Dodgy email - how does this scam work?
Discussion
I received an email at work saying my email address was "opted-in" and they were going to sell their list of addresses. If I didn't want my address on their list please call a national-rate number. There was no company name, the senders address was random letters at an anonymous provider, and it was signed a friendly-sounding "Kate".
After some discussion with our IT helpdesk I called the number through the company switchboard (which anonymises (sp?) the call. It was unobtainable. I deleted the mail and blocked the sender.
I've just received another one, identical apart from being an international (USA) number to call, which really makes me think it's a scam of some kind. I've just deleted this one.
Anyone know what's going on here? Perhaps to make money off the calls they get? Although they aren't premium rate numbers.
After some discussion with our IT helpdesk I called the number through the company switchboard (which anonymises (sp?) the call. It was unobtainable. I deleted the mail and blocked the sender.
I've just received another one, identical apart from being an international (USA) number to call, which really makes me think it's a scam of some kind. I've just deleted this one.
Anyone know what's going on here? Perhaps to make money off the calls they get? Although they aren't premium rate numbers.
2 potential problems:
1. Expensive phone call
2. By responding, you are admitting that the email address is genuine, so you will probably end up on a list sold to somebody rather than not!
{edited to add: ooh! 666 posts
}
{further addition:}
'Better' way of running the scam now is to include a link to a small graphic, which will be unique per speculative email sent. When you open the mail and the graphic is downloaded, the scammer can track which graphics have been accessed and thus construct a list of valid email addresses to sell!
>> Edited by pdv6 on Monday 27th January 11:37
1. Expensive phone call
2. By responding, you are admitting that the email address is genuine, so you will probably end up on a list sold to somebody rather than not!
{edited to add: ooh! 666 posts
} {further addition:}
'Better' way of running the scam now is to include a link to a small graphic, which will be unique per speculative email sent. When you open the mail and the graphic is downloaded, the scammer can track which graphics have been accessed and thus construct a list of valid email addresses to sell!
>> Edited by pdv6 on Monday 27th January 11:37
pdv6 said:{further addition:}
'Better' way of running the scam now is to include a link to a small graphic, which will be unique per speculative email sent. When you open the mail and the graphic is downloaded, the scammer can track which graphics have been accessed and thus construct a list of valid email addresses to sell!
Which is where stuff like ZoneAlarm Pro (yeah, you have to pay for this) is worth its weight in gold: you can allow Outlook (or whatever) to connect to your network or the internet to fetch mail, BUT NOT to fetch images from the Web.
Sure, it'll cost you $40 or so, but what the hey.
Somehow, my office E Mail address has got onto a list in the USA. Get about 10 spurious messages a day advertising p*n*s enlargement, hormone treatment, Viagra, septic tank cleaning, cheap loans etc. How do I stop them, If i answer the delete address at the bottom that confirms the address is genuine, if I don't I keep getting this rubbish. Over the last few months I've started getting brochures thro' the post for adult vids & mags. How do I stop these?
Blocking the IP won't work as there isn't "an" IP as such. Once you're on one spam list, you're almost instantly on more than one. You'll get spam from multiple sources, both in terms of who's doing it and where they're doing it from.
In a corporate environment, think about robust spam filtering at the firewall or network edge, or something like SkyScan from Message Labs, which does the same thing as a managed service. They'll also virus scan your e-mail before it gets to you too. (www.messagelabs.com)
In a corporate environment, think about robust spam filtering at the firewall or network edge, or something like SkyScan from Message Labs, which does the same thing as a managed service. They'll also virus scan your e-mail before it gets to you too. (www.messagelabs.com)
Blocking the IP won't work as there isn't "an" IP as such.
But if the e-mail is comming from spam@spammer.com, you can find the IP of spammer.com and simply ignore everything from it....
Once you're on one spam list, you're almost instantly on more than one. You'll get spam from multiple sources, both in terms of who's doing it and where they're doing it from.
This is true. Which is why you *never* reply....
Tony Hall said: Somehow, my office E Mail address has got onto a list in the USA. Get about 10 spurious messages a day advertising p*n*s enlargement, hormone treatment, Viagra, septic tank cleaning, cheap loans etc.
Ive had a few of these this week 
been trying to figure out where they got my e-mail from 
Keep getting another one on Messenger - that my sinpire.net membership has been activated
3 easy steps:
1. Go to www.sinpire.net
2. Type in user name and password (supplied)
3. Connect to live sex shows and X rated movies
>> Edited by Marcos maniac on Monday 27th January 15:37
Mr E said:
Blocking the IP won't work as there isn't "an" IP as such.
But if the e-mail is comming from spam@spammer.com, you can find the IP of spammer.com and simply ignore everything from it....
Nope. The e-mail will purport to come from spammer@spammer.com. Note that "spammer.com" isn't necessarily a host with a corresponding IP address: it's just an e-mail domain. And, at that, not usually an e-mail domain that belongs or will get back to the spammer.
It will usually have been sent from an internet host which, for the sake of argument, is called somebox.insecure.com. This host does have an IP address and is special: it'll let *anyone* (say, a spammer) upload one copy of an e-mail message to it, with a thousand recipients specified. It'll then do all the hard work of delivery (looking up addresses, queuing, bandwidth usage) for the spammer, who is probably just using a dialup modem.
