stopping spam

victor2

My ISP uses SpamAssassin. I set it to move the emails it traps into a spam folder so I never see them unless I go looking. 517 in there for this month and it is very rare that a genuine email ends up in there, and I have a whitelist for a few senders that did. I use Outlook 2010 on my PC and that traps a few that do get through. Very little junk actually makes it to my inbox.

JohnB47

Around a month ago, I started to get loads of emails in my spam folder. This has happened before. They were all supposedly from different American companies but two days ago they all suddenly stopped. This suggests that they were all false and were coming from the same place. None get through to my inbox, so I just delete them regularly when they restart. Bit of a nuisance but nothing I can do about it.

TELLIT01

debitcardmayhem said:

Brie said:

Ta all - glad to know it's not just our household that gets this muck!!!

@k_man - i didn't know there was the call screening option.  Will look into that!!

I have a BT branded phone, am out at the moment but it screens our calls very effectively. You would need caller id on your line, and if you put your contacts in with their std code they won’t screened,unless they have set their phone to withhold their number, but they just need to prefix your number with 1471.

I have a BT branded phone and I'm far from impressed by the call screening and blocking function.  Reading the bumph before I bought it I assumed that I would simply have to press a button on the phone to block any more calls from a number.  The reality is that you need to put all callers you want to answer into the contacts list first.  Then any other calls are told to leave a message.

That doesn't work if you are expecting a call from a business which doesn't display their outgoing number.

J_B

TELLIT01 said:

I have a BT branded phone and I'm far from impressed by the call screening and blocking function.  Reading the bumph before I bought it I assumed that I would simply have to press a button on the phone to block any more calls from a number.  The reality is that you need to put all callers you want to answer into the contacts list first.  Then any other calls are told to leave a message.

That doesn't work if you are expecting a call from a business which doesn't display their outgoing number.

Must be a different phone to the one our in-laws have.

If you are in their contacts, you get straight through, if not, you are invited to state your name and then press 1 (?) which then tells the owner who is calling and gives them the option to accept the call

Le_Kirk

J_B said:

TELLIT01 said:

I have a BT branded phone and I'm far from impressed by the call screening and blocking function.  Reading the bumph before I bought it I assumed that I would simply have to press a button on the phone to block any more calls from a number.  The reality is that you need to put all callers you want to answer into the contacts list first.  Then any other calls are told to leave a message.

That doesn't work if you are expecting a call from a business which doesn't display their outgoing number.

Must be a different phone to the one our in-laws have.

If you are in their contacts, you get straight through, if not, you are invited to state your name and then press 1 (?) which then tells the owner who is calling and gives them the option to accept the call

If it is a BT Call Protect phone it is "state your name and press the # key"

JohnB47

J_B said:

TELLIT01 said:

I have a BT branded phone and I'm far from impressed by the call screening and blocking function.  Reading the bumph before I bought it I assumed that I would simply have to press a button on the phone to block any more calls from a number.  The reality is that you need to put all callers you want to answer into the contacts list first.  Then any other calls are told to leave a message.

That doesn't work if you are expecting a call from a business which doesn't display their outgoing number.

Must be a different phone to the one our in-laws have.

If you are in their contacts, you get straight through, if not, you are invited to state your name and then press 1 (?) which then tells the owner who is calling and gives them the option to accept the call

Totally agree with this. In many years if having a BT phone with Call Guard, I have received no, repeat no unwanted calls.

Edit: Actually the caller speaks their name (or something like 'hello, its Fred calling') and then presses #. The phone then rings and when answered, the receiver hears the message and presses 1 if they wish to accept the call. The receiver is totally unaware of the call unless the caller presses #. I believe that's why machine generated calls don't get through.

forgotmyname

Had a good one for a change.  Email said a UK company, had my name although it fell at that hurdle.  It seemed fairly
legit until you look deeper.

Fail 1.   UK catalogue company which I have never used.
Claimed someone bought an Ipad £899? with a Foreign name and an address many miles away.

Fail 2.   Claim it was a Paypal transaction which is obviously not linked to an account I don't have.

Fail 3.   Although that is my name its not the name I use for Paypal, its my Ebay one.  I use the equivalent
of Pete on one and Peter on the other.

Fail 4.   I check email headers and can clearly see the senders address is a subdomain.

Other than that it was a fairly good effort.  

[Deleted User]

forgotmyname said:

Had a good one for a change.  Email said a UK company, had my name although it fell at that hurdle.  It seemed fairly
legit until you look deeper.

Fail 1.   UK catalogue company which I have never used.
Claimed someone bought an Ipad £899? with a Foreign name and an address many miles away.

Fail 2.   Claim it was a Paypal transaction which is obviously not linked to an account I don't have.

Fail 3.   Although that is my name its not the name I use for Paypal, its my Ebay one.  I use the equivalent
of Pete on one and Peter on the other.

Fail 4.   I check email headers and can clearly see the senders address is a subdomain.

Other than that it was a fairly good effort.  

Pleasant Green on Youtube has fun with a lot of these types of emails. He will waste the scammers time as much as he can and show how these scams actually work. Worth a look if you haven't heard of him. Not endorsing him, I just think its good content.  

Norman_Castle

Do you delete them or mark them as spam? My understanding is spam filters learn what to block from numerous people marking the same emails as spam. I never delete mine although I rarely see them as the spam filter catches most of them.

Can't help with automated calls but I often aim to keep scam callers on the phone for as long as possible. Recently managed 10 minutes 45 seconds discussing an unlikely refund of a miss sold washing machine warranty (on my 20 year old machine which belonged to my dad?). It took her that long to annoyedly state I was wasting her time, I replied "Well you started it". I've also managed to get a call back for a personal injury claim after a call handler believed I'd been attacked by a bear. 

My thinking is, if you waste my time, I'll waste yours.

Brie

Norman_Castle said:

I've also managed to get a call back for a personal injury claim after a call handler believed I'd been attacked by a bear. 

My thinking is, if you waste my time, I'll waste yours.

You are now my hero!!!