strange e-mails.

  • Thread starter Thread starter roger hebb
  • Start date Start date
R

roger hebb

Hi,
Can anyone tell me whats the meaning of a load of strange
e-mails i get which consist of a load of jumbled up words-
usually 3 or 4 lines of words at the bottom of the e-mail-
ie-bionic surreptable congrous-just a meaning less ramble-
usually comes with a advert for drugs or something you
dont need or sometimes just the ramble and nothing
else,anyone know what its all about?
Roger h.
 
It is called SPAM. It is probably best to not allow these types of email to
even get onto your pc. I use a program called Mailwasher Pro which sets up
filters which will delete these emails from your isp server.

In OE you may be able to do the same thing using rules in OE to block these
emails. Look in the Tools in OE for Message Rules.

Good luck
 
On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 04:19:53 -0800, "roger hebb"

in Hit or Miss, it's a miss attempt to bypass some spam catchers. Oddly enough
my popfile caught the 1st one of these attempts ages ago.
 
roger said:
Hi,
Can anyone tell me whats the meaning of a load of strange
e-mails i get which consist of a load of jumbled up words-
usually 3 or 4 lines of words at the bottom of the e-mail-
ie-bionic surreptable congrous-just a meaning less ramble-
usually comes with a advert for drugs or something you
dont need or sometimes just the ramble and nothing
else,anyone know what its all about?
Roger h.
Click to expand...


It's called "spam," a.k.a. unsolicited commercial email. The rambling
gibberish is used to help fool primitive spam blockers.

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. (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

Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having
both at once. - RAH
 
roger hebb said:
Hi,
Can anyone tell me whats the meaning of a load of strange
e-mails i get which consist of a load of jumbled up words-
usually 3 or 4 lines of words at the bottom of the e-mail-
ie-bionic surreptable congrous-just a meaning less ramble-
usually comes with a advert for drugs or something you
dont need or sometimes just the ramble and nothing
else,anyone know what its all about?
Roger h.
Click to expand...

Many (if not most) of these contain an attachment which will try to infect
your machine with a virus if you open it.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, IE/OE
Please respond in Newsgroup only. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com./athome/security/protect/default.aspx
 
Bruce said:
It's called "spam," a.k.a. unsolicited commercial email. The
rambling gibberish is used to help fool primitive spam blockers.

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. (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.
Click to expand...


Check This out NOTHING IS FREE
Look at all the Domains They USE to Collect E-mail address's
Click on one of them and you will see that the first thing they WANT is
your E-mail address's
They Even have Sites that are directed to KIDS

http://www.omnipoint.com/lists.html
 
while it's not realistically possible to eliminate it, you can permanently
stop SEEING it and being bothered by it with a "challenge" anti-SPAM system.

I use Choice Mail One.

Unless I choose to go to the "other side" and review the endless junk that
has come in, I am 100 percent SPAM-less in my regular in boxes.

There is a free trial. It is a little bit tweaky to set up, but once
configured, it works perfectly.

http://www.digiportal.com/
 
Hi Roger,
You shouldn't even be 'opening' these emails to look at their content.

If you're using Outlook Express (I'm not sure how this works in other email
programs), set the Inbox so that it doesn't show the preview pane. (From
the View menu at the top of the window, choose Layout, and uncheck the
preview pane box.)

Then you can go through the list of new emails and delete almost all the
spam just on the basis of from ("Harold Potter"? really now), or subject
matter, or if it's not even addressed to you. If I see something
suspicious which *might* be for real, I right click on it, select
properties, details and message source. This lets me see exactly what's
inside without (I hope!!) actually opening it.

After eliminating the junk, open the real messages by double clicking on
them.

Since you can get viruses and other malware through email even from
'trusted' sources, make sure you have anti-virus ware with an up to date
subscription, and to be doubly sure set your program not to automatically
open attachments (many viruses ride in as attachments) and to read messages
as plain text only, not HTML.

And if you've really been opening and reading all those viagra and day
trading offers, now is a good time to do a complete virus scan and check out
programs such as AdAware and other spyware detectors. Here's one entry into
this whole field:
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Have a safe day,
gg
 
Back
Top