spam control

[joe]

I was looking for help on my windows
but people told if I post in newsgroup
I will get spam.

I haven't put my email here like this
(e-mail address removed)
so how can they spam me?

Joe

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I was looking for help on my windows
but people told if I post in newsgroup
I will get spam.

I haven't put my email here like this
(e-mail address removed)
so how can they spam me?

Address collecting bots get smarter and smarter. If you "munge" your email
address in a predictable way - it might be able to spam you. SOme even
steal them if they look real and try different variations on the theme in
hopes one is correct. In general - if you do not post using your email
address - you will not get spam from the newsgroups when you post/reply.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I was looking for help on my windows
but people told if I post in newsgroup
I will get spam.

I haven't put my email here like this
(e-mail address removed)
so how can they spam me?

Actually, if that's your real email address, you've posted it twice,
once in the your post's headers, and once in the body of the post. That
address will soon be inundated with spam.

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 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 or whatever other email client application
you use, 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:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Alias]

5) Within Outlook Express or whatever other email client application
you use, add any spammers to your Blocked Senders list, so the their
messages are automatically deleted from the server without being
downloaded to your PC.

Or use Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com) that has a built-in spam program. I
just started using it and I configured an account I have had since 97
that gets about 500 spams a day. Within a week, 99% of the spam was
going into the trash.

Alias

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Actually, if that's your real email address, you've posted it twice,
once in the your post's headers, and once in the body of the post. That
address will soon be inundated with spam.

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 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).

I don't know for sure, but my guess is that most E-mail-address-harvesting
software will automatically remove NOSPAM from an address and derive your
real address in no time at all.

I prefer not to use my real address at all in newsgroups, but if you do, I
think it's a much better idea to disguise it in a much more individual way,
not in a way that's been done by countless others. Then describe how to
un-munge it in text in your signature block.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I don't know for sure, but my guess is that most E-mail-address-harvesting
software will automatically remove NOSPAM from an address and derive your
real address in no time at all.

A good point, but I'm not sure of what else to use as an example.
Random letters, perhaps? I'm open to suggestion.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

 

[Lem]

Actually, if that's your real email address, you've posted it twice,
once in the your post's headers, and once in the body of the post. That
address will soon be inundated with spam.

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 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 or whatever other email client application
you use, 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:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH

Actually, address harvesting from Microsoft newsgroups by "spambots" seems to be
-- these days at least -- an urban legend. I use this hotmail address to post
in newsgroups on the theory that (1) because I don't use it for my regular
email, I don't care if it gets spammed and (2) if it becomes inundated with spam
I can just abandon it and set up another "throwaway" address. Over the past
year, however, I have noticed that the hotmail address gets as many as five spam
emails a week, while my "real" email address -- which I don't use to post in
usenet newsgroups -- gets about 20 a day. YMMV.

That being said, it can't hurt to be prudent and disguise email addresses used
in public newsgroups.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

A good point, but I'm not sure of what else to use as an example.
Random letters, perhaps? I'm open to suggestion.

Random letters that don't appear in the real address would work well. For
example, a signature like

John Smith
(e-mail address removed) (to reply personally, remove every other letter in the
domain)

There are many other good ways to do this, limited only by the poster's
imagination (but don't make it so complicated that it's a chore to reply).
My only point is not to do it the same way many others do, since the
spammers will already know about it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Actually, address harvesting from Microsoft newsgroups by "spambots"
seems to be -- these days at least -- an urban legend. I use this
hotmail address to post in newsgroups on the theory that (1) because
I don't use it for my regular email, I don't care if it gets spammed
and (2) if it becomes inundated with spam I can just abandon it and
set up another "throwaway" address. Over the past year, however, I
have noticed that the hotmail address gets as many as five spam
emails a week, while my "real" email address -- which I don't use to
post in usenet newsgroups -- gets about 20 a day. YMMV.

You may be right or you may be lucky, but...

That being said, it can't hurt to be prudent and disguise email
addresses used in public newsgroups.

....that's the important point. There's almost no reason not to do so.

 

[Plato]

I was looking for help on my windows
but people told if I post in newsgroup
I will get spam.

You will get spam sent to any email address you use for USEnet posts.

If you need to provide a real email address for USEnet for verification
to use the service, then create a disposable address at the 1,000 or so
free sites where you can get a free email address.

 

[Plato]

forums or newsgroups, such as this one, as 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

And, there are many apps to collect USEnet email addresses that are
free. Any Average Joe can have them and use them.