Blocking spammers with dubious stock-market information

[Dick Chambers]

I have been having trouble with the large volume of spam I am receiving,
particularly the type that informs me that the share price of XYZ Co is
expected to rise next week from $0.05 to $0.25. Anybody who has even a
smattering of knowledge of the law of supply and demand, and how this
affects share prices, will instantly recognise what their little game is.
For some reason, I seem to be a particular target for this type of spam,
receiving some 10 spams a day of this type. Equally numerous is the Viagra
spam. With my standard telephone line, this all takes time.

Stopping this type of spam is difficult, and I would like to ask
contributors here for advice. My Symantec software does not always seem to
stop it. The spam comes from a different address each time, so it is not
stopped by being from a recognised dodgy address. The spam always contains a
few lines of non-syntactic text, utterly meaningless, but containing
everyday words that a spam trap would not recognise as suspicious. This is
followed by the message, which is in the form of an image. These tactics
make it impossible for me to block the message by finding a spam-type word
in the message body.

Ideally, I would like to block any e-mail that contains an embedded image
(i.e. cause the server to dump the message before spending time sending it
to me over my non-broadband telephone line). However, I am an engineer:
for professional reasons I do occasionally need to accept genuine e-mails
with either an attached image file or an embedded image. Therefore, I shall
make use of a "trusted senders list", whose e-mails would not be blocked.
The problem arises with genuine professional contacts who are e-mailing me
for the first time. I cannot afford to block such people, who are sometimes
new customers. Ideally, I would like the server to automatically dump all
non-trusted incoming e-mails containing an image, including the one from the
unknown genuine engineer, but to automatically reply to each sender with an
explanation of what has happened. If genuine, the engineer could then send
me an introductory e-mail, with no image, to get himself onto my trusted
senders list. Having thus established himself, he could then re-send me his
original message, including its image or engineering diagram.

Is this sort of thing possible with Outlook Express? How can I do it? Is
there an alternative method that might work even better?

Richard Chambers Leeds UK.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I have been having trouble with the large volume of spam I am receiving,
particularly the type that informs me that the share price of XYZ Co is
expected to rise next week from $0.05 to $0.25. Anybody who has even a
smattering of knowledge of the law of supply and demand, and how this
affects share prices, will instantly recognise what their little game is.
For some reason, I seem to be a particular target for this type of spam,
receiving some 10 spams a day of this type. Equally numerous is the Viagra
spam. With my standard telephone line, this all takes time.

Stopping this type of spam is difficult, and I would like to ask
contributors here for advice. My Symantec software does not always seem to
stop it. The spam comes from a different address each time, so it is not
stopped by being from a recognised dodgy address. The spam always contains a
few lines of non-syntactic text, utterly meaningless, but containing
everyday words that a spam trap would not recognise as suspicious. This is
followed by the message, which is in the form of an image. These tactics
make it impossible for me to block the message by finding a spam-type word
in the message body.

Ideally, I would like to block any e-mail that contains an embedded image
(i.e. cause the server to dump the message before spending time sending it
to me over my non-broadband telephone line). However, I am an engineer:
for professional reasons I do occasionally need to accept genuine e-mails
with either an attached image file or an embedded image. Therefore, I shall
make use of a "trusted senders list", whose e-mails would not be blocked.
The problem arises with genuine professional contacts who are e-mailing me
for the first time. I cannot afford to block such people, who are sometimes
new customers. Ideally, I would like the server to automatically dump all
non-trusted incoming e-mails containing an image, including the one from the
unknown genuine engineer, but to automatically reply to each sender with an
explanation of what has happened. If genuine, the engineer could then send
me an introductory e-mail, with no image, to get himself onto my trusted
senders list. Having thus established himself, he could then re-send me his
original message, including its image or engineering diagram.

Is this sort of thing possible with Outlook Express? How can I do it? Is
there an alternative method that might work even better?

Richard Chambers Leeds UK.

While it's not possible to completely eliminate spam (unsolicited
commercial email), there are some precautions and steps you can take to
minimize it's impact:

1) Never, ever post your real email address to publicly accessible
forums or newsgroups, such as this one, as it appears that you have
done. For years now, spammers have been using software utilities to
scan such places to harvest email addresses. It's a simple matter to
disguise your posted email address so that these software "bots" can't
obtain anything useful. For example, insert some obviously bogus
characters or words into your reply address, for example:
"(e-mail address removed)."

2) Never, ever reply to any spam you receive, even to "unsubscribe" or
"remove" yourself from the spammers' address lists; you'll only compound
the problem. If spammers had any intention of honoring the your desire
not to receive spam, they wouldn't have become spammers in the first
place. When you reply to a spammer, all you're doing is confirming that
he/she has a valid, marketable email address.

