unwanted email....?!

We all know what spam is but my email address is presently being plagued with "one-off" emails which finishes off by saying you do not need to respond to this message if it is of no interest.
Much, much worse is the unwanted emails which actually give me an unsubscribe link, which does not exist. Add to that the ones where you have to type in the unsubscribe address and email them only to find minutes later that it has been returned as there is no such address. It is very frustrating. Is there a program which can refuse to accept an email, if it does not have a valid return address, just a thought.

> We all know what spam is but my email
> address is presently being plagued with
> "one-off" emails which finishes
> off by saying you do not need to respond to
> this message if it is of no interest.

It's an old tactic, and the unsubscribe or complaint addresses are forged. Griping to the originator simply tells them there's a live address there.

> Much, much worse is the unwanted emails
> which actually give me an unsubscribe link,
> which does not exist.

The tactic is to send you off griping to an old (or nonexistant account) so that you don't get the spammer's REAL account kicked off the net.

>Is
> there a program which can refuse to accept
> an email, if it does not have a valid return
> address, just a thought.

Some folks are using MailWasher (which I don't use because downloading mail onto your computer presents some security/virus risks) and say that they're getting less spam after using Mailwasher. I use a $30/year mail account at Spamcop (as you can see). It features spam reporting (automated) and is heavily virus-and-spam filtered. Spamhausen know to drop my name off their lists, because it's a sure bet that anyone with a spamcop email is going to hunt down their upline ISPs and send through lots of gripes. I've posted using this contact (and put it on my websites) and get fewer than 3 pieces of spam a month at my Spamcop email.

...and those get promptly whacked, too.

A number of the big places are doing a better job of spamkilling -- including Yahoo (I almost abandoned an account there because of the spam) and Hotmail. Of the options I've tried, Spamcop is the best answer for my needs.




The Five Minute Mentor

I use Mailwasher available from http://www.mailwasher.net
Some important details you need to be aware of:
Mailwasher does not download the mail straight from your server/isp until you tell it to process mail.

You can check every email, which it will show you in plain text, (all images and executables are ignored) this feature alone is excellent from a Virus point of view

And yes you can bounce the messages back giving the impression that the email account does not exist. Or you can delete the email off the server without downloading it.

It is free and you only pay what you feel is a good price when you are ready to buy it.

I hope this help’s

Warmest Regards
Martin Hopkins

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. . . Mailwasher has actually labeled certain pieces of email as viruses. Of course, I delete them on the server.

My problem with using Spamcop-anything is that it is indiscriminate in it's labeling of emails. Like other blanket solutions, it takes into account hops that may be en route to you, and if a hop has gotten itself on a list for whatever reason, the email coming to you that uses that hop - even though legitimate - is labeled spam.

I am having to designate newsletters to which I have subscribed as "Friend," so the headers won't be compared to the lists used by Spamcop and it's analogs.

Spamcop isn't the only culprit blocking legitimate email because of its "guidelines," but a goodly number of very useful ezines are labeled spam by it.

On my list of things to do is an analysis of the emails that get screwed because of Spamcop's "helpfulness," and to try to determine why each is being rejected. Just eyeballing my subscriptions, one popular list service has been listed, so anything coming from there is labeled Spam.

(That's what happened in the case of both Seedzine and the Ehotsheet.)

My recommendation is to use Mailwasher, let it show you what mail you have on the server, then you label the stuff you want so it gets through to you.

Marye

One of the hops (computers) between my machine and Seedzine/Ehotsheet computers has gotten onto Spamcops list, so when that machine turns up in the headers, those mailings are labeled spam.

> One of the hops (computers) between my
> machine and Seedzine/Ehotsheet computers has
> gotten onto Spamcops list, so when that
> machine turns up in the headers, those
> mailings are labeled spam.

Hi Mary,

Thanks for mentioning why there's this problem with getting the SeedZine/EHotsheet - I can't really control which route email from me gets to you by, so that makes this a difficult problem to control...!

