Different question about spam.

Old_Gold

If anyone has seen I have been trying to get help as I have started to get bundles of spam. I cannot ignore my bulk folder as sometimes genuine emails slip through and the other day I opened one I thought was genuine. To my surprise I then realised something I did not know. The spam emails are not addressed to my box.
So my question is why is mail getting through to my address when it is addressed to a different email box?

newlywed

You need to look at the full headers. The display name shown can be something entirely different to the actual e-mail address it is sent to (shown in the full header of the e-mail), spam mail often has this.

Theo_Cupier

Often, a single spam message will be sent to a number of mailboxes at once.

Many ISPs find their customers are victims of "dictionary" or sequential spam, where the spammer sends Emails out to large numbers of generated Email addresses, eg

aaaaaaa@yourisp.com
aaaaaab@yourisp.com
aaaaaac@
and so on

Other spammers will focus on "known words"@yourisp.com.

Sometimes such spamming is litterally blanket bombing an ISP (since it is so cheap to send spam) in the hope that one mug responds and tries to buy their little blue pills, or whatever.

Other times, they are actually monitoring responses from these spams to see which Email addresses @yourisp.com are active. This means they have a list of "active" addresses they can use themselves in future or - perhaps worse - sell to other spammers and guarantee themselves an income.

In short, your Email address may not be on the "to" field of the spam, but it's probably on a computer generated "cc" list or - if you can't see how it got there - the "bcc" list.

Old_Gold

Theo I cannot believe that the ISPs could not stop this if they wanted.
I understand your point about the pills but some of the posts actually lead to nowhere.

Theo_Cupier

Old Gold. From an ISP's point of view you have to understand two things:
1. How do they discriminate between a legitimate Email sent to many of their subscribers and 'dictionary attack' spam
2. What's in it for them commercially to spend money providing such a service?

That's the technician and telco consultant in me speaking, though. The internet user (and parent of young children who use the internet) says of course they can, and should, damned well do something about it.

Old_Gold

I am not a techie at all but I wouldn't think for a start that it would be difficult for them to bar certain addresses eg anything@strange.if . If it was something recognisable eg yahoo or hotmail the address would be easier to trace.
BT have announced today that they have a scheme to combat spam and I think if all the genuine ISPs joined in we should see a reduction in this annoying spam.
What's in it for them. Keeping satisfied users or is that such an old fashioned idea.

Theo_Cupier

Old_Gold wrote:

I am not a techie at all but I wouldn't think for a start that it would be difficult for them to bar certain addresses eg anything@strange.if . If it was something recognisable eg yahoo or hotmail the address would be easier to trace.

So who keeps up with the constant stream of new domains being registered, or sub-accounts being created to send spam from? It is a huge problem and will take a huge effort to try and fix

BT have announced today that they have a scheme to combat spam and I think if all the genuine ISPs joined in we should see a reduction in this annoying spam.
What's in it for them. Keeping satisfied users or is that such an old fashioned idea.

I agree completely, but at the moment it's a ubiquitous problem. If someone manages to solve it and starts an ISP guaranteeing 100% successful spam filtering then I expect it will get a LOT of custom. Here's hoping...

Old_Gold

Theo_Cupier wrote:

So who keeps up with the constant stream of new domains being registered, or sub-accounts being created to send spam from? It is a huge problem and will take a huge effort to try and fix

.

Why not have the ability to only allow registered domains to get through the system. Surely if you have a system where you have to opt in must be easier than trying to keep those out who are dodgy.

Patr100

Old_Gold wrote:

Why not have the ability to only allow registered domains to get through the system. Surely if you have a system where you have to opt in must be easier than trying to keep those out who are dodgy.

Not practical with the millions of emails sent every day and possible domains . Thousands are being legitimately registered every day. What if you send an with a domain email that is not on the list? You wouldn't recieve it - you wouldn't even know it was sent to you. eg AOL.com was notorious for spam - and some ISPs may have blocked it in the past but legit aol users also suffered.

Sorry but this is a chronic problem for which there is not easy quick fix - otherwise it would have been taken up - the onus is on you to set up filters /alllow deny domains -

Old_Gold

The only reason it has not been fixed is because it is not in the interest yet of the ISP's to do something about it. How difficult would it be for me to be able to choose to block anything that says viagra or a phrase I choose not to. But I cant with Yahoo unless I pay for the service.
Of course it would be possible to use the system I have said. It just means that genuine people would have to co-operate with the system. AOL or any other system would have more control to stop spammers using their system therefore we would not have to block AOL users. What I am saying will come eventually otherwise the whole system will block up so why not do it now rather than later.

Patr100

The only reason it has not been fixed is because it is not in the interest yet of the ISP's to do something about it. How difficult would it be for me to be able to choose to block anything that says viagra or a phrase I choose not to. But I cant with Yahoo unless I pay for the service.

Sorry, I won't labour the point but it's not a simple as that . Also domain blocking is not the same as key word blocking. spammers know this and have ways of gettiing round blocked words. Free Yahoomail has some anti spam facilities - and they generally work well in my experience. why should they provide a free service and do your filtering for you?
If you want to use Outlook Express with it and set up further anti spam rules then you can pay extra and can do so -