EMAIL SPAM

[Heather]

A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally posted my personal
email address on one of these posts. I have been
receiving about 50-100 spam emails containing viruses or
worms since. They all say they are from Microsoft.
Anyone know of any way to block these emails or have any
other advice? I hate to delete the email address I have
had for 3 years. Thank you! I know, I know.. That was
stupid of me to put my email address on the web!
Heather

 

[David Candy]

Well a lot of us here do.

 

[Malke]

A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally posted my personal
email address on one of these posts. I have been
receiving about 50-100 spam emails containing viruses or
worms since. They all say they are from Microsoft.
Anyone know of any way to block these emails or have any
other advice? I hate to delete the email address I have
had for 3 years. Thank you! I know, I know.. That was
stupid of me to put my email address on the web!
Heather

Unfortunately, Heather, your email address was harvested by spam bots
and there's nothing you can do. The emails from Microsoft are, of
course, not from Microsoft but from machines that have your email
address and are infected with Swen or Gibe. Basically, you can make a
message rule to detect and delete emails with certain characteristics.
How you do this depends on what email program you're using. Check in
the email program's Help files for something like "message rules"
"email filtering" or the like.

Malke

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Heather,

What program are you using for email? Many of them can allow you to setup up
a filter or rule to delete these messages.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Myron J. Mandell]

Hi Heather,

You've got lots of company.
For a while, I tried setting up OE rules to block spam. At best, I managed
to block about half of it.
I finally gave up and downloaded a free trial of SpamSubtract. Works much
better for me.
I'm sure there are other excellent anti-spam programs as well.

Myron

 

[Papa]

I suggest you bite the bullet and create a new email address.

Also, if you are not doing it already, install and use an anti-virus
program, a firewall, and an anti-spyware program - run them regularly, and
keep them updated.

 

[Ian A. White]

A couple of weeks ago, I accidentally posted my personal
email address on one of these posts. I have been
receiving about 50-100 spam emails containing viruses or
worms since. They all say they are from Microsoft.
Anyone know of any way to block these emails or have any
other advice? I hate to delete the email address I have
had for 3 years. Thank you! I know, I know.. That was
stupid of me to put my email address on the web!
Heather

You can try something like Mailwasher to pre-process your messages
before you fully download them. Also check with your ISP and see if
they offer spam/virus filtering. Mine does and conveniently adds header
lines to the messages making it very easy for Mailwasher to identify
them and mark them for deletion before downloading.

As for continuing to get spam, it is going to take a very long time for
you to stop getting them. The biggest problem is newsgroup archives
that are available on the Internet. As long as your address exists in
these archives, you will continue to get the stuff. I get spam to
address formats I stopped using in 1996.