3) Be especially leery of any offers from websites for free software,
services, information, etc, that require your email address, or that
require your email address so you can "login" to access the offered
service and/or information. Many such sites are supplementing their
income by collecting addresses to sell to the spammers. For instance,
subscribing to CNN.COM's Breaking News Service will garner you a lot of
additional spam. (Of course, not all such sites have under-handed
motives; it's a judgment call. If the offer seems "too good to be
true," it's most likely a scam.)

4) DO forward any and all spam, with complete headers, to the
originating ISP with a complaint. Not all ISPs will make an effort to
shut down the spammers, but many will. One tool that makes forwarding
such complaints fairly simple is SpamCop (http://spamcop.net).

4) Another useful tool is MailWasher (http://www.mailwasher.net). This
utility allows you to preview your email before downloading it from the
server. Spammers can even be blacklisted, so that any future emails
from them will be automatically deleted from the server.

5) Within Outlook Express, add any spammers to your Blocked Senders
list, so the their messages are automatically deleted from the server
without being downloaded to your PC.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Brian A]

If you're using Symantec's AntiSpam for your email, you can add spammers to the
list by right clicking on the message and clicking "This is Spam" in the popup list.
It then adds anything in the "From" field to the list and will from that point on
send it to the spam folder. This however, as with any others already detected by
AntiSpam, doesn't keep them from being downloaded.

In addition to Bruce's advice, your ISP may have a Spam app installed at the server
which you may have access to and configure for each email account you may have. One
fallback in using an ISPs AntiSpam is if it is really aggressive which can/will block
legitimate emails if anything matches its rules.

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[C A Upsdell]

If you're using Symantec's AntiSpam for your email, you can add
spammers to the list by right clicking on the message and clicking "This
is Spam" in the popup list. It then adds anything in the "From" field to
the list and will from that point on send it to the spam folder. This
however, as with any others already detected by AntiSpam, doesn't keep
them from being downloaded.

Since the 'from' address is usually forged, this will also block
legitimate email from these addresses.

 

[Brian A]

Since the 'from' address is usually forged, this will also block legitimate email
from these addresses.

Not if the senders name/addy is in the Trusted list.
Symantec's AntiSpam does not block any email from downloading, it sends any email
tagged as spam to the Symantec Spam Folder that's setup in the email app. If any
legit email is sent to that folder, a simple right click on that message and click on
"This is not spam" removes it from the spam list and sends it to the inbox.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[mikeyhsd]

you can be PRO-active in helping track them down and stop it by forwarding as attachment with the headers pasted the messages to

(e-mail address removed)
(e-mail address removed)
and
(e-mail address removed)



(e-mail address removed)



I have been having trouble with the large volume of spam I am receiving,
particularly the type that informs me that the share price of XYZ Co is
expected to rise next week from $0.05 to $0.25. Anybody who has even a
smattering of knowledge of the law of supply and demand, and how this
affects share prices, will instantly recognise what their little game is.
For some reason, I seem to be a particular target for this type of spam,
receiving some 10 spams a day of this type. Equally numerous is the Viagra
spam. With my standard telephone line, this all takes time.

Stopping this type of spam is difficult, and I would like to ask
contributors here for advice. My Symantec software does not always seem to
stop it. The spam comes from a different address each time, so it is not
stopped by being from a recognised dodgy address. The spam always contains a
few lines of non-syntactic text, utterly meaningless, but containing
everyday words that a spam trap would not recognise as suspicious. This is
followed by the message, which is in the form of an image. These tactics
make it impossible for me to block the message by finding a spam-type word
in the message body.

Ideally, I would like to block any e-mail that contains an embedded image
(i.e. cause the server to dump the message before spending time sending it
to me over my non-broadband telephone line). However, I am an engineer:
for professional reasons I do occasionally need to accept genuine e-mails
with either an attached image file or an embedded image. Therefore, I shall
make use of a "trusted senders list", whose e-mails would not be blocked.
The problem arises with genuine professional contacts who are e-mailing me
for the first time. I cannot afford to block such people, who are sometimes
new customers. Ideally, I would like the server to automatically dump all
non-trusted incoming e-mails containing an image, including the one from the
unknown genuine engineer, but to automatically reply to each sender with an
explanation of what has happened. If genuine, the engineer could then send
me an introductory e-mail, with no image, to get himself onto my trusted
senders list. Having thus established himself, he could then re-send me his
original message, including its image or engineering diagram.

Is this sort of thing possible with Outlook Express? How can I do it? Is
there an alternative method that might work even better?

Richard Chambers Leeds UK.