Email Spam

[ihelpyou]

Well, I guess this forum can be for email also.

This is from a WELL known large company. I have had a merchant account for 3 years now. I have NEVER ever been to their site nor have I ever sent them an email. They are even stooping low to get business. This is SPAM.
===========

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But if it's all Greek to you, here's an easy way to
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companies
___________________________________________________________

Online Payment Processing * SUPER-EASY Interactive Guide
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____________________________________________________________

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Sincerely,


VeriSign, Inc.


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Please note:
If you do not wish to receive e-mail promotions from VeriSign,
click on the following link:
http://www.verisign.com/compref



______________________________________________________________________
This message was sent by VeriSign using Responsys Interact (TM).

To view our permission marketing policy:
http://www.rsvp0.net

==========

Blatant spam. WHy should I click on any link to opt-out when I NEVER signed up in the first place???

[I.Q. bandit]

Doug says----------------Blatant spam. WHy should I click on any link to opt-out when I NEVER signed up in the first place???-----------------



You don't have to do anything you don't want to. :p

How many e-mails have they been sending you? I once recieved 400 e-mails from this dude I pissed off in a chatroom. :( This was the worst spam scenerio I've ever been involved with. Actually it may have been more than 400 e-mails. I didn't really count all of them. ;)

[ihelpyou]

Yep, I already opted out.

I think this is the first one from them. My point is that this is from a very large co. They should know better. We get quite enough credit card spam companies sending this stuff as it is.

Verisign must have bought a list of email addresses that claim to be optin.

I would Never send an advertisement to someone who did not specifically ask for it from my own web site.

[JuniorHarris]

I would Never send an advertisement to someone who did not specifically ask for it from my own web site.
I would Never send an advertisement to someone who did not specifically ask for it from my own web site.
The following is only my opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the forum.

I just had to say it twice!~ These spamming idiots need to learn they are doing more damage then good for the few measly responses they might get. Though it may be time consuming, I generally always report any spam I receive. Amazingly it has died down quite a bit!~

I generally dump the message header and start working my way backwards through the header reviewing all ip addresses. I'll use either ARIN (http://whois.arin.net/), Ripe (http://www.ripe.net/ripencc/pub-services/db/), or APNIC (http://www.apnic.net/apnic-bin/whois2.pl) depending on what country the IP originates to determine the true owner of that IP address. I then respond to any contact emails with a forwarded copy of the message, including a full message header.

In addition, if the spam email contains a URL, I will also get the ip address for the web site and report to the host provider that their customer is using spam email to drive traffic. I will also include a copy of the email spam will full message headers.

And here's an idea I got from a friend of mine...and I think if we were *all* to do this, we may very well put some of these low-life scum-bag spammers out of business.

Many spammers will send URLs to the sites they wish for you to view. Well, why not oblige?

I just whip up a quick HTML page with about 10-12 iframes that all point to the offending URL.. I also set the refresh to somewhere between 1-5 seconds. Amazingly within just an hour one can log over 7,000 page views. Now imagine if every one who got the same spam email did something similar? This denial of spam (DOS) attack may overload their site and bring it down, but at the very least it would/could cause the spammer to exceed their bandwidth capacity and they would be required to pay exorbitant overage charges which could help put them out of business!

This works very well since I have DSL I don't even notice any overhead and can continue with my browsing and other work. I had one fellow who ended up blocking my IP address, however I simply disconnected and dialed back in and resumed my viewing.

I'm kind of disappointed this morning however, as I have not received any spam email to attack. But I did end up creating a nice ASP document which allows me to simply enter into a form the offending spam URL and a count value for the initial set of iframes. From there it just loops forever!~ :) It also provides an optional text field which will be added to the end of their URL.

