Information Request

[James]

Does anyone know how spam emails be stopped, or is there something
that can be downloaded
that would help?

James

 

[John John]

http://www.mailwasher.net/

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Does anyone know how spam emails be stopped, or is there something
that can be downloaded
that would help?

There are many third-party tools available, depending on what E-mail
client you use. Some are free; some are not. I personally use
Cloudmark with Outlook 2007.

Also many ISPs and E-mail servers do a good job of filtering spam.

However, note that no tool, whether it's one that you run or one that
your ISP provides, is anywhere near perfect. At best they will
recognize some spam (although the good ones get *most* spam), and stop
it. The result is a *reduction* in spam, not total stopping of it.

I see that you use GMail. If you haven't done so, enable GMail's spam
filter. It's one of the best.

Also note that you posted here using what appears to be your real
E-mail address. Although some damage may already be done, you should
stop doing this immediately. There are spambots that garner E-mail
addresses from newsgroup postings. Either "munge" your address by
adding characters to it (with instructions on how to remove them in
your signature, if you want E-mail replies) or use an entirely fake
return address. Since I don't want E-mail replies here at all, I take
the later option, and my return address is
(e-mail address removed)

 

[James]

There are many third-party tools available, depending on what E-mail
client you use. Some are free; some are not. I personally use
Cloudmark with Outlook 2007.

Also many ISPs and E-mail servers do a good job of filtering spam.

However, note that no tool, whether it's one that you run or one that
your ISP provides, is anywhere near perfect. At best they will
recognize some spam (although the good ones get *most* spam), and stop
it. The result is a *reduction* in spam, not total stopping of it.

I see that you use GMail. If you haven't done so, enable GMail's spam
filter. It's one of the best.

Also note that you posted here using what appears to be your real
E-mail address. Although some damage may already be done, you should
stop doing this immediately. There are spambots that garner E-mail
addresses from newsgroup postings. Either "munge" your address by
adding characters to it (with instructions on how to remove them in
your signature, if you want E-mail replies) or use an entirely fake
return address. Since I don't want E-mail replies here at all, I take
the later option, and my return address is
(e-mail address removed)

Ken the email programs I was use are Gmail, Outlook Express, and the
one I was actually asking about is my 3rd inbox-Hotmail.
Thanks in advance for helping
James

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Does anyone know how spam emails be stopped, or is there something
that can be downloaded
that would help?

James

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: "(e-mail address removed)."

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).

5) 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.

6) 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

Help us help you:


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[James]

     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: "(e-mail address removed)."

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).

5)  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.

6)  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

Help us help you:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

I want to thank everyone who responded-you all are really helpful, and
too I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

James

 

[Sam Hobbs]

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).

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

Another useful defense (for OE at least) is to set the option to always read
messages in plain text format. OE allows us to switch to HTML format if we
can trust that the message is not spam. Plain text format makes it nearly
(essentially totally) impossible for malicious email to do anything. You
especially don't want to allow images (even small ones) to be shown unless
you trust the sender.

All of these are intended to make it difficult or impossible for a spammer
to verify that your email address is valid.

 

[Gordon]

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

Eh? How do you work that one out?

 

[Stan Brown]

Sun, 6 Jan 2008 03:37:33 -0800 from Sam Hobbs

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

How, pray tell?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

How so? Please provide some sort of evidence to support such an
unsubstantiated claim. No guesses allowed.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Eh? How do you work that one out?

This was discussed in this newsgroup about a month ago. If you don't fnd
that discussion then perhaps I will later.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

How so? Please provide some sort of evidence to support such an
unsubstantiated claim. No guesses allowed.

See my previous reply in this thread about a previous reply to another
thread.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

See my previous reply in this thread about a previous reply to another
thread.

In other words, you can't substantiate the claim. Thanks for verifying
that.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

Eh? How do you work that one out?

This was discussed in this newsgroup about a month ago. If you
don't fnd that discussion then perhaps I will later.

This?
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...0/6eef3a091960a12f?lnk=st&q=#6eef3a091960a12f

Where you commented, "I used spamcop years ago until I realized that they
include our email address in their complaints. I am not totally sure that is
happening but I did read somewhere that they do. Perhaps they do not now
even if they did in the past, but if they do include our email address in
their complaints then it does not help us to report spam."

 

[Stan Brown]

Sun, 6 Jan 2008 15:22:44 -0800 from Sam Hobbs

This was discussed in this newsgroup about a month ago. If you don't fnd
that discussion then perhaps I will later.

In other words, you're just making it up.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

This?
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...0/6eef3a091960a12f?lnk=st&q=#6eef3a091960a12f

Where you commented, "I used spamcop years ago until I realized that they
include our email address in their complaints. I am not totally sure that
is happening but I did read somewhere that they do. Perhaps they do not
now even if they did in the past, but if they do include our email address
in their complaints then it does not help us to report spam."

Yes, except there was more in that thread. Ignore it if you wish; at least
others have the discussion to judge for themselves.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Sun, 6 Jan 2008 15:22:44 -0800 from Sam Hobbs


In other words, you're just making it up.

Thanks for the clarification.

