Controlling Spam 100% ??

moonrakerz

Once you start getting spam it is very difficult to stop it, it can be reduced but that gets harder as your address is passed from spammer to spammer.

One way to do it, which I picked up from this site, is to have your own domain and route your e-mail through this.
eg: your domain is:- domain.co.uk.
You can then put anything in front of this. So, if your name is Fred, use [EMAIL="fred@domain.co.uk"]fred@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]: BUT, only give this to people you know and trust implicitly !
Anyone else, you give their own unique e-mail address to contact you.
[EMAIL="britishgas@domain.co.uk"]britishgas@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="mse@domain.co.uk"]mse@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="dailytelegraph@domain.co.uk"]dailytelegraph@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="spammakers@domain.co.uk"]spammakers@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
etc, etc,etc

If you start getting spam, you can see what the address is on it (eg: [EMAIL="spammakers@domain.co.uk"]spammakers@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]) and just block any more mail with that address on it. You can also notify the company who you gave that address to, that somehow they are giving customers e-mail addresses to spammers - a reputable company will check its security. There isn't much you can do if the company is deliberately doing this !

Another advantage of doing it this way is that if you change your ISP, your e-mail address stays the same. I changed recently from PlusNet to Zen, I had to change my outgoing server, but all my incoming mail comes through the 1 & 1 server with the same address, so I didn't have tell all my contacts that I had a new ISP & e-mail addresses.
I set up a free web-mail account and fed all my pre-domain address e-mail into that, just to ensure that there isn't anyone you've missed when you set up the domain. I still check that occasionally - there is a huge amount of spam going to that address now !

And, of course you now have a website that you can put your holiday snaps on !!

I think the bottom line is that you have be very careful in the way that you manage the use and distribution of your e-mail address.

superscaper

moonrakerz wrote: »

Once you start getting spam it is very difficult to stop it, it can be reduced but that gets harder as your address is passed from spammer to spammer.

One way to do it, which I picked up from this site, is to have your own domain and route your e-mail through this.
eg: your domain is:- domain.co.uk.
You can then put anything in front of this. So, if your name is Fred, use [EMAIL="fred@domain.co.uk"]fred@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]: BUT, only give this to people you know and trust implicitly !
Anyone else, you give their own unique e-mail address to contact you.
[EMAIL="britishgas@domain.co.uk"]britishgas@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="mse@domain.co.uk"]mse@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="dailytelegraph@domain.co.uk"]dailytelegraph@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="spammakers@domain.co.uk"]spammakers@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]
etc, etc,etc

If you start getting spam, you can see what the address is on it (eg: [EMAIL="spammakers@domain.co.uk"]spammakers@domain.co.uk[/EMAIL]) and just block any more mail with that address on it. You can also notify the company who you gave that address to, that somehow they are giving customers e-mail addresses to spammers - a reputable company will check its security. There isn't much you can do if the company is deliberately doing this !

Another advantage of doing it this way is that if you change your ISP, your e-mail address stays the same. I changed recently from PlusNet to Zen, I had to change my outgoing server, but all my incoming mail comes through the 1 & 1 server with the same address, so I didn't have tell all my contacts that I had a new ISP & e-mail addresses.
I set up a free web-mail account and fed all my pre-domain address e-mail into that, just to ensure that there isn't anyone you've missed when you set up the domain. I still check that occasionally - there is a huge amount of spam going to that address now !

And, of course you now have a website that you can put your holiday snaps on !!

I think the bottom line is that you have be very careful in the way that you manage the use and distribution of your e-mail address.

That's exactly what I do. I started getting some phishing scams to my Aria email and told them but they just ignored me which was annoying as someone in the company must have given my address to the phishers. No big deal though, deleted the address from my forwarding list and changed my registered email address to [EMAIL="aria2@mydomain"]aria2@mydomain[/EMAIL]. But in terms of spam, even with about 300 forwarding addresses (!!) I still don't get any.

GaryS

As per Superscaper and Moonrakerz, the domain name path is probably the best route, and one that I also use.

I have set Outlook Express on the children's accounts to only accept email from names listed in their address book.
Any other email will not be downloaded, if they need to receive anything the sender will be added to the address book.

Works 100%, and mail can be checked for any new additions by myself online as needed.

