SPAM e-mail using Outlook

[Guest]

Over the past year I have been getting an increasing number of Spam e-mails.
I have my spam filters provided by my internet provider at appropriate
levels, and I have my Outlook Spam filters set at appropriate levels.
Typically, my e-mails get routed to my Spam filter and they really aren't a
bother. However, recently I have been getting thousands of them, and I
suspect I have some Spyware or something on my computer that is causing this.
I have full McAfee Security Center up and running on my computer and I have
scanned for AdWare and Spyware, but nothing seems to come up. My computer
seems to run OK, there are no other symptoms such as being slow, or lots of
Pop-ups. However, this recent increase in Spam e-mails makes me wonder if
there is still something else I should check. If it helps, I don't seem to
appear as the addressee in the 'To' line of any of the Spam e-mails, but it
is usually somebody else using my same internet provider, ct.metrocast.net.

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

there has been an increase in spam recently so I doubt you are infected or creating spam. it is just a part of life on the internet nowadays. I can get up to 300 spam messages per day and have had as high as 500+ in the last couple of weeks.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, Mark Bennett asked:

| Over the past year I have been getting an increasing number of Spam
| e-mails. I have my spam filters provided by my internet provider at
| appropriate levels, and I have my Outlook Spam filters set at
| appropriate levels. Typically, my e-mails get routed to my Spam
| filter and they really aren't a bother. However, recently I have
| been getting thousands of them, and I suspect I have some Spyware or
| something on my computer that is causing this. I have full McAfee
| Security Center up and running on my computer and I have scanned for
| AdWare and Spyware, but nothing seems to come up. My computer seems
| to run OK, there are no other symptoms such as being slow, or lots of
| Pop-ups. However, this recent increase in Spam e-mails makes me
| wonder if there is still something else I should check. If it helps,
| I don't seem to appear as the addressee in the 'To' line of any of
| the Spam e-mails, but it is usually somebody else using my same
| internet provider, ct.metrocast.net.

 

[Vanguard]

in message

Over the past year I have been getting an increasing number of Spam
e-mails.
I have my spam filters provided by my internet provider at
appropriate
levels, and I have my Outlook Spam filters set at appropriate
levels.
Typically, my e-mails get routed to my Spam filter and they really
aren't a
bother. However, recently I have been getting thousands of them,
and I
suspect I have some Spyware or something on my computer that is
causing this.
I have full McAfee Security Center up and running on my computer and
I have
scanned for AdWare and Spyware, but nothing seems to come up. My
computer
seems to run OK, there are no other symptoms such as being slow, or
lots of
Pop-ups. However, this recent increase in Spam e-mails makes me
wonder if
there is still something else I should check. If it helps, I don't
seem to
appear as the addressee in the 'To' line of any of the Spam e-mails,
but it
is usually somebody else using my same internet provider,
ct.metrocast.net.

Outlook's Bayesian filter tries to guess what is spam or ham based on
the weighting of words from prior e-mails. If the spam doesn't use
"bad" words that you've experienced in past spam e-mails then Bayesian
doesn't work. It uses a weighted database to record a subset of
keywords from your PAST e-mails in trying to guess if your future
e-mails are spam or ham. It takes awhile to train a Bayesian filter.
The Microsoft updates that include updates to Outlook's junk filter
are updates to this database based on what Microsoft has seen for spam
e-mails (so it doesn't accurately reflect what YOU have experienced
for spam but is probably good enough).

Try SpamPal which is free. SpamPal does more than Bayesian filtering
but its Bayes filter can also learn from the other methods rather than
just on past e-mails. That is, instead of just weighting words into
the database from your past e-mails to help identify spam or ham, it
will also mark those keywords as "bad" or "good" based on whether or
not the other detection methods in SpamPal have decided the e-mail is
spam or ham (i.e., its Bayesian filter can learn faster and borrowing
from other detection methods). Besides Bayesian filtering, SpamPal
can filter based on DNSBLs (DNS blocklists of known spam sources), do
MX blocking (i.e., e-mails from dynamically IP addressed mail hosts
gets tagged as spam), block based on country, includes white- and
blacklists, and can use regular expressions which can even be applied
to headers. If you need something better than what Outlook provides
then get something better which means looking into 3rd party anti-spam
products. SpamPal commits no actions against spam. It merely tags
what it thinks is spam and it is up to you to define rules in your
e-mail client on how to handle those suspect e-mails.

If you use SpamPal, don't use SPEWS or UCEProtect blocklists. They
aren't appropriate for identifying individual spam sources or for
tagging personal e-mails as spam or ham. They might be appropriate (I
say no but others say yes) if the spam filterer used scoring and these
blacklists added only a partial value to the overall score, but
SpamPal doesn't use scoring for its various detection methods (there
is "scoring" in the Bayesian database for the weighting of keywords
but no scoring at the detection component level). I use SpamHaus
SBL+XBL (which automatically includes CBL and blitzed.org), ORDB,
NJABL, and SpamCop (primarily because SpamCop allows for the user
community to "vote" on spam by issuing reports and which can update
that blocklist).

There are many detection methods available in SpamPal but I find the
DNSBLs, Bayesian, and MXblocking sufficient to get rid of a vast
majority of the spam crap.

 

[Rich/rerat]

Mark Bennett,
Also be aware if the Advertisers/Spammers are willing to pay a fee to the
ISP's/Mail service, their messages will not be caught/stop by ISP/Mail
service Anti-Spam/Junk filters.
See the following articles relating to the changes that AOL is handling SPAM
messages, these actions maybe enacted by other ISP's/Mail services, to
generate revenue.
1. http://it.slashdot.org/articles/06/02/03/033202.shtml
2. http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060207/afp/060207024916top.html
3.
http://www.consumerist.com/consumer...ol-to-charge-companies-to-spam-you-152955.php

Articles #2 & #3 mention Yahoo Mail doing the same as AOL, so if you are an
AT&T user; if AT&T has Yahoo provide your email service. This SPAM can be
coming through to you, since Yahoo has received a fee for it. And you did
not realize it could happen.
--
Have A Good Day
Rich/rerat

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