been referred here from BT - which is my ISP) so please forgive me if I've put this in the wrong place. Mods, please feel free to move it if I have.

I have a BTOpenworld/BTInternet account and I get literally HUNDREDS of spam emails per day in it.

Recently I've been getting really unpleasant pornographic spam IN that account FROM that account. Does anyone have any idea how to stop this? As I said earlier, I reported the problem to my ISP and they recommended this site.

I'm also getting a whole load of Russian spam (in Russian) in the same account.

I also get a lot of spam in my GMail account (but not so much and not the Russian stuff). I don't give that one out to anyone, but somehow it seems to have got itself partially linked to my BT account because I get duplicate mails in my Inbox there.

Strangely, my Hotmail account (which I give out to everyone) isn't affected and I get fewer than 10 spam emails per day in that one.

I would be grateful if someone could help me - especially stopping the stuff from my own address!

[rconner]

Recently I've been getting really unpleasant pornographic spam IN that account FROM that account.

Sounds as though you are yet another victim of From-address forgery. See the Wiki pages ForgedFromAddress and FromAddressForgery, these will help clue you in.

In short, these messages are not "from" your account, they likely never came anywhere near your account or your provider except when they were delivered to you.

It is pretty much impossible to stop spammers from forging from-addresses, but knowledgeable people know that these addresses are simply not trustworthy, so you do not stand to be blamed. The origins of the spam are concealed in the headers, and point back to IP addresses of machines, not to e-mail addresses of people.

As for stopping spam in general, this too is a tall order. However, it is possible to use filtering to keep most or all of the obvious spam from being delivered to your computer. SpamCop's filtering service for individuals is one way to do this.

-- rick

[StevenUnderwood]

Hi. This is the first time I've used this service (I've been referred here from BT - which is my ISP) so please forgive me if I've put this in the wrong place. Mods, please feel free to move it if I have.

I am going to delete the duplicate message.

Are you interested in using the reporting tool to report this to the ISP responsible? Otherwise, this message should probably be moved to the Lounge.

[Miss Betsy]

The reason you don't get as much spam on your hotmail account is that hotmail aggressively filters spam. I have an account that gets a lot of spam and I have that account forwarded to a hotmail account (that does not have the spam filter turned on). Almost none of the spam reaches hotmail. Of course, sometimes neither do legitimate emails.

The reason that your ISP recommended spamcop is that you can report spam via spamcop - if you want to 'do' something about spam. There is a certain satisfaction in reporting spam. Unfortunately, it rarely stops the spammers from spamming, but it gives others (like spamcop email service users and Mailwasher users and server admins) a way to filter out spam since your report also is sent to the spamcop blocklist. There is a complicated algorithym that determines whether an IP address gets listed. Once it is listed, no one who uses the spamcop blocklist to filter spam has to see it.

If your email address is an ordinary word or name, the 'dictionary' spammers have figured it out. They start with 'aaa' and go to 'zzz' at all the domains they can find.

As Steven said, what do you want to know? You can't stop spammers from sending spam. You can stop spam from being in your inbox by the use of filters.

Miss Betsy

[agsteele]

Hi Dianthus!

Welcome along. There's a steep learning curve tackling spam. The previous responders have said almost everything so I'll not repeat.

However, it is worth noting that it is unlikely that there is a link between your Gmail and BT accounts as you surmise. It is much, much more likely that the spammers involved have simply either guessed at both addresses or captured them from somewhere and sent the same message to you.

I use Gmail as a filtering account for my wife's Email and it provides a pretty robust means of removing incoming spam. You do need to train Gmail to make it fully effective. Just move all spam tothe spam folder using the Report spam option and the Gmail box 'learns' more and more.

Andrew

[Wazoo]

Hi. This is the first time I've used this service (I've been referred here from BT - which is my ISP) so please forgive me if I've put this in the wrong place. Mods, please feel free to move it if I have.

I don't see where you are using 'any' service beyond posting into the support Forum. As you posted into the Forum secton set up for issue with the SpamCop.net Reporting tools but make no mention if using those tools, yes .. this will be moved to the Lounge area with this post.

I have a BTOpenworld/BTInternet account and I get literally HUNDREDS of spam emails per day in it.

Recently I've been getting really unpleasant pornographic spam IN that account FROM that account. Does anyone have any idea how to stop this? As I said earlier, I reported the problem to my ISP and they recommended this site.

