SPAM reaching epidemic proportions

[Carol Haynes]

There is a pretty simple solution to avoid that - use a different email address for every contact - then you find out how the idiots and b******s are.

You can do this quite easily with Yahoo and others by using the anonymous email address generator. You still get all your mail in one place but you at least know which email address has been used.

My problem (the multiple 'carol' problem) is that when I signed up for my current ISP I had spam in my inbox when I opened it for the first time !! OK I know you say I should change ISP but I am happy with the service they provide in terms of internet access and mostly I do my own thing with email but it is  annoying.

[nudone]

i must say i like the idea about having a different email address for every contact - i might try it - something like just appending the initials of the individual onto the address (or the initials of the service/company).

[superticker]

I presume I can use:

[Select]

carol.*(carol)+.*

for 2 or more occurrences of the string?

-Carol Haynes (June 16, 2006, 03:00 AM)

Yes, but if you apply that to your entire header, your ISP only has to mention Carol twice to flag the message.  Be sure to tell MailWasher to search only the To: and cc: lines, not the entire message header.

Another, less efficient approach would be to have the regex check for To: or cc: at the beginning of the line when searching the entire message header.  You need to terminate the search.  I used an end-of-line $ meta character, but using something like ^Subject: would be better since a long To: or cc: line may wrap before reaching the next Carol occurrence.

[Select]

^(To|cc): .*carol.*(carol)+.*$

[superticker]

There is a pretty simple solution to avoid that - use a different email address for every contact - then you find out who the idiots ... are.

You can do this quite easily with Yahoo and others by using the anonymous email address generator, [and] still get all your mail in one place ...

-Carol Haynes (June 16, 2006, 03:12 AM)

Spamgourmet is the best proxy service for temporary e-mail addresses.  You can let these tmp addresses automatically expire based on frequency of usage or by expiration date.  You can also define allowed senders and sender domains for each tmp e-mail address that won't count against their expiration frequency.  Moreover, you can make your tmp addresses up on the fly without ever re-visiting the Spamgourmet site.  http://www.spamgourmet.com/

All the features are a little complicated to figure out at first, but you can start using it with the most basic features right away.  It's open source, so DonationCoder could setup their own spamgourmet service. 

My problem ... is ... I had spam in my inbox when I opened it for the first time !!

-Carol Haynes (June 16, 2006, 03:12 AM)

Geesh, you really need to change your name. 

[Carol Haynes]

Yes, I suppose I should have signed up with something so obscure that no spam list would want to attack it - you live and learn! It's dead simple though with Mailwasher just bin any email that has 2 or more carol's in the CC field and I don't see them at all! (So long as I don't get loads of friends called Carol or mailing lists - but then I am not using that email address any more except for a couple of subscriptions and ISP related service mail).

[bit]

My Thunderbird email program has started getting multiple daily spam emails from a couple of sources.
My ISP is supposed to block any sources if I forward the emails to their spam department, but so far no joy.
One source is in a foreign alphabet I can't even read.
I know not to reply or even click on included links; I avoid even opening the emails and just forward them to my so-far useless ISP spam blocking department.

I am not giving up this email address.
I don't have money to get something like a paid MailWasher account.
What is a good way to block or bounce the spam emails?

edit/update: Looks like MailWasher is free and am downloading it from MajorGeeks.

[Josh]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

[tomos]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

-Josh (July 29, 2014, 04:48 PM)

no illegitimate spam either?

PS how come?

[Deozaan]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

-Josh (July 29, 2014, 04:48 PM)

no illegitimate spam either?

PS how come?

-tomos (July 29, 2014, 05:26 PM)

Because he hasn't been at a computer in 10 years.

[tomos]

^

[bit]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

-Josh (July 29, 2014, 04:48 PM)

no illegitimate spam either?

PS how come?

-tomos (July 29, 2014, 05:26 PM)

Because he hasn't been at a computer in 10 years.

-Deozaan (July 29, 2014, 05:34 PM)

^Cheese, you  guys. Luv it.  
Okay, MailWasher for Desktop pc is freeware and can delete or bounce spam.
I only use it with Thunderbird and it does the job.
So far, so good.

But it persistently self-starts on Boot and tells me the same 5 emails just came in, every time I boot, for 2 days in a row.
I used StartCop to disable it from starting on boot; it still starts on boot, and ties up CPU power as it pops a big window in the middle of all my other boot-up stuff that normally goes so smoothly, and says the same 5 emails just came in as the last time.
When I click to close MailWasher, it closes the window but keeps an open tab at the bottom of Desktop that refuses to go away.
I need it to not self-start on boot, as I only check my Thunderbird emails every few days, and it's becoming a bit of a nuisance.

[superboyac]

I think what has happened is that in the last 2 years, more than the usual amount of people have started using the internet and phones and stuff.  These were the holdovers, the technophobes, and now they are playing with their phones more.  They are not used to the protection measures longtime users of computers are familiar with...antispam, firewalls, privacy, etc.

