Re: [NTLK] Spam?

On 7/16/2009 4:26 PM, Larry Yaeger wrote:
*snip
> Right now, things seem to be working relatively well, with little spam getting through and with few if any false positives (to my knowledge :} ). But it wasn't easy getting things to this point, and the spammers have sure made email a lot more difficult and less reliable than it should, and used to be.
>
Indeed they have. Some people (perhaps many) have even given up on
email due to spammers. I use thunderbird for my email and its spam
filtering while not perfect, is quite good and I never get a false
positive with it.

I use to go though the junk folder but like Larry it just takes too much
time. But I learned that if I do a search on the junk folder comparing
it to all the email addresses I have in my address books (and the
collected address book) if anything accidentally got marked as junk (by
me or the automatic filter itself) it gets found before going into
oblivion. One email address I have gets around 500 spam a day. But
only say 5 get though to my inbox.

Also about bouncing spam, it is generally not a good idea. The reason
being is you are contributing to the mass of junk going though the email
system. And if anyone does receive your bounced message it is likely
never goes to the spammer that actually sent, it as they never use their
own addresses, only others. And many (if not most) people automatically
filter anything that says "undeliverable mail" as the spammers started
using this. Or if they have your email address they use it in as the
"from" in their sends and when one bounces you get that bounce. I know
I get a lot of junk with my email as the from. Heck they often now have
it in BOTH the to and from trying to get around filters.

Yes changing the email addresses does work for a while, but sooner or
later it is found if you use it at all. Or even if you don't. I have
had email addresses that started getting spam and were never even used.
 The reason? The spammer just guessed or used a dictionary attack on a
server until they found something that went though without a bounce then
add that email address to their database. Another problem with changing
email addresses a lot: spammers never take email addresses off their
lists (they rarely even get the bounces to know about it anyway), only
add to them. So it actually contributes to more junk email in the
network over all. And there has been numbers run that eventually the
system will collapse under the weight of all the junk email. If I
remember correctly,I read that about 70% of the email now running though
all the servers in the world is spam. Now that is just plain scary.

-Dan

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Received on Fri Jul 17 01:37:53 2009