Help with E-mail spam!

Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Help with E-mail spam!

Every day I get sent an e-mail from a different name / domain advising of current Prices of some dodgy companies. On Express I just block the sender all the time and delete it.

Example :

From Donnie Cummins ..
E-mail mptaljk@...

------------------------------------
Company name: Texhoma Energy, Inc.
Stock symbol: TXHE.PK
Current price: 0.12 (up 50% this week)
Expected price 10/20/2006: 0.52
------------------------------------

The information mentioned herein has not been released to the
general public and should be kept confidential until its
scheduled announcement on Friday, October 20. I strongly suggest
that you get in before then.

HOUSTON, TEXAS--(MARKET WIRE)--October 20, 2006 -- Texhoma Energy,
Inc. [TXHE] is pleased to announce Successful drilling results on
the Clovely site. As mentioned in earlier updates we encountered
two expansive gas pockets with a flow rate estimated at 900 MCF
of gas per day. Today we are happy to report the discovery of an
oil reservoir which has far exceeded our initial expectations.
Recoverable reserves are estimated at 2mil barrels and plans are
in place to start additional drilling in order to take advantage
of this very fortunate situation. As always, we will keep our
shareholders abreast of the latest happenings.

With offices in Houston, Texhoma Energy Inc. is a junior
international oil and gas company focused on acquiring,
developing and producing oil and gas. The Company is currently
active in the southern United States.

The Company's principal geographic area of focus lies in the
wider Gulf of Mexico petroleum basin, which includes onshore and
in-shore opportunities. The Company participates in a selected
number of oil and gas ventures through judgment by a small team
of experienced professionals. Recently these experts have had a
string of successes which will be reflected in upcoming revenue
reports.

Revenue from production is estimated to be worth $120mil. With
177mil shrs outstanding this gives us a book value of 0.67

This is a great opportunity for you to make the market work for
you. After 10/20/2006 the price will increase significantly.

--
This email has been verified as Virus free
Virus Protection and more available at http://www.plus.net

--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.5/483 - Release Date: 18/10/2006

Has anyone experiences this and know how the feck I stop this. It's starting to do my head right in!!!

Cheers
Stevie

GfK

Nothing you can do, really.

Things like this come in waves. I used to get loads, then they stop for a few months, then start again.

Just delete 'em and don't reply.

Stevie G

Hmmm, ok cheers.

Indiepath

I get literally hundreds of these a day, the server catches most but they still come it - not much you can do either :(

Amon

Yeah, I get them aswell. They sort of change format every 3 months. First i was getting spam from nigerians claiming to be millionaires who wanted to put money in my account, then I got spam about Penis Growth pills, Ciallis etc. I get about 5 emails every couple of hours asking me to verify my bank details, paypal scams, ebay scams and just recently lots of emails where the text is actually a gif image thus bypassing the spam filter.

Grey Alien

Got the same. I reckon everyone on the planet must get some of the same spams. Pees me off that. These new ones with images and no text are well annoying as the spam filter can't catch them based on text content. Really annoying how many millions of manhours are wasted each day by people trawling through spam. It's either pills, shares or nigerian millions sigh...

QuickSilva

Agreed. Pain in the backside. My connection went down for a day or two and when I was back up and running I had hundreds of the crap to sift through, like I haven`t got anything better to do with my time. Still not much you can do about it sadly.

Jason.

Stevie G

Well at least I'm getting sod all compared to some people :) Can't wait for the pills & nigerian gibberish now ... the joys!

Perturbatio

get thunderbird and use it's spam filter, it finds the majority of spam for me.

Beaker

#10

Or use Spampal.

Buggy

#11

Try the new Hotmail Beta version thing. New email address, and not one spam mail (not even in the junk mail folder) as of yet. Maybe I just haven't been put on the mailing lists yet, though.

xlsior

#12

One of the best spamblockers I've used is Spambayes, at http://spambayes.sourceforge.net

Freeware, open source. Both Linux and Windows. They have a plugin for Microsoft Outlook (not express), or a proxy-version that works with any email client (Outlook Express, Eudora, whatever you have)

The nice thing about Spambayes is that it uses a baysian statistical analyses on your incoming mail. At first, it doesn't really know what to do, you train it by classifying messages. It will then start to recognize what your 'normal' mail looks like (use of words, topics, etc.) It will filter to no-spam, spam, and unsure. After a couple of days of training (depending onn how much mail you get, of course) it will have less and less 'unsure', and is pretty much dead-on.

I used it on my previous email address that received a lot of spam -- typically about 400 messages a week, 375 of which were spam. After training, it found less than 5 a week that it wasn't sure about, without flagging any real mail as spam.

