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Papirex

Dec 10, 2005, 8:32 AM

Post #1 of 17 (7573 views)

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Spam again

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I’m starting to think Mister Wong may be back in a different form. Remember all his “Offers to sell”? In the last 3 or 4 days my Mexconnect Email account has been delivering 10 or 15 spam Emails per day, some of them are using very bad English. A spasm of spam. I don’t use my Mexconnect Email account much anymore, and I have never used it for any registrations, etc.

It’s not a big problem for me; I use two Email clients, Outlook and Incredimail. Occasionally one or the other of them takes the week off, so using two of them is sort of like wearing a belt and suspenders for reliability.

Both of the Email clients I use have very good, customizable spam filters, so 99% of the spam I do receive is delivered directly to my deleted items folder. I always open it to quickly glance at the headings of the stuff in it before I delete all of it. Sometimes there is mail that I want to keep from my credit cards etc.

In the past, I have had episodes of spam attacks from my Mexconnect mail, and it has died down after 2 or 3 weeks. I am wondering if any other Mexconnecters are having a sudden surge of spam lately?

Rex

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

Rolly

Dec 10, 2005, 8:54 AM

Post #2 of 17 (7560 views)

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Re: [RexC] Spam again

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I get two or three per day. Almost always in Spanish. I use my Mexconnect mail only for writing to family and friends. I use Hotmail for other online doings.

Rolly Pirate

Uncle Jack

Dec 10, 2005, 9:47 AM

Post #3 of 17 (7541 views)

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Re: [RexC] Spam again

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3 or 4? Consider youself lucky. I've been getting as many as 12 to 14 of the same crap for a couple of weeks now.

uj

jerezano

Dec 10, 2005, 10:03 AM

Post #4 of 17 (7535 views)

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Re: [Rolly] Spam again

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Hello,

It is obvious that we don't have a spam filter on Mexconnect.com Years ago I made the mistake of using my mexconnect email to search for a medication that I must buy in the USA. I found that medication equivalent but in incorrect doseage sizes.

But ever since I have been inundated by spam. I get some 20 to 30 e mails a day. And every now and then I get a notification that my mexconnect e mail addresss is circulating on various postings. I have thought seriously about changing my mexconnect.com addresss, but it doesn't seem worthwhile as I can easily click on delete all and then screen out the real messages before zapping them themn off to spam hell.

But, yes, I do wish we had a spam filter on this web page.

Adios. jerezano.

Rolly

Dec 10, 2005, 11:59 AM

Post #5 of 17 (7518 views)

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Re: [jerezano] Spam again

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There is a spam filter on Mexconnect mail. Go to Options, and you will find three spam filter options that you can use to meet your needs. It works fairly well -- in the same league with the spell checker.

Rolly Pirate

Papirex

Dec 10, 2005, 3:41 PM

Post #6 of 17 (7494 views)

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Re: [Rolly] Spam again

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Rolly, I hadn’t noticed that Mexconnect mail had a spam filter before, but I hadn’t looked for one since I use Email clients to handle my Email and I use their filters. While something is better than nothing, I saw that you need to enter an Email address to filter out the spam when using the filter in Mexconnect mail.

Since virtually all spam mail senders’ use spoofed Email addresses that makes that type of filtering pretty much useless. The filters I use allow me to enter words that are in the senders’ Email address or the body of the message to send the message to my deleted items folder. They are pretty efficient.

The list of words I have on that list has become pretty large after a few years, but some of them are: credit; card; loan; approved; mortgage; rates; sex; enlarge; Viagra: Cialis; etc. etc. etc. I add words to the list when I see a pattern of them being repeated in spam mail.

I believe that most good Email clients have similar filtering tools, Eudora, etc. I use Outlook, and Incredimail, a free program. My outlook program is part of my MS Office 2000 Premium programs, it is in English with no other language choices, so I have loaded the Incredimail program in Spanish in my wifes’ computer. It is a lot easier for her to use it in her native language.

If anyone is really being bombarded with excessive amounts of spam, an Email client is probably the best answer, for the filtering capabilities. The basic Incredimail program is free, but there will be an ad for their service at the bottom of every Email you send. For a one-time fee of I believe US$ 30. for a lifetime license, there will be no ads, and a couple of more bells and whistles.

A caution: Hotmail, out of the goodness of Microsofts’ “heart” now requires you to buy their paid Email program to import Hotmail into an Email client.

Rex
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

Rolly

Dec 10, 2005, 5:00 PM

Post #7 of 17 (7485 views)

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Re: [RexC] Spam again

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If you go to Options|Spam Assassin, you can enable the default filter which is the one I mentioned as being "pretty good."

