Re: SMART SPAM
- From: Bruce Chambers <bchambers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 18:58:16 -0600
Mickey Mouse wrote:
Until now I've been reading but not answering my spam mail.
I do this to locate key words or phrases that I can use to create a rule within outlook express. Can't keep blocking sender because it's always a different address.
Spam is now coming as a graphic. That is, spam is typed at the source (sender) and then converted to a graphic before sending. This appears to overcome the message rule blocking in outlook express.
Anyone experience this yet and is there a way to overcome it?
Mickey
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. 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: "name@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
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, 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
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Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell
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- From: Mickey Mouse
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