leadfoot said:
I am using W98SE, Firefox browser, Thunderbird email, AVG 7 antivirus,
adaware, spybot.
But none of those are anti-spam programs. Why have you chosen to not
use any anti-spam filtering products, even some very good ones that are
free? I use SpamPal and its plug-ins, all of which are free and work
with any POP3 e-mail client and POP3 e-mail service. If you use a
web-only mail account (i.e., they do not provide POP3/SMTP servers),
like Yahoo, then you might find a protocol converter proxy you can run
locally, like YahooPOPs.
The amount of spam that I receive each day runs from 30 to 50
messages. At least 75 % of these messages have some kind of
attachment.
While you are not using your real e-mail address in your post here, and
if this level doesn't abate after around 4 months, then it sounds like
you are not being careful to whom you divulge your real e-mail address.
When registering for a game site, software registration, a newsletters,
registering to access to a forum, or anywhere else where you have yet to
build any trust with them, use an e-mail alias. This is NOT the same as
some simplistic e-mail forwarding service, like Bigfoot, but rather
provides an e-mail alias that you create on-the-fly and disable or
delete whenever you want without affecting your true e-mail account.
I use Sneakemail for aliases (because they are free unless you want
higher quotas - but then where I divulge aliases don't need high
quotas). SpamEx is another such service but aren't free. If you only
want to have the sender use an e-mail to you only once then you could
use Trashmail. For example, if you need to register to a site to use it
but really don't want to use your real e-mail address or you'll only use
it once, they might send a confirmation e-mail with a link that you need
to click to complete the registration. So use Trashmail, an alias, or a
disposable webmail account to get their confirmation e-mail. You could
also use disposable webmail accounts for different purposes, like one
for some game forums, another for newsgroups, another generic one for
untrusted senders, and so forth, but aliases are usually easier to use
than disposable accounts since you don't have to go through the
registration process each time.
I never open any of these, but it could happen by
accident. Some of these emails look like important mail.
Along with SpamPal using DNSBLs (DNS blocklists) of known spam sources,
Bayesian filtering, regular expressions that let you test on any header,
and so forth, its HTML-Modify plug-in eliminates nasties in
HTML-formatted messages, like externally linked images that can be used
as webbugs. Also, it has an option to change every attachment with a
bad extension (.exe, .vbs, .scr, and so on) to the .txt extension so you
could never accidentally execute it by clicking on it (and save it and
run it - which are actually more than enough prompting to protect you)
because you would also have to rename it (or remove the .txt extension)
to execute it, and obviously by that point you have made a deliberate
and conscious choice to run that attachment.
For
instance, I had recently bought something on ebay and there was an
email whose header was "Here is your tracking number".
eBay does nothing to protect your e-mail address. If you are a buyer
and send the seller a question via e-mail, the seller knows your true
e-mail address. If you are a seller, everyone can send you an e-mail
message, and if you reply, like to a purported buyer query, then you
will probably divulge your true e-mail address. So register with eBay
using an e-mail alias or disposable webmail account. You can change
your e-mail address without losing your established eBay account.
I am getting so swamped by spam that I may have to change my email
address. My ISP does nothing and the shitheads from India who answer
the phone are like programmed robots and could care less.
I've used big (national) and small (local) ISPs. It depends on the
quality of the service, their profit margin, how long they've been in
business, and their tech expertise as to how many services they may
offer in addition to just the Internet access and e-mail services they
provide. Might be time to start hunting around for a better ISP
(gbronline.com = Great Barrier Reef, huh? And in Missouri no less?), one
that includes spam filtering so you can have some of it accomplished
server-side instead of wasting the bandwidth, time, disk space, CPU
cycles, and potential threat of having to download it before you can use
a client-side anti-spam product to delete it. You could continue using
your ISP but find e-mail service elsewhere, like Yahoo.
