Damned Spamers

[infrogmation]

Grrr.
Anyone else been getting spam or bounces of spam that was forged to look like it came from your personal email address?
I've got a pile of bounces of Make $ex Fast spam with my address forged on it; from headers looks like from or via rain.fr

Any thoughts about this going beyond annoying into the illegal territory of identity theft?

Comments

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

Spammers have been doing it for years.

France is pretty much a cesspit. Especially wanadoo.fr. If you can, I recommend blacklisting the whole netblock.

[portia.livejournal.com]

I want to do something to the email on my new laptop to block spam. Since you are an expert on the subject what should I do to filter that crap out? Is there an easy program I can install or something? Can you email me or post something in your LJ for anti-spam rookies like me? (The easier the better.) Thanks.

(Sorry to use your journal to solicit help from someone else Froggy.)

[ernunnos.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about filtering on Windows machines, but spampal (http://www.twinlobber.org.uk/spampal/) looks pretty good. It sits between your mail server and your mail reader, so you read mail just like you normally would. It checks the sender of each email against a couple of DNSBLs (blocklists) to determine what mail to block. There are a bunch of DNSBLs out there, each run by different people, each with different standards for who they will and will not block. The ones I like best are relays.osirusoft.com and relays.ordb.org.

If you install spampal and tell it to use those two DNSBLs, it will probably cut your spam in half.

[portia.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll give it a shot.

[jjjiii]

I've thought about it, and concluded that that is one of the main reasons why I don't want my email address tied to my real name. You think it says "Junior J. Junior III" on my birth certificate?

Unfortunately, I think the best way to avoid spam in your in-box is to abandoned compromised accounts and start new ones, and then be VERY careful about who you give the address out to. It also helps to go with a reliable, but not well-known provider. I've been using www.myrealbox.com for a few months now and have been very happy. I have had one account there for over a year (during which time it was mostly inactive) and it has yet to receive its first spam message.

The only other option to avoid getting spam is to hold your own domain and manage your own email server. Then, each time you deal with a company, you create a new address *just* for dealing with that company. That way, if they sell you out, you know who not to do business with, and then you just remove that account and the spammers can no longer hit you there.

For example, say you register the domain infrogmation.com Your "true" account might be "froggy@infrogmation.com" but you'd never give that one out except to close friends. But when doing business with amazon.com, you'd create an email account called amazon.com@infrogmation.com. Then if amazon.com@infrogmation.com starts getting a lot of spam, you know that amazon are slimeballs and you quit dealing with them and delete the account, and all the spams headed for that account bounce back.

The only thing is that it's a bit of a pain to manage your own email server, and it's probably not something you'd want to do unless you're already a sysadmin, or a big DIY geek.

[girl-on-a-stick.livejournal.com]

Yuck. Luckily I have not gotten that one.
The worst I've gotten lately is spam for "rape sex videos."
How nice.

What I've been getting

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

is not bounces of deliberately forged junkmail, but bounces of Klez virus mail from people with so much junkmail in their inboxes that Klez picks up the subject lines from it.

Time to petition Congress to outlaw Outlook Express?