Re: porn email
From: N. Miller (nsm_at_blackhole.aosake.net)
Date: 03/23/04
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Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 16:52:40 -0800
In article <A7C8793B-C594-4DC5-A1CA-DA2C731450E7@microsoft.com>,
kathycruz@earthlink.net says...
> I am having a serious problem receiving porn email. It happened on my
> older computer and is now on my brand new one. I am running XP Home,
> IE6.0.2800. Outlook Express 6.0.2800.1123. Am current on all Windows
> updates. Not using Preview Pane. Have McAfee SpamKiller, Virus Scan
> Online, Personal Firewall. Run Virus Scan at least weekly, sometimes
> more. Also run Stinger. Have services down to bare minimum to logon.
> SFC checks out ok.Have done all I can in those products, email rules etc
> to block but can't seem to find the source.
The source is in the "From:" address field of your newsgroup post. Spammers
have harvesters which sweep the news groups looking for email addresses.
There are several ways to deal with it. When posting through the Microsoft
web site, let the web interface use the default email address,
<anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com>. If you want to be cute, and create
your own personal "bad" email address, use ".invalid" as the TLD; e.g.,
<I_luv@puppies.invalid>. If you have control over your own domain, create a
dead-end address, as I have done.
> Get them immediately when I open Outlook Express, looking at message
> sources they are all over the map. When I look at source, some are not
> even addressed to my email name but an alias must have been created
> somewher.
The sender's email address is usually phoney, or forged. The spammer often
uses "Bcc:" to disguise the bulk of his advertising campaign. He can set up
a run with a single "To:" address, not yours, and a hidden list of copied
addresses, including yours.
> When I look at blocked and accepted messages in Spamkiller, the breakdown
> is correct but that is not the reality. All come into inbox.
Does not SpamKiller tag messages? A good proxy spam filter should add a tag
to the "Subject:" field for clients, like MSOE, which can't filter deeper in
the headers. If the "Subject:" tag is [spam], then you can create a single
MSOE rule to diver messages with [spam] in the "Subject:" field to a "Junk"
mail folder.
> I delete all messages immediately and then permanently delete all in
> delete folder. Yet messages get saved on my hard disk. The folders I
> created in Outlook Express have identities. Is this correct? This is very
> frustrating and not what I expected when I started with my new PC; I did
> not import any data. I do not know if its Outlook or IE but I need some
> help on how to stop this as I have no confidence in email which is a vital
> tool.
It has nothing to do with the newness, or oldness of the computer, the
importation of data, or the level of currency of the mail client. If the
spammer can find your address at all, he will spam it. You should use a
discardable email address for signing up on web sites, and refrain from
giving out your email address to any merchant, or mall contest that you pass
in the brick-and-mortar world. I have a couple of Sneakemail address I use
like that, and my ISP just added the ability to create up to 500 discardable
addresses for similar purposes.
> I immediately print any real emails and delete those too but can't continue
> this way. Please help.
PA Bear, and others, favor the "Whitelist" approach. This works well enough
with MSOE, but is crude, simplistic, and you must know a sender's email
address ahead of time so you can add it to the "Whitelist" (or "Pass list"),
or they won't get through.
One rule for the "Whitelist", and a second rule to dump everything that
isn't moved to the "Whitelist" folders. I suspect that SpamKiller should be
tagging the messages, and diverting the suspected spam to a blocking folder.
I have used a Naive Bayesian filter which does that; POPFile. Robin Keir's
"K9" is similar.
For the last four years, or so, I've been using Pegasus Mail instead of
MSOE. It has a very rich filter set, and currently, in conjunction with
Mercury Mail, it is as effective as any other spam filter system in use.
About 97% of the spam hitting my accounts is diverted to my spam handling
account; similar to a "Junk" mail folder. Every one of those filtering
schemes has one flaw, though; false positives, the diversion of non-spam to
the spam collector. If you have an auto-deletion rule, as I have, you risk
throwing some email away. I have two levels of aggressiveness, depending on
whether it is my email, or my patrons's email. Mine, well, I am willing to
suffer an occasional lost message do to the false positives; consequently I
see very little of the 20 spam email messages each day that are polled from
my ISPs POP3 account. More spam gets through to my patron because I am less
aggressive on those messages.
Whether "whitelisting", or "Blacklisting", you will need to maintain your
filters; adding to either list. Even with the Naive Bayesian filters you
have to keep "training" them. Spammers know that people try to block their
ads, and keep trying to beat the blocks. I am convinced that spammers are
truly "sociopaths", in every sense of what that word means.
{For those who need examples of "sociopath", Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and
Adolf Hitler are examples.}
P.S. Please don't confuse the notorious serial killer, Ted, with the goofy
idiot of a husband and father, Al.
-- Norman ~Win dain a lotica, En vai tu ri, Si lo ta ~Fin dein a loluca, En dragu a sei lain ~Vi fa-ru les shutai am, En riga-lint
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