Accrington Web - Spam mail

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I have recently been getting spam mail that says it is sent from MY email address, :eek: I dont understand how this can happen if I havnt sent the mail, it is exactly the same address that I use.. Any idea how it is done and if I can stop them? :confused: I havnt opened any btw, just deleted them.

I got one of those yesterday too Derek ... was gonna' ask on here, but they tell me off ..:D

Think the subject heading gave it away 'If you can read it, your wife isn't happy then' !.

Goes on about MSN and I had subscribed to offers, and to click the 'unsubscribe' button. 'Course I haven't and deleted, however, they are trying all sorts now, and it will get in a bit that I am afraid of opening any foreign E-Mails ... just like I never answer certain 'phone calls these days.

You can't stop it as its dead easy to spoof a from address.

I'd not worry about it mate

One thing that does seem to cut it down is if you have your own domain name for email.

Quote:

Originally Posted by entwisi (Post 649004)

One thing that does seem to cut it down is if you have your own domain name for email.

Ok, not afraid to look stupid .. what do you mean Entwisi .. domain name ?

The bit after teh @ sign

e.g. I don't use [email protected] I use entwisi@<my own domain>.co.uk (not put in for obvious spam bots but you get the idea.

You can run an email domain for under a pound a month with domain names about £3 a year. this gives you 5 email accounts, auto Antivirus scanning, auto responders and even sub domains so you can seperate stuff like ebay traffic from personal email.

1&1 Internet Ltd. - 1&1 Mail - 1&1 Instant Mail

Got that .. mmm, don't have that ... thanks.

Spam identifies the "sender" using several techniques usually designed to bypass any spam prevention measures you might have taken.

So many people belong to mailing lists that if they delete (as spam) anything that has their email address as the sender, they won't get their own contributions to the list. This is easily overcome (even in outlook express) by setting up a mail rule which deletes any email from you that is not to the mailing list.

A lot of spam comes from compromised PCs and works by spoofing the email address that the spam purports to come from. The theory is that you're more likely to open an email from someone you know, but if the compromised PC is identified, it's easy to clean it. So the spammer tries the next best thing and picks up someone else's email address from the compromised PC's inbox or address book. Chances are, you'll know them or know of them, and open the email.

By far the biggest spam magnet is a usenet (newsgroup) posting. These usually try to change the leading part of the email address (the bit before the @ sign) slightly in the hope that it will still get through.

Just under 92% of the email I get is spam, and the antispam program I use picks up 99.75% of them.

My spam blocker picks it all up, seems to be very good at filtering spam out, my concern was that my email address may have been compromised in some way, you have lost me Entwisi with the domain name email, I have around 90 domain names, but my email addy is the same one I always use, the domains just point to the main website.

When you set up your email client, (Outlook express, windows mail, thunderbird, etc..) one of the boxes you fill in is your email address. This comes out at the other end, as the reply to address. You can put any email address in here, and you can still send it through your normal email.

If you want to try it -
Setup a new email account using your email settings, but fill in the email address as [email protected] or [email protected], then send yourself an email. It will appear to come from one of the above people.

Spammers are using this technique, but with the email address off their spam list. There is more chance of it getting through, if it's not from a known spam domain. Eventually all domains will be on the anti-spam blacklist then nothing will get through.

Okay redash, thanks for that.

This has been happening to me too. I thought something malicious had taken over my e-mail address. I have spent a major part of this weekend running malware , spyware and virus checks........my spamcleaner doesn't let it through, but I recently needed to check my 'trash' box for an e-mail that I was expecting.....I was quite perturbed to find e-mails for....shall we say, 'male enhancements' purporting to come from me.
Thankyou for the explanations....not that I am a whole lot wiser, but I am reassured.

I get those margaret, along with viagra, loan offers, dating, etc, some of these could cause a lot of trouble for people, the cretins who send them will hopefully die a slow and painful death! :eek:

been getting em from meself fer yonks now, used to worry me a bit, but now just don't give a stuff. probably get a couple a day, from me n about 200 from other pricks.:D

Interesting use of "other", Cashy ;)

do what redash says it works i did it months ago and not had any spam from the day i did it good luck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Studio25 (Post 649389)

Interesting use of "other", Cashy ;)

nah not interesting Honest.:rofl38::rofl38:;)

I used to get loads of spam mail until I changed my server, I made the mistake of sendin an on line birthday card to my daughter who was in Bangkok at the time, BIG BIG MISTAKE, from then on I was pestered with offers for all sorts from on line gambling, insurance, medical products ect, all Yankie firms

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redash (Post 649291)

Useful information there Redash. Thank you! I wondered how it was done.

I avail myself of the email service provided by my ISP and my user name was 6 random characters. Thus my Primary email address would be something like [email protected] and it is only known to my ISP and myself and NEVER used anywhere else. No Spam received to it.

My Secondary email address also with random characters for the user name is used only for things like banking, PayPal etc. No Spam received to it either.

My Tertiary email address is for general use like friends and family and when registering with any web sites. Loads of spam now. When it gets too much it will be dumped and I will use one of the remaining two. Once dumped I will create another email address to replace it.

My Quarternary email address is dormant until I need to use it, as is my Quinary email address.

I have organised my email client (Outlook Express) so that my ‘Inbox’ receives the emails addressed to my Tertiary account and there are four separate folders, one for each email address, ready to accept emails for those email addresses.

I can access each email account via the BT website and any Spam emails I tag so that next time they go straight to the Spam box and they get deleted automatically periodically, if I don’t do it myself. Over time the system has learned which emails are Spam and which ain’t, so 99.9% of Spam emails get routed to the Spam box. I still get the odd one but once tagged as Spam it never troubles me again.

Once my ISP mailbox contains nothing but legit emails I use MailWasher to list them and if a Spam email has arrived a few seconds ago I tag it so that next time MailWasher will deal with it and then use Outlook Express to download them.

There is only one email address in my address book and that is my general purpose email address. If anything nasty manages to sneak into my computer and starts to send out emails to addresses in my address book, I will get one and also be warned that something nasty is on my computer. That has only happened once and that was a long, long while ago.

I get round not having an active address book by creating a Word page with the person’s name at the top (and it is saved under that name) with their email address below. I compose my message underneath and then click on the email address to launch the “New Message” window, copy and paste my message and away it goes.

Everyone should notice a huge drop in spam anyway, as one of the biggest problem sites for spam proliferation has been shut down.

I've not really noticed, because my antispam regime deals with it all behind the scenes, but a quick look at the stats shows I'm getting 500 fewer daily! :)

I wonder why they decided to call ‘junk’ emails Spam?

That’s an affront to a product that saw us through the last major war that rivalled ‘Bully Beef’ better known as ‘Corned Dog’ (proper name Corned Beef).

Quote:

Originally Posted by jambutty (Post 650909)

I wonder why they decided to call ‘junk’ emails Spam?

It's from the Monty Python "Spam" sketch, where everything in the café comes with spam, even the spam.