I do my best to make sure people really want any ezine they're getting from me.... We use a double opt-in system (you have to confirm you really want it, after you've subscribed), and every issue has unsubscription information (at the end), so anyone can unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks Mary, your explanations are very illuminating!

- Dien Rice

The problem isn't that the enroute computer has been labeled as a spammer... it's that it's been labeled as "having an open relay." This means that there's a security hole on that computer that hackers can exploit -- and MAY have exploited before.

The complaint MAY not have come from Spancop, since manually doing complaints (as many of the oldstyle gripers do) would have forwarded the note about the open relay to RBLS (the Black Hole list, which is NOT maintained by Spamcop). It can also come via other routes (since hackers spider for open relays, some of the big spam blocking companies ALSO spider for open relays.) Our mail system where I work got into the RBLS because we did, indeed, have an open relay.

We weren't spamcopped. It was caught by a spider and reported.

...trying to explain it to the folks who set up the internet connections ...took quite a bit of time. Many ISPs are actually unaware of this security issue and are unaware that they have problems until someone reports it.

So yes, ISPs do get blocked. They need to know about it so they can patch the security hole and then reappy to the RBLS folks to be taken off the list (this is what we did.) RBLS will then spider you and if your security drops, you can end up on their RBLS list again.

But this isn't Spamcop's doing. It's the keepers of the RBLS list which many firewalls use to block spammers.

Hosting spammers (and ignoring pleas for assistance in stopping them or refusing to kick them off) is another way to get onto one of these filter lists. And still a third is to host sellers of "spam tools." Because the IPs of the service providers themselves get blocked, anyone using legitimate, non-spamming services hosted on these IPs is also blocked.

I did quite a bit of research on this this summer, so I'm certain of the above. Also, there are quite a number of these online filter systems, however Mailwasher uses two open relay databases (ORDB [relays.ordb.org] and VISI [relays.visi.com]) and the Spamcop list - bl.spamcop.net.

It shows what was used to judge whether to blacklist an email automatically.

As an added tidbit, China seems to be the leading "open relay" country to the extent that many hosts simply block any mail coming from there. These hosts report having little success in getting the Chinese to help by setting up their email servers correctly.

China is on my server's "block" list, and Japan is quickly earning a spot there. Much of the email I get from myself (yeah, right) originates at a Japanese server.

Marye

Keith:

Forget about trying to Unsubscribe, in most cases. Forget about replying to ask to be unsubscribed.

Learn to recognise SPAM and set up your own filters.

I use Pegasus Mail and ALL mail that comes in to me is filtered. If the filter catches it, it gets moved to a SPAM folder. Once a day I check the SPAM folder to see if wanted emails have been caught - sometimes they have been.

Seeing no wanted emails I "Select All" and "Delete." And thus my SPAM problem is taken care of in seconds.

There are emails that the filter misses. Only because I haven't set it up with those certain words. And sometimes the SPAMMER will do something to the word - like spell it with spaces between each letter - to by-pass SPAM filters. I learn from the SPAM that gets through and add their words and tricks to my filter.

I am currently getting SPAMMED from someone in NY who uses Verizon as their IP. The SPAM has MY FROM ADDRESS on it - as if I am spamming myself. (It's actually someone's infected computer emailing me a virus.)

After a half dozen attempts to get Verizon to block email leaving their system with my From address, I have given up. I simply tweaked my filter to filter those out but to leave email I might send to myself.

Your have to deal with SPAM yourself and in your own way.

I choose to filter it to a SPAM folder for daily mass deleting. My time is too valuable to waste it trying to find a SPAMMER and shut them down. Or to stuff around trying to unsubscribe myself.

I treat SPAM like offline junk mail - one quick look to decide if it stays or goes, and then into the appropriate place (round file for Junk). Takes as much time to do as it takes to look at it.

SPAM takes me less time to deal with because of my filters.

Michael Ross


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