Rolly Pirate

jswarts

Dec 10, 2005, 5:21 PM

Post #8 of 17 (7480 views)

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Re: [Rolly] Spam again

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Rolly is right about SpamAssasin. It performs 100's of heuristic tests on all incomming email and assigns a point value to the results of each test. If the email gets a score higher than the set limit, it is determined spam and thrown away. Am email can get points for having alot of blank lines, containing certain words like vicodin, the date or time being in the future, or the word hello in the subject for example. A full list if the tests performed and the points assigned can be seen on the SpamAssassin website if you are interested. It's a truly brilliant system. With the point assigned and points threshold, no email will be blocked for having a few of the characteristics. I've used it on my server for a few years and it's spam detection has been 98% accurate for me. It has never moved anything to the trash that wasn't spam, although it has missed a few spam emails. I could rectify this by lowering the point threshold on my server, but its working well enough for me not to mess with it. Give it a try. I think you'll be impressed and you don't have to spend the time making a list of words or banned domain names :)

Jennifer

wendy devlin

Dec 10, 2005, 5:28 PM

Post #9 of 17 (7475 views)

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Re: [jswarts] Spam again

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But if the SPAM is not sent to your "Report Spam" site, what's the point?

jswarts

Dec 10, 2005, 5:33 PM

Post #10 of 17 (7472 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] Spam again

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Hi Wendy,

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

Jennifer

wendy devlin

Dec 10, 2005, 5:52 PM

Post #11 of 17 (7458 views)

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Re: [jswarts] Spam again

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All spam that arrives on our web-server is sent to our web-servers "report spam" E-Mail address.

Then the web-server is able to block the problem spam senders.

It is the only "filter" that has a lasting affect/effect !

jswarts

Dec 10, 2005, 6:03 PM

Post #12 of 17 (7454 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] Spam again

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I see what you mean now. The problem I have encountered with that method is that spammers spoof legitimate addresses and contiually change the address they are sending from, so some legitimate mail gets blocked and its impossible to keep up with the new addresses. They simply move on to another. I also had all of my email blocked from a server once because it was a charter.net address and someone had spoofed a charter.net address for spamming purposes. It took awhile to get that straightened out.

I like SpamAssasin because it filters the mail based on good tests. I don't really care if spammers get caught or reported as long as I don't have to deal with any of the flotsam they produce. If I don't have to see it, deal with it, or waste my time with it, I'm happy!

wendy devlin

Dec 10, 2005, 6:23 PM

Post #13 of 17 (7447 views)

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Re: [jswarts] Spam again

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If a spoofed legitimate website is on server that is not able to handle spam, it is not worth worrying about.

(This post was edited by wendy devlin on Dec 10, 2005, 6:29 PM)

jerezano

Dec 10, 2005, 6:58 PM

Post #14 of 17 (7438 views)

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Re: [wendy devlin] Spam again

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Hello,

Rex C described exactly my problem with the filters. They are useless. I had never noticed the Spam Assasain. I will try it and see if it works.

Thanks Rolly. Adios. jerezano.

Papirex

Dec 10, 2005, 7:32 PM

Post #15 of 17 (7431 views)

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Re: [Rolly] Spam again

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OK Rolly, I have enabled Spam Assassin (I think) the first time I looked at it, I thought I needed to enter the URLs or Email addresses to be blocked. After I read your post I went back and just clicked on it to enable it. A box popped up saying I had enabled Spam Assassin. I hope I did.

If it works, it will be good to have two layers of protection against spam.

Rex
"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

Papirex

Dec 11, 2005, 9:09 AM

Post #16 of 17 (7407 views)

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Re: [Rolly] Spam again

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After enabling the Spam Assassin filter In Mexconnect mail, it let one more spam mail through last night, and there were six more of them this morning. All but two of them were delivered directly into my deleted items folder by my Email clients’ filter. I added one more word to my filter list to automatically delete the two messages that were in my inbox the next time they arrive. I don’t add a word to that list unless I have received the same spam mail 10 or 12 times.

I read an interesting news item earlier this year that answered the question for me of why these spammers do it. The article concerned the first person to be sentenced to prison for violating the new US federal law banning the sending of unsolicited commercial Email (spam).

He is a young man about 24 or 25 years old. He was only getting one hit for every 300,000 spam mails sent. But he was sending out 30 million spams per day. The main thing he was selling was a “program” to make money collecting delinquent accounts for FedEx.

For US $ 375. all he sent his victims was a list of delinquent account names. Whether those were genuine or fictitious names was not mentioned. At the time he was arrested, he was taking in US $ 700,000 per month, and in the four years he had been operating his scam he had amassed US $ 20,000,000. He was caught fairly easily because he did not hide his identity for the deposits of the money he was receiving.

With that kind of money to be made, it’s no wonder that those crooks keep doing it. The sad thing about this is, I think that most of the victims of these scams are probably those least able to cope, or deal with it either monetarily, or mentally.

Rex

"The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved" - Victor Hugo

(This post was edited by RexC on Dec 11, 2005, 9:11 AM)

sfmacaws

Dec 11, 2005, 2:57 PM

Post #17 of 17 (7388 views)

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Re: [RexC] Spam again

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Another option. I use Mailwasher Pro by Firetrust http://www.firetrust.com/ I used the free version for a while but I liked it so much I paid for the full version. It uses various spam lists to blacklist spam as well as 'learning' when you click that something is spam. You are contributing to the blacklisting of spammers as well since what you click as spam goes into the database for all. The best part is that it does not download the whole email - or ANY attachments - to your computer, it just picks up the first few lines (you can set that). One click and it deletes all spam from your email server before it gets to you. You run it before using your email program.

I have several email addresses and I get probably 30 or more spams a day on them. Mailwasher runs through all of the accounts quickly, highlights the spam , points out the questionable and with one click I get rid of it all. It misses very little and only occasionally will mark something questionable that is a form letter or mass forward from a "friend", truly they are spam but I don't blacklist the sender when I know them, I just delete it. It recognizes most virii as well and marks the email.

Jonna - Mérida, Yucatán