OT: spam poll

I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've been
getting about 100-200 bogus
Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
it hasn't.

I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com), but
I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration, but
I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?

Very pissed off in San Diego,

RJS

My ISP has a spam filter.. and a Virus checker if you want it..
Doesn't help the news groups tho.. only emails.


"Robert Sefton" <rsefton@nextstate.com> wrote in message
news:YVsdb.12231$T46.6679@twister.socal.rr.com...
> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've been
> getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
> it hasn't.
>
> I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com), but
> I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
> email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration, but
> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
> this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?
>
> Very pissed off in San Diego,
>
> RJS
>
>

> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period,

It's well known that spammers harvest usenet.  If you post
without munging you will get spam.

There are two approaches to reducing spam.  One is to block the
mail so it never gets to your mail server.  The other it to filter
it into a junk bin (or bit bucket) after it arrives.

With either approach, you have to decide how many false positives
(lost valid mail) you are willing to tolerate and compare that to
how much you care about false negatives (spam getting through).
Opinions differ widly and often cause flame wars.

If you run your own mail system, you can probably get rid of most of
it by using various block lists. It's a pain.  You basically have to
become a block list wizard as well as all of your other sysadmin duties.

For filters, SpamAssain gets good comments.  I haven't used it.  It
runs on your system rather than on your ISPs mail system so you
can use it even if your ISP doesn't do much/enough anti-spam work.
You have to download the junk first so it may not be good
enough if your link is full.  There are other similar filtering
programs.  I think there are versions of SpamAssin that run on the
mail server.

You can outsource all the blocking/filtering.  SpamCon has many good
resources.  In particular, start at
  http://www.spamcon.org/recipients/index.shtml
and check out the link to filtered email services.


For usenet, you can use a munged (fake) address.  That's a pain since
the replies you actually want won't work without manual editing and
people like me who miss that step just go "Aw, shit", and dump the
bouncee message unless it's really important or interesting.

You can do tricks like using tagged addresses (foo+xxx@wherever)
where the xxx part is a time stamp and messages older than
some cutoff are automatically rejected.  Details like the "+"
depend upon your system, and it may not be supported.

You can also use tagged addresses to find out who is passing your
address on to others.  Just assign an xxx whenever you give out an
email address and remember who/when.  (Doesn't work for business
cards.)


> and in the last couple of weeks I've been getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
> it hasn't.

The security patch IS the latest virus.  Pretty good social engineering,
but easy to filter out.  Some people advocate filtering out anything
that MS mail readers might execute.

Another part of this mess is that the first wave of anti-virus filters
sent back a "You have a virus" message.  That was OK before the viruses
started forging return info.  Now the bounces can be as much of a
problem as the viruses.



The best anti-spam discussion resource I know of is SPAM-L.
The FAQ is at http://www.claws-and-paws.com/spam-l/tracking.html
Best to read the FAQ and lurk for a day or three rather than
jumping in with something like your message here.


Yes, ISPs should be attacking the spam problem much more
agressively.  Unfortunately, nobody has figured out how to
convince them to do that.  Spam is like polution or graffiti.
The guy in a position to fix it doesn't have any economic
incentive to do that.


>My ISP has a spam filter.. and a Virus checker if you want it..
>Doesn't help the news groups tho.. only emails.

Well run news servers don't get much spam, at least not on
the groups I read.  I don't know the details of how it's done.

I get news via supernews.  I think there are others that are
also essentially spam free.


Ugh.  Sorry for all the OT clutter if everybody is tired of this crap.

-- 
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California.  So are all my
other mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.

> Very pissed off in San Diego,
>
> RJS

300-400?  Ouch  :_(

I made the mistake of using my real email _once_ and I instantly got hit
with spam mail.  Luckily I'm only getting 40-80 every morning.  I have my
outlook sorting emails into folders based on which of my many email
addresses they're sending to.  Luckily and inadvertently, all the spam email
seems to go to my default Inbox folder, so I usually do an Cntrl-A and
delete them all.  Still, it's a hassle to keep doing it.

Since other more knowledgeable folks have given us interesting info, I'll
bring up a slightly related topic.  Deja Vu (now owned by Google) archives
all newsgroup postings (and I'm sure anyone could do it if they want to,
i.e. U.S. government).  One way to prevent Deja from archiving your posts,
if you want to, is to add to the Keywords field:  "world" on one line and
"x-no-archive" on another.  Outlook express doesn't allow you to automate
it, unfortunately (unless they recently added the feature)

Of course this is a voluntary thing on Deja and technically they really
don't have to respect your request.

If your daring, trying to Google your name with maybe a few personal details
(where you live, lived, highschool, college, etc.).  We live in interesting
times.


