inundated with spam and fake undelivered mail

russetred

Recently my inbox is being filled with undelivered mail messages which I know has nothing to do with me and I don't touch at all just delete. I am also getting hit with dozens of share type tips with snappy little titles like dyke !!!!! and worse. None of them I open or respond to.Will they get fed up and go away or will I have to do something about it? I'm not that savvy on the computer yet so advice would be appreciated

Woby_Tide

you will have to start opening a few of them to enable you to set up rules which then filter them out

i.e. teh share tips often have some gubbins at the bottom detailing which US Fed rules they have adhered too, you then set a filter saying delete if the body contains the rule numbers tehy quote

for teh failed deliveries(I've had this all of a sudden soon, my domain has been cloned with numerous addresses of random names so hard to filter, but most of the failures contain "MESSAGE REJECTED" or 'undeliverable' awithin the subject or the sender is "mailer-daemon", again set a rule to delete these. It's a long process but eventually you get a list of filters that works on most

this is the manual list of filters I've created overthe last 3 years!
kevbo" "painttd" " .com y" " y" $header_to: is "o@ .com" "(OTC:" "*Stock Traders Alert*" "00kingst4tements" "0NL|nE" "0nl|NE " "Aletec" "C'|alis" "C1AL1S" "C1AL|S" "CIALIS" "Ci-alis" "Ci-ialis" "Cia'lis" "Cialas" "Cialis" "ClA||IS " "Con^sultation" "Current_Price" "C|AL1S " "EEV1lTRA" "Ejectulation" "En_Largement" "Erctions" "Ereection " "FDA" "FEDEX " "GrOwth" "Hydroc0done" "Hydrocodone" "In vestor " "M3ds" "Micro-Caps " "Modafinil" "ONL|nE " "ONL|nE" "Online_Pharmacy " "Online_Pharmacy" "Paracodin" "Paris Hilton" "Ph4rm4cy" "Ph4rmies " "Premerature" "Provigil" "Rolex" "SPUR-M" "SaVE-BiG " "SaVE-BiG" "Secti0n27A" "Securities Act of 1933" "Securities Exchange Act" "Secur|t|es" "Simply-RX " "SmallCap" "St0ck " "St0ck" "Tadalafil" "Va1ium" "Vi-c0din" "Via-gra " "Viagra" "Vic0din" "Vicodin" "Viiagrra" "Vjagrra" "VlAGGRA" "V|AGRA" "V|agra" "V||IAG*RA " "WHY_PAY_MORE" "Xanax" "ava1lable" "cia|is" "ejaculation" "em4|l" "experimenters.smndrc" "f0rw4rd" "f0rward " "insidefinancial" "l00k|ngstatements" "m4il1ngs" "medications" "microcap" "mircocap" "mi||i0n" "penny0master0" "pr0jecti0ns" "prOfi|e" "qu1ckserv.net" "rep0rt1ng" "s0fttabs" "se-xual " "shareh0lders" "soft`tabs" "softtabs" "sofware" "st0ck " "st0ck" "st0ck-brokerage" "st4tements" "trylogos" "variousus.net" "very2004.com" "whitpages" "www.correctspeling.com" "xanaax" "|NF0" $message_headers contains "EEV1lTRA" $message_headers contains "RND_WRD" $message_headers contains "ejaculaton "

Alfonso_Skinarelli

Woby_Tide wrote:

you will have to start opening a few of them to enable you to set up rules which then filter them out

Do not open them at all. If using Outlook Express, opening them may activate a malicious attachment (which usually accompanies them) or start a malicious script which can infect you immediately.

Right-click the email and select "Create a rule" and follow the prompts.

Alternatively, employ the help of any number of anti-spam tools available such as MailWasher Free..

http://www.mailwasher.net/

Woby_Tide

Don't worry, I wouldn't bother using something bug ridden like OE so don't mind opening them

redux

I'm not qualified to advise on eliminating spam as I hardly get any, but I understand that quite often a load of fake bounced emails like this mean that you are actually infected yourself - which may have happened in the first place by opening emails with dodgy attachments.

Either that or someone that has your email in a database has a virus on their server. I phoned one company a year ago about this; they called me back after a couple of hours to thank me, as they had found one.

I think the OP may need advice on eliminating worms and trojans, and which protection programs he/she has or needs, not an argument about OE. I hope that the pundits here will notice this thread.

cwoodham

This is becoming a real problem for many of us. If you look back at the posts on this board over the last few months you will see that you are not alone and this question comes up now and again.

Is your email address showing on a personal/business website you have? Spammers harvest these and use them for spamming. If this is the case try cloaking the email address or use a contact page on your website. But either way its too late. The spam will still keep coming.

Alternatively, I'm finding that a specific email address I gave to a limited number of people is now being spammed. I guess the spammers have accessed the address books on their PCs perhaps because they dont have a firewall.

As Alfonso says above, MailWasher can be used to check and delete all unwanted email on the servers before downloading to your computer. That way you can get rid of any spam+attachments before it gets near your PC. The last freeware version (1.33) is available here.

MailWasher 1.33 allows you to check a number of email addresses if you have more than one. I check four or five. You can also set up filters in it to automatically tag any incoming email which doesnt have a genuine address (one you would be expecting) and mark it for deletion. That way you can tag for deletion anything with random characters then your domain name (e.g. [EMAIL="vhxyte@yourdomain.com"]vhxyte@yourdomain.com[/EMAIL]). Its one of the most useful utilities on my machine.

And dont bother bouncing the spam. It wont go back to the sender. The undelivered mail you are receiving is spam which people have bounced back thinking they were returning it to the sender but as your address was faked in the FROM field you are receiving it instead. HTH

molerat

I have been getting a load of these recently. I have fixed it by setting up ie accounts for each of my names.

me@mydomain.myisp.co.uk
mrs@mydomain.myisp.co.uk
member@mydomain.myisp.co.uk

The member@ one is fairly important as the isp use this to send mail.
All of the junk is being sent to
randomname@mydomain.myisp.co.uk
and the default mail pickup on your ie is probably
mydomain.myisp.co.uk
which means it will pick it all up. Setting to definite named mail accounts stops it from reaching you.

I also have webmail so have set a filter.
If to is not me, mrs, member then dump in deleted mail.

It seems to be working. I am monitoring the webmail just to make sure there no glitches.

redux

Actually, I do that and give each company a different prefix, so if I have a problem I'll know who sent it, hence contacting the company about the virus on its server.

hurrah

Interesting article about spam mail here.

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6038236.stm

superscaper

redux wrote:

Actually, I do that and give each company a different prefix, so if I have a problem I'll know who sent it, hence contacting the company about the virus on its server.

I do that as well but it doesn't seem to work, I've only had it happen twice where I got phishing scams sent to specific email addresses. I contacted those companies, from one I got a response that they were getting an IT manager to look into it (ebuyer) , then I got more and I contacted them again but they just ignored me. The other company just ignored me from the start (rgmedia). I tried explaining that the email address they had on file for me was unique to them and hence since I'm not inundated with phishing scams to all my other email addresses and my pc is clean then the phishers had to have got the address from them, but they didn't even respond to me.

As for actual spam email they're always sent to random @ mydomain.co.uk and never to any email address I've actually used.

tweeter

I keep getting some that won't delete, as a thing called "language pack installation" pops up, which I never install. I close it as a window but don't cancel it.Should I install Microsofts languages like Japanese/.../.../ to stop these "language pack installation"popups, and hopefully right click and delete or send them to a folder, as in the past I've lost mail because of a too aggressive anti spam management setting which I hopelessly set up. Hope this makes sense.Thanks for any replies.tweeter