It is good for you to believe that. Now you will do us all a favor by
insisting to use SpamCop. That will benefit everyone else at least. Thank
you.

For those that choose to believe what I say, SpamCop can be
counter-productive for the person reporting spam.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Using SpamCop can make things worse for you, not better.

Eh? How do you work that one out?

This was discussed in this newsgroup about a month ago. If you
don't fnd that discussion then perhaps I will later.

This?
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...0/6eef3a091960a12f?lnk=st&q=#6eef3a091960a12f

Where you commented, "I used spamcop years ago until I realized
that they include our email address in their complaints. I am not
totally sure that is happening but I did read somewhere that they
do. Perhaps they do not now even if they did in the past, but if
they do include our email address in their complaints then it does
not help us to report spam."

Yes, except there was more in that thread. Ignore it if you wish;
at least others have the discussion to judge for themselves.

I looked through said discussion...

Bruce mentioned SpamCop first with:
"One tool that makes forwarding such complaints fairly simple is SpamCop
(http://spamcop.net)."

Followed by your comment (Sam Hobbs):
"I used spamcop years ago until I realized that they include our email
address in their complaints. I am not totally sure that is happening but I
did read somewhere that they do. Perhaps they do not now even if they did in
the past, but if they do include our email address in their complaints then
it does not help us to report spam."

Bruce replied (in reference to Spamcop):
"Well, yes, email address that received is an integral part of the
header information that must be submitted when reporting spam. That's
inevitable and unavoidable."

Followed by your reply (in reference to SpanCop):
"I suggested not using SpamCop. I said don't use it unless they assure
us they don't include our email addresses in their reports."

Poprivet replied there with:
"If you mean spamcop.net, they do munge your address
where it's in the clear. But what they don't/can't do
is look in base64, etc. types of code to see if it's
been hidden somewhere. If you read the FAQs you'll
find it well spelled out. If it botheres you, don't use Spamcop.
Do it manually. And hope."

Where you responded (last response in the thread)(Sam Hobbs):
"So let's get back to what I said. I said that using Spamcop could easily
make things worse for the person reporting spam."


I personally wouldn't call that a very conclusive discussion. Poprivet was
the only one participating that mentioned any sort of documented facts
beyond a loose opinion that I saw. In fact - I followed up on that one
suggested documented fact and located this:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/3.html

Where they state:
"SpamCop will parse the headers of unwanted email and (if all goes well)
phrase a complaint to the system administrator responsible for the spammer's
internet access. This complaint will be addressed from a blind SpamCop.net
email address, however any responses to that address will be routed to the
email address you have provided with your SpamCop account. You may be
presented with more than one address to send your complaint to and can
select whether to send to each individual address or not."

Digging just a bit further - SpamCop/IronPort Systems was sued (in 2004) and
one of the 'complaints" was:

"The lawsuit alleges SpamCop deleted the email addresses of complainers from
the complaints the company sent to OptInRealBig's ISPs. According to the
allegations, "Neither Optigate nor the other ISPs could take any corrective
action because SpamCop had rendered the Complaint to be anonymous."
Barrett agrees this is a problem. "SpamCop reports delete the email of the
person who's reporting the spam from servers, so ESPs (email service
providers) have a difficult time removing the people who are reporting the
spam.""

More:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3348241
http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/optinrealbig.shtml
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2004/06/28/judge_denies_optinrealbigs_bid_to_stop_spamcop/

And more on what I believe was the final decision...
http://lawsuite.word-to-the-wise.com/srannounce.txt


I do not work with SpamCop/for SpamCop nor do I even recommend it currently
in my list of tips... I have never used it - nor likely will I. I have no
plans to recommend it or not. I personally don't see the point of reporting
the email spammers - because if that worked - it would have by now. I get
very little spam that makes it to me - even on an account that, by all
rights, should get 1000's of messages a day (and does, in fact, get - on
average - 100 spam messages a day.) It is all filtered and never gets to me
and the chances that I could lessen said spam never enters my mind. It's a
wasted effort - in my opinion - because of the tricks employed to send said
emails.

However - to each their own - if someone feels they are cleaning up the
world by reporting spammers (or even just cleaning up their inbox) - more
power to them. I personally just take the 'good filter' approach and never
see the problem that collects in my mailbox - somewhere - probably. Do
whatever you like - but do your own research and read up on things before
you try it out.

 

[Stan Brown]

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 12:42:14 -0800 from Sam Hobbs

For those that choose to believe what I say, SpamCop can be
counter-productive for the person reporting spam.

Right -- you repeated the same unsupported statement, so it *must* be
true.

The contrast between your "it must be true because I say so" and
Shenan Stanley's actual research is pretty striking.

Whether Spamcop does or does not include your email address in the
spam report, what does it matter? The spammer already *has* your
email address. And it doesn't matter that you're confirming that it's
good, because they don't care.

 

[Sam Hobbs]

Whether Spamcop does or does not include your email address in the
spam report, what does it matter? The spammer already *has* your
email address. And it doesn't matter that you're confirming that it's
good, because they don't care.

Confirmation of validity of an email adderess is valuable to those gathering
and selling email addresses. That is common knowledge among those familair
with spam.