Enough!!! Who passed on my e-mail address! Help please!!!!
 

I have (for years) guarded my business e-mail like it was the family jewels, and have never gotten spam on it, none, zero, nada. Till now. Now I am getting a series everyday selling me codine, or software or horny houswives (with pics:)) . But seriously this has to be some common scam? The names on the sender are all random with goofy names like "Overflow M. Wolverine" or "Charles F. Stomaches"

How can I get rid of this stuff, it's killing me! Like 20 a day!

There's a zillion ways they can get your email address. Do you have your email configured as your FTP passwd in your browser? Could also be a dictionary attack.

Only 20 a day? I get over 10k spams a month. I implemented a challenge-response system, which cut down the spam dramatically. When a new user sends me an email, they get an email back which to which they must respond within 24 hours, or the email isn't delivered to my inbox. For the most part, this works well, but there are still legitimate users with the IQ just above the common houseplant that can't figure it out, and will write a follow-up email to the challenge email, or send me another fresh email asking why I haven't responded... :rolleyes:

I use a challenge-response system on my home e-mail: www.beprivate.com and it's cut my spam down from 100s to <5 a day.

Can't use that sort of system for work, though.

You could implement bayesian filtering, which isn't quite as heavy as a challenge response syste, but will pick off the obvious spam and can be trained.

This suddenly started happening to me as well. Deleted 4 of these "mails" already this morning. Could it be related to this BB?

Man there's gotta be an assload of money to be made if someone could actually kill these things! I was thinking the other day, and I know NOTHING about programming, but would a return e-mail to these addresses with some kind of virus or monster big bandwidth eating file affect them? Can we counter attack?

I read another guy on here talking about it too (can't remember who) so I thought the same thing. This is the ONLY place on the entire web that my business e-mail addy is used.

Probably was me...I started a thread, wondering if switching to Mac would stop this krap. So...there may be a Pelican connection here? I'm NOT one of the computer savvy here..

I hope I'm not stating the obvious but I always have a private "throw away" email address that I use for any BB etc.

hotmail and others have free email addresses.

Heck I have about six addresses that I use depending on the risk factor of getting spamed.

HTH

P.S. You wouldn't have a link to the horny houusewifes handy would you?
J/K!

Spam is, has been, and will be a huge problem. As long as morons keep buying stuff advertised that way, people will still keep sending it.

First of all, never reply to a spam. Ever. It's useless, and does nothing but confirm your email address. Most spam is sent from mail servers with open relaying, or zombied home PC's.

Switching to a Mac won't help.

The throw away e-mail is something I've been using for 10 years (Yahoo) I NEVER use this one for registering or whatever, only here.

Horny Housewives are plentiful on the internet, you cant swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen or so:)

Thom,

Cant you geeks:) come up with some kind of sentinel that checks if the address is real? There has got to be a way! Like a pay service where you register your address to be "real" and accept only e-mails from the same? Could sweep the nation Tombo, just remember to cut me in:)

I get over 300 a day and 60% are spam. Use a Yahoo email address for anything I am not sure of then give them my personal email address later once I know they are ok.

Also I use Pegasus, the email program that allows you to view the header of your emails on the internet, and delete spam and virus emails before they ever get to your computer.

Jon, what does "BePrivate" cost?

JoeA

One thing I've been thinking of, if things get out of hand (which, for me at least, they haven't yet), is to implement a password system, whereby you use a codeword in the subject line, which you freely give to anyone you give your email address to - put in in your email sig, on your business card, etc. Basically, when someone emails you they have to include the code word in the subject line. Then set up a filter in your email program that moves any email with the code word in the subject line into a folder called "real mail" or something. Then just delete everything remaining in the inbox (which wouldn't have the codeword in the subject line), as that will be the spam. The only holdback to this would be emails sent by a bot (email lists, auto-responses, etc).

Mail Washer

Randy

$40 a year.

Who is your ISP? Some are very active in controling spam in their email systems.

I use Earthlink and get NO spam; my free MSN Hotmail account is pretty effective in filtering out the junk too.

My wife uses AOL and says they do absolutely NOTHING to try to filter/control spam.

A few of my clients use Mailblocks...they like it.
AOL acquired them.
.
http://www.mailblocks.com/login.aspx
.

Reverse DNS lookup has been available in sendmail since at least 8.1 (1995 or so). If you're using a windoze-dependent ISP, suffer! :)

Tip: If anyone EVER sends you an internet "greeting card" promptly strangle them. That's how one of my accounts ended up on a spammers list.