So you can block the *domain* that the e-mail purports to come from... but that's unlikely to be the spammers *actual* domain. It's more likely to be a domain that you'd regret blocking: hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.
You can block the host that actually sent you the e-mail, but they're just some victim, and the spammer won't use the same one next time anyway, so you lose.
Sorry to be negative, but while there *are* ways to block this stuff, a simple "block the IP of their domain" isn't it.
The real answers are databases of known victim hosts (called spam relays), combined with keyword/phrase scanning, and so on. If you're not a corporate user, in the main, you can't block based on known spam relays, so you're down to keyword scanning.
Use the rules wizard in Outlook to move messages to a spam folder if they contain obvious spam keywords (you know: viagra, p*nis, diploma, "government grant", "removed from the list", "unsubscribe from the list", etc). You'll still be getting it, but it isn't half so annoying. You also need to check this folder periodially, as some legitimate e-mail will end up there, sometimes for no good reason, as it's Microsoft. Sigh.
As you can't do much about the source, I'd recommend http://popfile.sourceforge.net/
It sits between your email client and pop3 server and 'reads' and categorises your emails as they arrive. It takes a few days (more or less, depending on the volume of junk you receive) to learn how to categorise your email based on their content. The obvious categories are spam and non-spam, but there's no reason why you can't expand the categories. After a while it will learn that '(insert favourite car model here)' is a good indication that an email is genuine, whereas 'herbal' and 'diploma' are the opposite.
Mine's set to modify the subject line of junk mail to include 'SPAM', then a Mozilla filter just bins 'em.
(NOTE: Almost certainly doesn't help for Outlook/Exchange users, but will be fine for anything that uses pop3 as transport)
It sits between your email client and pop3 server and 'reads' and categorises your emails as they arrive. It takes a few days (more or less, depending on the volume of junk you receive) to learn how to categorise your email based on their content. The obvious categories are spam and non-spam, but there's no reason why you can't expand the categories. After a while it will learn that '(insert favourite car model here)' is a good indication that an email is genuine, whereas 'herbal' and 'diploma' are the opposite.
Mine's set to modify the subject line of junk mail to include 'SPAM', then a Mozilla filter just bins 'em.
(NOTE: Almost certainly doesn't help for Outlook/Exchange users, but will be fine for anything that uses pop3 as transport)
F
king spammers!
I'm no expert, but as I understand it, there are some spiders designed to collect e-mail addresses from web sites and these then get passed/sold on to spam merchants.
A useful program to help deal with the problem is Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net) which allows you to check your waiting mail BEFORE downloading it and shows you who a message is from, the subject and size of message.
It even tells you which are likely spam or viruses (though isn't a substitute for anti-virus). It's not 100% on this, but you can usually tell spam from the subject/address.
Mailwasher then lets you delete unwanted messages such as offers from your ISP from your mailbox without having to download them and even enables you to bounce spam back at the sender to make it look like your address is crap.
You can download it free but the guy welcomes donations. Got to be worth a fiver!
king spammers! I'm no expert, but as I understand it, there are some spiders designed to collect e-mail addresses from web sites and these then get passed/sold on to spam merchants.
A useful program to help deal with the problem is Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net) which allows you to check your waiting mail BEFORE downloading it and shows you who a message is from, the subject and size of message.
It even tells you which are likely spam or viruses (though isn't a substitute for anti-virus). It's not 100% on this, but you can usually tell spam from the subject/address.
Mailwasher then lets you delete unwanted messages such as offers from your ISP from your mailbox without having to download them and even enables you to bounce spam back at the sender to make it look like your address is crap.
You can download it free but the guy welcomes donations. Got to be worth a fiver!
i think the only way to win is to sting the purchasers of email lists. this destroys demand and therefore the existence of email harvesters... so if there's a website of an advertiser you can visit with a contact us form, fill that in with a polite message ( 
) and click submit 100 times... good or bad idea?
) and click submit 100 times... good or bad idea?
The problem with this is that they then believe their spam marketing is working so they step it up to send even more. These guys have tools that can send millions of email an hour.
shadowninja said: i think the only way to win is to sting the purchasers of email lists. this destroys demand and therefore the existence of email harvesters... so if there's a website of an advertiser you can visit with a contact us form, fill that in with a polite message (
One thing that has been done is some guys in the US have signed up the biggest spammer they can find to every mail order catalogue and advertising and marketing campaign. So now he gets tons of junk mail a day. Unfortunately he doesn't seem to understand that what he feels about that is what everyone else feels about his spam email.
The VERY worst thing that anyone can do is respond to ANY of this spam in ANY form. So do not reply via email. Do not phone them. The best way is to try and find something that bounces the email you don't want (the software already mentioned sounds ideal if it works).
Another thing. Be VERY careful using any sort of vacation email program (you know the ones that automatically reply that you ae on holiday). Not only do they confirm to spammers that you exist but I have heard that crims are using them to trawl the phone book to find the home addresses of people they get replies from. Not sure if this last bit is true but unless you have some very common name, and there are hundreds of people in your area with the same name, or live along way from work, or are ex-directory it is certainly possible.
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