how does junk mail arrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter p.mc
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p.mc

Hi

I've just gone over to another ISP about a month ago and had my second junk
mail in my OE6 mail server. The thing is, how do these posts arrive at my
cyber door when the "Sent To" address is nothing like mine apart from the
latter isp.com.
I do take care and mung my NG address as usual, and I have a disposable
email I use if I need to fill in any forms for the purpose of
verification...etc.etc.

To reiterate...How does

junkmail@my isp.co.uk
arrive at
myaddress@my isp.co.uk..?

When... junkmail.@my ispco.uk... isn't even my valid email address...?
 
It may be that "junk mail" is automatically generated when you post the same
question on three or more bulletin boards!

Milt
 
p.mc said:
Hi

I've just gone over to another ISP about a month ago and had my second
junk mail in my OE6 mail server. The thing is, how do these posts
arrive at my cyber door when the "Sent To" address is nothing like
mine apart from the latter isp.com.
I do take care and mung my NG address as usual, and I have a
disposable email I use if I need to fill in any forms for the purpose
of verification...etc.etc.

To reiterate...How does

junkmail@my isp.co.uk
arrive at
myaddress@my isp.co.uk..?

When... junkmail.@my ispco.uk... isn't even my valid email address...?
Click to expand...

(After re-reading, I noted this doesn't apply here, but I typed a bit
anyway so it's sent.)

In addition to stuff being sent Bcc, spyware and trojans on OTHER people
computers can harvest your e-mail address as well.

One thing that irritates me to no end is when I receive something that
has been forwarded to me, and 30 other people, that was forwarded to 30
people before that, which was forwarded to 20 people before that, etc.,
which I scroll through 6, 7, or more pages of headers showing the 100 or
meore people this had been sent to. Personal e-mail address's, business
e-mail account's, complete with a lot of full proper names and
organization names, and then I hit the one or two lines at the bottom
that was the actual message being forwarded.

If I was a spammer, I'd then have 100 more, KNOWN valid addresses to send
more junk to.

As a courtesy, if I choose to forward like this (very rarely), I then
would go ahead and delete all the previous headers and only send along
the real e-mail content.
 
1 Your address may be in the BCC header.
A lot of junk mail has a "dictionary tool" to put every word in the dictionary, or list of common
name, as a BCC person at a specific ISP address. This way they get lots of messages through without
actually having a database of names. Only an advanced filter by your ISP will reduce this. There
is no fool-proof way to stop all spam.
 
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'p.mc' wrote, in part:
| I've just gone over to another ISP about a month ago and had my second
junk
| mail in my OE6 mail server. The thing is, how do these posts arrive at my
| cyber door when the "Sent To" address is nothing like mine apart from the
| latter isp.com.
_____

It can get worse. 'Junk email' can be malicious. There are Internet
'worms' that harvest email addresses and send out infectious emails to the
harvested addresses and that also use these addresses for 'spoofed' 'From'
addresses.

Swen was such a worm within a day after it appeared, I began getting 2000
emails each day, all infected with 'Swen'. MY system did not get infected
because my protections against malware worked. But still that was 40 MBytes
of 'junk' mail per day (and at that time mail boxes were usually only 10
MBytes.)

You are right to use an invalid email address when posting to Usenet
newsgroups - 'Swen' harvested email addresses from news servers - that was
how my email address became a target. After about two weeks the flood began
to taper off, and after 6 months, I never got another.

The solution was for ISPs to check all email for infections. Now most do.
The junk mail problem is much harder to solve; message content changes quite
often, and false positives are a BIG problem. If you have subscribed to
legitimate mailing lists, it is possible that your email address will not be
in the 'To' line, as it may be sent with 'Blind Carbon Copy' just as most
junk email is sent. As long as junk email can be sent at no cost, it will
be a problem. Even a 0.01% return makes it worthwhile. About half of my
junk email comes from Brazil, in Portuguese! And I don't understand
Portuguese!

Phil Weldon

| Hi
|
| I've just gone over to another ISP about a month ago and had my second
junk
| mail in my OE6 mail server. The thing is, how do these posts arrive at my
| cyber door when the "Sent To" address is nothing like mine apart from the
| latter isp.com.
| I do take care and mung my NG address as usual, and I have a disposable
| email I use if I need to fill in any forms for the purpose of
| verification...etc.etc.
|
| To reiterate...How does
|
| junkmail@my isp.co.uk
| arrive at
| myaddress@my isp.co.uk..?
|
| When... junkmail.@my ispco.uk... isn't even my valid email address...?
|
| --
|
| Regards
| p.mc
|
|
|
 
p.mc said:
Hi

I've just gone over to another ISP about a month ago and had my
second junk mail in my OE6 mail server. The thing is, how do
these posts arrive at my cyber door when the "Sent To" address
is nothing like mine apart from the latter isp.com.
I do take care and mung my NG address as usual, and I have a
disposable email I use if I need to fill in any forms for the
purpose of verification...etc.etc.

