Spam Tide Rising? Thoughts, suggestions...

[dalecosp]

Is it just me, or is the Spam Intensity Index rising towards an all-time high?

I think I have over 30 Class A nets in my deny list now ... about what, 10% of the webspace? Not to mention individual hosts and B/C nets...

Anyone else noticed the same thing lately --- like, what, 2 weeks or so?

[Moonglobe]

i have arond five domains on my deny list and have only ever gotten one spam from each of them. i almost never get spam, because i hardly ever give out my address, and even then only to companie i trust (macromedia for example).

[scoppc]

Originally posted by Moonglobe
i have arond five domains on my deny list and have only ever gotten one spam from each of them. i almost never get spam, because i hardly ever give out my address, and even then only to companie i trust (macromedia for example).

Yep, never give out your address should be one solution. If you ever have to give out any address, well, create one to hold all those SPAM. Kinda trapping em to a "dead" inbox.

Email harvester, somethin like web spidey can actually grab not less than 5000 email addresses from all over the Internet. Scary. Guest Book should be the main sources. This forum, too. :eek: (if you are talking about SPAM email, of course)

[piersk]

Most definately rising. I'm the net admin of my company and therefore I'm in charge of daily searching through our spam "bins" where all the spam goes (we don't delete spam just in case anything important gets marked as spam) and I reckon we get at least 200 spam messages a day. That may not sounds much, but when you take into consideration that theres only 9 of us working here, it comes back as being quite a lot.

[The Chancer]

I've had the same hotmail account for nearly 6 years, and I am now getting more and more...

Denying domains doesn't really work, as there are so many random ones out there, what with that as well as cloning of a domain - (had a porn mail from cs@microsoft.com) it is getting more and more difficult to do this.

Trying to spot it by the subject line is harder as well... "You left your umbrella" is innocuous enough, but the image left nothing for my 8 year old's imagination....

Yes I know I should change the account, but doesn't that admit that the spammers have won ?

Something I wouldn't like to admit and thats for sure.

Methinks the USA should pass something like we have, that spam sending is considered "illegal" if you don't have the consent of the receiver, considering that 99% of my spam is from the other side of "the pond"... (use of $ gives it away...)

[piersk]

The anti-spam software that we use at work (and I use at home on my server) also checks for keywords, checks on domain blacklists and checks for things like whether the emails has a remote image in it, or comes from a domain that doesn't exist.

Just in case anyone's interested, since I posted that last email (which I did just before emptying our spam bins) we have received 24 new spam messages. As I said before, that may not seem like much, but when you consier that we are an oil and gas firm (rather than a computing/web design firm) and there's only 9 of us here, that seems like a hell of a lot to me.

Oh, and if anyone wants to know what the software I use is, PM me, so I don't have to post what might be construed as an advert here.

[Elizabeth]

I receive about 60 spams a day, personally - and yes, it really bites. That's after it's already been filtered. But because I am usually the checkpoint for new and existing customers (who can have virtually any email address) - only allowing certain email addresses is really not an option. So I get much joy in deleting spam from idiots.

Now, my husband, on the other hand, gets prob about 25-30 per day, but he takes the time to forward each one to all the appropriate authorities, including spamcop and the ftc. Me, I don't have the patience or time for that :)

Yes, spam is definitely on the rise, IMO.

-Elizabeth

[bad76]

I'm spammed too (25/30 at day...).
The max it's when i return after some time, 15 vacation days
for example... There is 30*15=450 email useless!!! It's terrible!
I've to spent a lot of time to erase all...

But i query, because this spammer is probably an autosender
there isn't any method to force to remove any address from
its bookaddress ?

I know if you try to click on "remove from this mailing list" of any
kind of spam, you receive other four or more for each one
you click, because it has received confirm that your
address is real.

But, anyone know if there is a way to trust him that your
address is not a real address ?

For example if i fill my mailbox for some time, posting myself
eg 2MB of attachment, all spam return to spammer because
my email is full.

May be after a while am i removed from its list ?

My next vacation days i'll try it... :)

see you

[goldbug]

2 words: Bayesian filter.

One example: the spam filter built-into Mozilla Mail. I've been using it for a while now, and I get quite a large amount of spam on some of my accounts. After a couple weeks of training, it catches most->all of the spam with no false positives. Worth a look for those of you without (working) solutions.

Additional Reading:
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/better.html

[feldon23]

Not an issue -- SpamAssassin

[codeDV]

I use Pop-File. Once trained it rarely miss classifies spam and its open source, which makes it even better.

Spammers can never be completely anonymous. One way to fight back is to notify the web host to which the spammer is pointing and tell the owner of the domain they have used in the email address. Complain to your ISP and complain to the ISP from which the mail was sent.

This is very time consuming and I must admit I only do it when I get time. But I guess every little helps.

I get around 5 - 10 per day and I don't often give out my email address.

[dalecosp]

I'd like to possibly try something on the server like SpamAssassin, but I'm of the opinion that the best method to combat this idiocy is to make the mail server refuse connections from spammers.

After all, they get paid for how many they can distribute, and if some software I have just bit-buckets it, they still get paid, right? Or is that just tripe from someone out there...

So, thus far my answer is find where the relays are and block those nets at the firewall or via tcpwrappers, and to configure the MTA to not accept non-extant hosts, etc.

If anyone has an even better way to point the FFinger at spammers, I'd appreciate a hint... :D