Your specific question of how to stop it has been answered above .. you can't.

Your general question of how to manage your spam has answers all over the place. There's the SpamCop FAQ, the SpamCop Wiki links found at the top of this very page. There are countless existing Topics/Discussion found within this Forum. You made no mention of your e-mail client, browser, or Operating System, but in all likelihood, there are support venues for them that offer up some suggestions. There are free, shareware, and for-cost tool/application out there that work in different ways at different points in the flow of e-mail that can 'handle' your spam.

Again, this Topic does not appear to have anything to do with an issue with the SpamCop.net Reporting System.

[knighthawk3344]

Hi Dianthus

I am also a BT broadband user, so we are using the same ISP, I have to agree with most of the comments made by the Forum, But I have to disagree with some of the comments saying you can't stop spam. Why do I say this, because I have had some great success with reporting spam. It depends where you send the spam reports to, what the spam is about, and where It came from. Me personally I spend many hours writing to people who will take action, because like most of these ISP's they won't take real action against there users, because they don't want to lose customers, and they think more of money, than they do of people, who are suffering from large amounts of spam in there mail boxes on a daily basis. which are coming from Infected computers on there Networks. I think It's about time the laws where changed and people started taking responsibility for there own computers. So If your computer is Infected, and you have no protection on your computer, you have to pay in some way. I am not talking about people who try there best to protect the computers, I am talking about those with no protection at all, some don't even know what a Antivirus is, never mind a Firewall. and what about those computers running on the Internet with no proper windows, no updates, no patches, nothing.

So If reporting spam does not stop spam, why are we reporting It.?

I am reporting It, because I know It's working, reasons I say this are.

Over the past 5 weeks, I have had no spam in one of my main Mailboxes, which for the last 2 years, there was not a day went by without spam.

I know your not suppose to give your email address to a Spammer, But I sent my email address to a Spammer and told them that they could send all there spam here, do you think I got anything back, no, not one Email, not after I told them what I did in the past, that's another story.

I have sent over 10,000 reports to Interpol, Police, Government, you name I have sent It.

I also report other people's spam for them through Spamcop, Just in case people say It's not allowed, please read this http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8899 Since doing this, the people I report there spam for have told me there spam has gone down to nothing. just a trickle, and no they don't use Filters, and neither do I.

I have said all along It depends how serious you are about spam, where you report It

It makes me wonder why the people on the Forum say you can't stop spam, and also It makes me wonder how they have so much time to spend on these Forums and fight Spammers at the same time.

[Wazoo]

It makes me wonder why the people on the Forum say you can't stop spam, and also It makes me wonder how they have so much time to spend on these Forums and fight Spammers at the same time.

The question that was asked and answered was (re-phrased);

"

How do I stop spam being sent with my address in the From: line?

"

Please take another look at the Subject & Description lines.

[rconner]

It makes me wonder why the people on the Forum say you can't stop spam, and also It makes me wonder how they have so much time to spend on these Forums and fight Spammers at the same time.

As Wazoo points out, the question asked was how one can stop spammers from forging the from-addresses of their mailings. I know of no way to do this, because the forgery is very easily done and requires no access to the victim's computer, internet account, or related resources. If you have found a way to stop it, perhaps you might share the information here.

-- rick

[agsteele]

Over the past 5 weeks, I have had no spam in one of my main Mailboxes, which for the last 2 years, there was not a day went by without spam.

Hi knighthawk3344!

Whilst I'm sure we are all pleased that you have had some time with little or no spam, you also need to bear in mind that ALL the major ISPs are spending significant effort on preventing this junk reaching you. When we implemented greylisting, for example, our spam load dropped from thousands of junk messages to tens...

As you imply, the bottom line is cost for most ISPs and spam does cost them a great deal in bandwidth so the more that can be blocked before you even know about it the more cash the ISP can save.

Since many ISPs do use the SCBL as one of the tools they employ, your reports of spam are helpful in feeding the block list. Thank you.

But, of course, this action doesn't STOP spam, just prevents it reaching users whose ISPs use the SCBL unless the originating ISP takes action. Sadly, many do not

But as others have noted, this thread is about stopping spammers from forging From lines and the SCBL and all other methods are entirely ineffective in tackling this.

Andrew