GarethM_2

superscaper wrote: »

That's exactly what I do. I started getting some phishing scams to my Aria email and told them but they just ignored me which was annoying as someone in the company must have given my address to the phishers. No big deal though, deleted the address from my forwarding list and changed my registered email address to [EMAIL="aria2@mydomain"]aria2@mydomain[/EMAIL]. But in terms of spam, even with about 300 forwarding addresses (!!) I still don't get any.

They probably did not pass your info along. Spammers use a computer to automatically generate email addesses. Firs they start off by getting a domain name, the part after the @ symbol, from any webpage/website or other sources. Then they set the computer to send messages and the computer starts by sending messages to a@domain.com, b@domain.com ... eventualy getting to any comination of letters and numbers. So no one needs to pass your info around.

My suggestion for a great spam filtering software is SpamBayes ... you need to train it to identify spam mail but eventually (like mine right now) it gets so good it doesnt even need to be worried about. Go to spambayes.sourceforge.net

moonrakerz

GarethM wrote: »

They probably did not pass your info along. Spammers use a computer to automatically generate email addesses. Firs they start off by getting a domain name, the part after the @ symbol, from any webpage/website or other sources. Then they set the computer to send messages and the computer starts by sending messages to [EMAIL="a@domain.com"]a@domain.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="b@domain.com"]b@domain.com[/EMAIL] ... eventualy getting to any comination of letters and numbers. So no one needs to pass your info around.

Never had this problem, all my spam was addessed to my "pukka" e-mail address.
The addresses are passed around. This can be seen by looking at the e-mails, apart from the usual Viagra and 'growing' bits of your body ones , you get groups of ones around a particular subject. Lately, I have had lots about AutoCad, a while back it was on line gambling.

Really it's a case of using what works best for your set of circumstances.

moonrakerz

Al_Mac wrote: »

I don't get SPAM, am I doing something wrong?

No, it's because you think that the e-mail from Willard Z Bananapeel offering to extend your p***s by 10 inches is actually from someone you know !!

:rotfl::rotfl:

DKLS

I use spam bayes at home, and is on all work PCs, its free and works a treat, you have to train it what is and what isnt SPAM, eg I recieve a lot of medical related emails, so need something clever to filter out Viagra Emails from EPO emails.

superscaper

GarethM wrote: »

They probably did not pass your info along. Spammers use a computer to automatically generate email addesses. Firs they start off by getting a domain name, the part after the @ symbol, from any webpage/website or other sources. Then they set the computer to send messages and the computer starts by sending messages to [EMAIL="a@domain.com"]a@domain.com[/EMAIL], [EMAIL="b@domain.com"]b@domain.com[/EMAIL] ... eventualy getting to any comination of letters and numbers. So no one needs to pass your info around.

I'm not naive about spammers but I have to disagree with you. At the time I also had the catchall option activated and I only ever recieved spam to common addresses such as admin, sales, info@ etc. So the chance that they only decided to spam ONE email address at my domain through random letter combinations (although it was specific phishing emails not generic spam) and it just happened to be one of the 300 (actually less at the time) addresses I actually had registered must be bordering on millions to one. Even assuming they were only randomly guessing 4 characters (and assuming only single case letters) for before the @ it would be a 1 in 456,976 chance they actually got that. I also later got some phishing emails to another of my email addresses, again at a time I had a catchall and I NEVER got them sent to any of my other email addresses or any other possible @mydomain. These were very specifically to those addresses and for you to be right for both scams to have only been to addresses I just happen to use it would actually be in the region of 1 in 141 trillion minimum using the method you described. So because of that I'm more inclined to believe the companies had a lapse in their security.

Moneymaker

See info here for removing the spam problem:
http://www.glodark.com/spam.htm
Of course you have to have an IQ of more than 10 to understand it.

edi7on

Or you could just use Yahoo AddressGuard. I have given my main e-mail address only to family, other have [made up] addresses which i can delete any time.
I actually don't get any spam but want some so I have created a address just for spam and forward the emails of that address to a particular folder which I have a look when I am bored to death [rare]. Because I don't use web mail I just fetch the e-mails from my account, that particular spam folder doesn't get fetched so i can only see them if I use web mail and go to that spam folder.
And with yahoo's unlimited storage even if I never visit that folder it doesn't matter because it not running out of space