Regards,
Vinh

Robert Sefton wrote:
> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've been
> getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
> it hasn't.
> 
> I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com), but
> I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
> email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration, but
> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
> this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?
> 
> Very pissed off in San Diego,

Install mailfilter. I have it running as a cron job every 3 minutes
in debian. I have it set to delete anything over 100kB with the
word "microsoft" and a few other buzz words.

It deletes the crap directly in your isp pop3 account even on a
slow dialup line, so 10MB of M$ crap can be deleted in 20s. After
that, email is as spam free as ever. However, your mailbox will
fill up overnight unless you leave the PC on. Consider using
another OS if viable that doesn't support a spam/anti-spam
industry.

http://mailfilter.sourceforge.net/
http://mailfilter.sourceforge.net/download.html

Hal Murray wrote:
> 
> > I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> > I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> > public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> > receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> > emails per 24hr period,
> 
> It's well known that spammers harvest usenet.  If you post
> without munging you will get spam.

That may be one of those overratted known facts.  I remember someone
doing a study where they set up several email addresses and used them in
several different ways to study the rate of spam.  The newsgroup posted
emails got relatively little spam.  I believe the rate of spam did not
go up dramatically until they started using web pages that required
email addresses like the greeting cards, etc.  


-- 

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

Thanks for the info, everybody. I have a spam filter that steers
about half of the normal junk into my delete folder. I've become
inured to this stuff. It's the MS emails with virus attachments
that force me to click on a Norton warning box for each one that
has put me over the edge. It takes me at least 15 minutes each
morning now to manually wade through it all. I'm going to abandon
this address today. It's beyond salvaging.

RJS

"Robert Sefton" <rsefton@nextstate.com> wrote in message
news:YVsdb.12231$T46.6679@twister.socal.rr.com...
> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post
to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've
been
> getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off,
but
> it hasn't.
>
> I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com),
but
> I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
> email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration,
but
> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
> this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?
>
> Very pissed off in San Diego,
>
> RJS
>
>

Robert Sefton wrote:
> 
> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've been
> getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
> it hasn't.
> 
> I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com), but
> I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
> email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration, but
> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
> this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?

If you have your own domain name, why can't you pick different addresses
at that domain?  The only problem I find with having my own domain is
that I like to keep the addresses open but I get spam sent to a bunch of
made up addresses.  So I have to discard those specific addresses. 
Otherwise I don't get much spam that I can't easily filter. 

-- 

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

Robert Sefton wrote:

> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap.

The latest version of netscape (and mozilla) has
a most excellent junk mail router. It does a
good job right out of the box and you can train it
further by example rather than by keyword.

   -- Mike Treseler

   --  mike.treseler@flukenetworks.com

300-400/day isn't that bad.  I've been getting that in under 2 hours.
My ISP has been next to useless on resolving it.  I did change to the
latest paid version of Eudora, which has a spam filter built in.  That
has done a pretty good job of culling out the junk.  I also had to set
the virus sw to automatically delete virus files rather than prompt me
to do away with the annoying dialog boxes that were popping up every
couple of seconds.  It is still not an ideal solution, as I can't go
off-line without having the mailbox at the ISP overflow within a few
hours, and I still have to cull the junk mail box to recover the
occasional false positive.  It has cut down the time involved
however.  In my case it has been two major sources this month:  the
microsoft patch virus, and viruses embedded in "failed delivery"
"returned" emails.

I too am a consultant, and I depend on having my email address in the
clear to get the traffic into me.  This whole spam thing is an
irritant that was not at the debilitating level until this summer.

Robert Sefton wrote:

> I've had the same email address for almost eight years now, and
> I've never tried very hard to hide it, meaning that when I post to
> public forums like this I use my real email addr. I'm now
> receiving on the order of 300-400 (brutally repetitive) spam
> emails per 24hr period, and in the last couple of weeks I've been
> getting about 100-200 bogus
> Microsoft-security-patch-with-virus-attachment emails per day on
> top of that (Norton Antivirus pops up a warning box for each one
> it detects and I have to manually step through them). I've been
> patiently waiting for the Microsoft patch garbage to die off, but
> it hasn't.
>
> I'm a consultant and have my own domain name (nextstate.com), but
> I've finally decided to abandon it and start using a roadrunner
> email address. I won't bore you with my rage and frustration, but
> I'm curious how other people are avoiding, filtering out, or
> fighting back against this crap. Shouldn't the ISPs be attacking
> this problem with a little bit more enthusiasm?
>
> Very pissed off in San Diego,
>
> RJS

--
--Ray Andraka, P.E.
President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.
401/884-7930     Fax 401/884-7950
email ray@andraka.com
http://www.andraka.com

 "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little
  temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
                                          -Benjamin Franklin, 1759