To reiterate...How does

junkmail@my isp.co.uk
arrive at
myaddress@my isp.co.uk..?

When... junkmail.@my ispco.uk... isn't even my valid email
address...?
Click to expand...

Just a few of the spammer's methods:
-- guess at your address and a few hundred others too (called a
dictionary list).
-- You posted your address on a newsgroup.
-- You gave your address to a web site that collects addresses
to make spam lists.
-- You signed up for a newsletter or automated mail of some sort
where they collect the addresses to sell.
-- You have a personal web site and put your email address there
so people can contact you.
-- A worm, trojan or virus visited your computer while you were
online and stole your address book.
-- Someone did you a favor and signed you up for a new gag list
or whatever.
-- One of your friends had their address book harvested from
their machine and your name was on it.
-- Someone thought they'd play a trick on you and signed you up
for porn or something else you might not like,to get back at you
for something.
-- Your ISP was hacked and all the addresses stolen.
-- Your address made it to ONE spammers list: That list was
then sold to people a thru z who in turned each sold an even
bigger list to even more people.

Spammers can find email addresses very easily - all they have to
do is look for an "@" and chances are very good they have found
an email address and so they steal them. They have automated
software programs to do this for them.
Spammers also congregate at ISPs who are spam friendly and do
not close their accounts when the spammer is caught.

Once you get on a spam list, it is next to impossible to get off
them because they never delete names; they just add new ones.,
They don't care that many of the addresses are no good anymore.
A single spam run can contain a million or more people's email
addresses.

The From in an email is very easily forged and is not proof of
who thge email came from. Anyone can do that without special
software; even you.

www.cauce.org
www.spamcop.net

Go to Google and try a search for "Spam prevention" and you will
get a LOT of hits. "Spam avoidance" is another good search
phrase. Or just "spam" if you want to see more than you could
possibly ever read.

HTH,

Pop
 
Pops,
My e-mail address was harvested a few years ago when I inadvertently
published my e-mail address on one of these msn newsgroups and have been
plagued ever since with spammers. Recently (three weeks), I started using
BlueFrog (an add-on to the MailWasher programme) and the incidence of spam
to my address has been considerably reduced.
 
There are undoubtedly several ways. Among them--
Your address is the closest address to a bogus one used by the spammer.
IP's often have broadcast addresses for internal use and targeted customer
lists with addresses that are sold.
The send receipt and other email options can be used to validate active
email addresses.
The attachment process can be used as well.
 
Thanks

There was something on the "Cc:" line but that wasn't any of my addresses
either, I was hoping I could find out which of the five mail addresses I
have that it was sent to, so I could then delete the compromised email
address if you see my meaning!
Is there any way of knowing what address it was sent to when there's no
information to gather from the offending spam?

The two mails were typically;

To:...(A mail address, but not mine)
Subject:...John wanted me to send you this...(Crap)
Cc:...(Something typed in but no mail address)
 
p.mc said:
Thanks

There was something on the "Cc:" line but that wasn't any of my addresses
either, I was hoping I could find out which of the five mail addresses I
have that it was sent to, so I could then delete the compromised email
address if you see my meaning!
Is there any way of knowing what address it was sent to when there's no
information to gather from the offending spam?
Click to expand...

No, you can't tell. The "To:" and "CC:" headers that you see are
basically documentation. The SMTP server that sends the mail receives
a list of addresses to send the message to, and also the mail to be
sent. Normally, the headers in the mail message are set to reflect the
address lists given to the server, but there's nothing that enforces
that, and with SPAM the headers are frequently missing or fake.
 
Well thanks all for your input, I'm a little bit wiser for it and I'm sure
it's been a benefit to the lurkers.
 
ME said:
Pops,
My e-mail address was harvested a few years ago when I inadvertently
published my e-mail address on one of these msn newsgroups and have been
plagued ever since with spammers. Recently (three weeks), I started using
BlueFrog (an add-on to the MailWasher programme) and the incidence of spam
to my address has been considerably reduced.
Click to expand...


I have found that once you are in any one apammer's mailing list, it is
very difficult to come out of it as these lists are never reviewd to see
which accounts are active and which not. I have got some free
web-based email accounts which are used for collecting spam. These
accounts are now completely full and the emails are all bouncing (for
nearly two years now!) but these spammers are still keeping my name on
their valued list!! I suspect even if I die and my accounts are closed
the name will remain there and transferred from one spammer to another.
I haven't found a way to fill up the yahoo email box so that email
bounces. Its size is 1 gb and will require millions of spam messages to
fill this up. I keep sending big files to this account (to fill it up
quickly) but it looks like I have to do it forever.

What is required is that whenever these spammers are convicted, their
hardware should be confiscated and destroyed. This is the only way to
destroy the list of email addresses permanently.
 
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