[bit]

I think what has happened is that in the last 2 years, more than the usual amount of people have started using the internet and phones and stuff.  These were the holdovers, the technophobes, and now they are playing with their phones more.  They are not used to the protection measures longtime users of computers are familiar with...antispam, firewalls, privacy, etc.

-superboyac (July 30, 2014, 01:34 PM)

Heh! I never owned a cell phone, but never thought of myself by that terminology; 'technophobe'.  
I grew up when Operators gave you numbers free of charge, and you only paid for your own outgoing phone calls, not incoming calls (which you have no control over).
That to me was the greatest scam of all; getting people to pay for callers' incoming calls to you.
Then I watched one day as a friend stared at his printer blowing expensive ink and paper on an unwanted and unsolicited incoming spam message printed out on his printer, and felt as if some kind of penultimate milestone of spam idiocy had been reached.
That's what made Robert A. Heinlein the s-f writer so great; in 'Podkayne of Mars' during a taxi ride a 3-D spam vid advertisement popped up in the faces of the passengers, and when they paid extra then the driver was able to make the sound go away but not the video; Heinlein had it wired way before the first home pc was even on the horizon.

MailWasher is great, but I just need a way to get it to stop self-starting.

[Josh]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

-Josh (July 29, 2014, 04:48 PM)

no illegitimate spam either?

PS how come?

-tomos (July 29, 2014, 05:26 PM)

I use Google Apps and setup "groups", aliases, for various services I use. Each email address is for a specific service (mortgage, bank, specific ordering site, etc.). That way, I know which sites are selling my info if I receive a spam message over it.

That said, since moving to this (and previously fusemail) and the alias system, I have seen NO SPAM since starting it I am quite happy about that. That said, I do have a "catch all" alias that attracts everything else from my domains.

[bit]

I found this Firetrust Support MailWasher tech support advice.

quote--
Re: MailWasher launch on Windows startup

Post by sst » Mon Aug 26, 2013 10:45 am
http://www.firetrust.com/en/products/mailwasher-pro/support/frequently-asked-questions#how-can-i-stop-mailwasher-from-starting-up-at-windows-startup

How can I stop MailWasher from starting up at Windows startup?

Answer: Click, Settings>>General>>Application, and from the "Startup:" menu select, "Launch when windows starts", and click Save, then select, "None" and click Save again.
If this doesn't work, please check the startup folder under Start>>All Programs>>Startup to ensure MailWasher is not listed there.
If not, click Start, search for msconfig and click msconfig.exe.
Click the startup tab, and uncheck MailWasher if there.

As for MailWasher refusing to close when desired, I went into Settings and unchecked 'Minimize MailWasher when X is checked' and that made it just quit when X is checked (X being the 'X' in the upper right corner that normally closes a window).

[bit]

I do appreciate everyone's helpful advice to start using virtual email addresses.
I already do that with my active email address, which is shielded behind SneakEmail and SurfSolo and works through SeaMonkey Portable.

The problematic email address is the unencrypted 'standard issue' one my ISP provides, which I set up to work with Thunderbird, and which is just for a few contacts that don't really generate a lot of emails--until recent spam problems.
I've successfully defended that email address from spammers for the last 10 or 15 years, using KnujOn, among other things.
Then an important service needed an email contact for me over the telephone, and I gave my ISP email address out as a convenience since I wasn't near my computer, and next thing I know it's getting all this spam.
MailWasher is settling down somewhat now, but when it bounces spam, that prevents me reporting it to KnujOn, so I don't know if I'll stick with MailWasher, or quit that and just start reporting all the spammers to KnujOn.
Maybe I can figure out how to report it to KnujOn first, and then bounce it anyway using MailWasher.

KnujOn is NoJunk spelled backwards, and they have a delay factor between reporting spam and them shutting it down by tracking down the sources and reporting them to law enforcement authorities.
But with patience over the built-in delay in their response time, they've been surprisingly effective over the years.

[CWuestefeld]

From my own personal perspective, spam incidence has just jumped up dramatically in the past week or so.

In the past 24 hours, I've had ~90 messages that were obvious spam stopped at my ISP, plus another 65 making it through the easy filter and stopped by my Bayesian filter.

[superboyac]

I haven't seen a legitimate spam message in...6 years now. I love it!

-Josh (July 29, 2014, 04:48 PM)

no illegitimate spam either?

PS how come?

-tomos (July 29, 2014, 05:26 PM)

I use Google Apps and setup "groups", aliases, for various services I use. Each email address is for a specific service (mortgage, bank, specific ordering site, etc.). That way, I know which sites are selling my info if I receive a spam message over it.

That said, since moving to this (and previously fusemail) and the alias system, I have seen NO SPAM since starting it I am quite happy about that. That said, I do have a "catch all" alias that attracts everything else from my domains.

-Josh (July 30, 2014, 04:27 PM)

Interesting system!  I never knew about that, will have to test it out.

[Stoic Joker]

From my own personal perspective, spam incidence has just jumped up dramatically in the past week or so.

-CWuestefeld (July 31, 2014, 03:16 PM)

I can confirm that observation as the filter on our Exchange server flashed Tilt like 3 times today.