Spam War

[stonemonkts]

I am looking for advice and help regarding spam. Here's a little background in brief:

-Longstanding email account which for years was clean has been of late receiving 30-40 spam mails (software, drugs, penny stocks).
-I create message rule after message rule, using Outlook Express (delete from server if message body contains specific words, taken from the spam, etc…).
-I am still receiving 30-40 per day, and it is starting to truly drive me insane.

Just now I tested it by writing an email from another account which contained the word "Corel" in the body...and wouldn't you know it, it went through.

So, are those rules you can create in OE totally worthless????

Also, it is obvious that the spammers create these fucking messages with ZERO hope of a response but just for the sake of passing spam blockers (messages with nonsensical words, phrases, etc).

Needless to say, I would love a few months alone with each and every one of these cocksuckers...but never mind that.

PLEASE ANYONE OUT THERE HELP ME PLEASE!!!!

I'll purchase any spam software but it must be effective with Outlook Express.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Pete C]

I don't use Outlook, but it seems that what you're doing is on the browser level. Doesn't your ISP have anti-spam options?

[stonemonkts]

No, they don't.

It is a local ISP company which is one of two who have phone numbers which are local calls for me, so I'm stuck with them.

They allow you to have up to 5 email accounts so I've just added a third, which I intend to transfer over to slowly over time. Unfortunately the account which has been polluted is the main account so I will have to keep it active anyway.

I think I fucked up by using the clean account when I signed up for a frigging Yahoo message group (dumb DUMB).

[Deke]

It's always as well to have at least one account that you never post on the internet for any reason whatsoever, ever, but the problem is that there are some people out there with machines sending out test messages to randomly generated names and addresses. Every time one goes out and doesn't come back with an error message it's flagged up as a live address. For a while I was sending out error messages to these things, but they've cottoned on to that now and you can rarely tell what's a test and what's a spam (Which, of course, you shouldn't respond to under any circumstances since they will promptly flag that up as a live address).

Sometimes you just can't win.

[Lenny D.Guitarist]

Stonemonkey, I understand your frustration. These bottom feeders will never stop pestering people who don't have time for their horseshit. Maybe the easiest solution is to create another yahoo, hotmail, or netscape e-mail account.

Having never received a single piece of spam in my computing life, I think that I may finally started to realize why.


I NEVER give out my real e-mail address unless it's to a company I trust, for example Barnes & Noble. Secondly, I read privacy statements extremely carefully before I ever agree to anything. Whether it's to give them the option of e-mail notification, or software registration, or whatever.


Other than that, I cannot figure out what I do differently than the rest of the computing world.


I have received bogue e-mails from my yahoo account that I created here a few times a couple of years ago, but that's about it. And I simply blocked all of those and never had that problem again.

I'll also get the occassional scam e-mail like we were talking about on Frank M's thread. But I'm pretty sure that has to do with my father who gets a virus on his machine about twice a year. Probably gets my addy from his addy book.

Stoner, have you tried blocking these accounts?

[Lenny D.Guitarist]

Stonemonkey... I have a Netscape e-mail account that I never use, although it's still active. I just checked it 5 minutes ago. The last message I received was in Oct 2004, no spams, no hits, no errors.

[stonemonkts]

Blocking accounts is useless because they change up constantly. I also never rec'd a spam mail on the account in question until a few weeks ago..then they multiplied on a daily basis. I feel foolish because the anger they have induced has been of the throw-the-monitor-through-the-window type, which is ridiculous.

But I swear to everything I honor I would roast these fuckers alive on a slow flame (after several months of slow torture, of course).

ANYway...I downloaded a shareware program especially designed for Outlook Express called "SPAMfighter".

So far it has worked out.

It's a fucking shame though. What a world, full of mostly good people sprinkled with a lethal dose of asshole we live in.