Highly recommended.

since it analyzes *your* mail, you get a much more accurate filtering than with other products that are based around generic one-size-fits-all filters.

Cygnus

#13

I get the occasional spam, but generally I don't share my email address so I dont get my Addy shared around the spammers.

Type your Email into google for a list of websites you need to go remove your addy from. :)

if google finds your email, so will the spammers.

Stevie G

#14

Ah .. cheers Cyg, I'll try that when I get home.

Thanks all with the advice.

Cygnus

#15

I'd like to point out that my Hotmail account is spammed to uselessness.

Funny because it's linked to BlitzCoder and they won't let us edit our posts!

Stevie, looks like BlitzCoder is the cause of your problems, too... that Virus Remake :)

Rook Zimbabwe

#16

I started getting that spam (embedded html -- HOT STOCK TIPS!) when my company started using BLACKBERRY out in the dield for its field techs... I used SPAMCOP for a while but the flood became too great.

Skitchy

#17

Get Cactus Spam Filter - its free. Somebody here recommended it a few months ago, so I grabbed it and it REALLY is good. You have to train it obviously, but its dead easy to do.

Dubious Drewski

#18

You people give out your email to anyone, don't you.

I have zero spam. Here's what I do:
Get a gmail account. Then get a trash email account, like hotmail.

If a forum or website wants you to register via an email confirmation, give 'em the hotmail account. This keeps
your gmail clean. Plus whatever spam does make it through is no problem; gmail's filters work very, very well.
I've searched through my spam folder. No mistakes so far.

xlsior

#19

You people give out your email to anyone, don't you.

My *real* email address gets maybe 5 spam messages a year or so, and those are sent to an alias that's harvested from the publically viewable whois information for my domains.

Unfortunately, even if YOU never give out your email address to anyone other than friends and family, it doesn't mean you won't end up on the spammer's lists -- whois info can sometimes open the floodgates as well. As do those nice 'free' greetingcards sites your aunt keeps sending you stuff through that harvest your address in the process. As do those random other sites with cute little 'forward this to a friend!' links.

and once you're on one spammer's list, it doesn't take long before you're on *every* spammer's list. There's money to be made selling address, after all.

The only way to truly prevent spam is to not use email at all. :-/

Dubious Drewski

#20

As do those random other sites with cute little 'forward this to a friend!' links.

Well, yeah, but you don't actually read or send those...do you?

I ignore all chain-letter-esque emails completetely, even ones from my dearest family members. If they want to write me, write me. Don't send me that crap.

...But that's just personal preference.

The only way to truly prevent spam is to not use email at all. :-/

Yeah but, like me, you can reduce it enough so that it becomes a non-issue.

DampeS8N

#21

I block people who send me chainmail... doesn't matter who they are. Including my aunt and my great aunt and my brother.

#22

Prevent spam by using a whitelist.

Default to blocking every email. Only let through ones from known addresses.

Cygnus

#23

People who got blocked for sending me Forward emails:

My cousin, my Sister, about 5 friends, and anyone else who sends me more than one- (on the first one I send a warning ;) )

xlsior

#24

Well, yeah, but you don't actually read or send those...do you?

Of course I don't, but the whole point is that if your great-aunt DOES sent you one, she just handed your address over to who-knows-who, which can very well result your address to be added to marketing lists and resold to others. Bottom line is that even if you are careful not to hand out your email address, others very well may do so without realizing the problem.

T David

#25

I actually still get them. I dont even bother with those people. I delete them. One time I had a lawyer from Brazil, try to get me to help him with a dead "relative" of mine (wasnt related). I told him to beat it, and if I catch his illegal rear e-mailing me again he was going to have issus. He never sent another one. I at one point shut my bulk e-mail completly down. After a 2 months being off, I turned it back on, and got 7 new e-mails in 30 seconds flat. The only suggestion, is to make an e-mail username, that is prettyhard for somebody to accidently manifest. my dsbickford acount was to easy to get. But something that has 10 charecters and 5 numbers (example) is hard to manifest unless they actually knew your address.

Foppy

#26

But something that has 10 charecters and 5 numbers (example)

AHAAAA!!

*starts sending spam*

kevin8084

#27

I read the header and trace back to the sender's IP address (not always possible, though). Then I forward the email to the abuse department of the sender's ISP with the statement that I do not wish to receive any further unsolicited email from their user. This works very well for the most part.
Good luck :)

Grey Alien

#28

Default to blocking every email. Only let through ones from known addresses.

unfortunately if I did this, I'd have missed out on some great business opportunitues...

wedoe

#29

Get Cactus Spam Filter - its free. Somebody here recommended it a few months ago, so I grabbed it and it REALLY is good.

That was me, and YES, it is fabulous ! :o)