Most webmasters and webstats will review/report the top url, and by adding unique text to the end of the url (in the form of a dummy querystring), it should stand out like s sore thumb. I can't repeat the exact text I usually add, but it's generally some colorful adjectives describing my dislike for spammers. These query string text values can be added to any url without effecting the page, but the web server will record the unique URL. And I suppose having 10,000 - 20,000 requests for that URL will really make it stand out!~;)

Here's an example of using the query string message:

http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/index.php?s=?/_Sample_of_query_string_message_/

This is the home page for the forums here, you'll notice the page loads just fine. However, you'll also notice the query string message in the URL as well. Believe me, someone will see this message!~ :eek:

In addition, if we're lucky enough, their logs will get spidered and index the same URL. Imagine their surprise when they are number one on Google for ****ing spammer!~ <lol>

It's amazing how much better I feel after hitting some spammer for 20,000 page views!~ Not to mention the good chuckle I get from the nice messages I pass along!~

Oh, by the way, did I mention I hate spammers!~:rolleyes:

[ihelpyou]

That is toooo funny. I wish I had the know-how to do things like that. I just hit the delete button about 100 times a day. Since My email address is on every page of my site, I am on many spam lists because of harvesting, etc.

Very good tutorial though. :cool:

[JuniorHarris]

Well spammers just happen to hit my button!~

This is too late for anyone who already has had their email address extracted. But you can discourage email extraction programs by unicoding the email address (http://fantomaster.com/famshield0.html).

I despise email harvesters and siphons as well!~ Regardless of entry point, the only page they ever see is a nice little [email siphon] page with email addresses of the various companies and web sites that sell [the same] email harvesting and email siphon software!~ :eek:

See E-Mail collectors List (http://www.siteware.ch/webresources/useragents/collectors/) for a list of harvesters and siphons!~
(The list used to have more entries).

[ihelpyou]

Good links and information JH.

[I.Q. bandit]

I'm going to spam your inbox Junior!! :D

[JuniorHarris]

<lol> I suppose it wouldn't be the first time!~ :rolleyes: It seemed there for a while someone was spamming myself and other members at another forum!~ :eek:

:)

[Mel]

Hi JH - Maybe i am the guilty party at the other place????:D

Let me recite a real horror spamming story that I finally ended just a few days ago;

About three weeks ago everyone in our company started getting these get rich quick emails - You know the kind - Put a $5 bill in an envelope and mail it to the bottom name on this list, when your name reaches the top you will receive $64,000. The problem was that this same dude was sending identical emails to every address in our company at least 10-15 times a day.
The remove address (a yahoo address)didn't work, A whois revealed that the domain was registered to a fake address in Tokoyo and the Tech contact was someone in Israel that never responded to emails.

So I just set my spam filters to send all this stuff to the junk basket and got on with things. But after about two weeks of this performance daily I started to get mad.

Got out the trusty Neoworx tracert utility and tracked the Network he was hosted on to a very big company in New York.
Emailed them a few times with no response, called them and was promised the world, but nothing happened.

Finally I got the email address of the VP of the hosting company and sent him an email explaining how I was sure that their lack of response was due to the spammer assuring them that he wasn't spamming, but just to prove it to him I would forward to him every spam mail we got from the get rich quick clown.

Set up an autoresponder to forward all emails from the spammer to the VP and within the next day we had forwarded more than 250 emails to him.

The spamming stopped that night.

[Mel]

Me again JH -

A couple of links that may prove useful to those who need to combat spam:

GeekTools at http://www.geektools.com/ has a nice Whois utility that will automatically search all the registries and come up with whois information from almost any country.

NeoTrace (http://www.neotrace.com/) has a very good tracert utility (with a free lite version) that will give you geographical location information, and network whois info. Great for tracking down who is hosting the spammer.

One thing to remember is that there is hardly ever any check on the addresses and contacts given when registering a domain. Dedicated spammers can put anything they like in there and thats what comes back from your whois query.

[I.Q. bandit]

You know I never thought of setting up an autoresponder in defense against spam. Of course I didn't know what an autoresponder was up untill a month ago. That's an ingenius idea comrade!

[JuniorHarris]

Mel thanks for the geektools link, I didn't have that one...nice whois all in one place!~:up: Neotrace has been in my toolbox for quite some time...a very handy utility!~:)

I know most of us realize these emails are generally all sent with invalid return addresses...and they try to excuse themselves by providing an opt-out feature. Well I generally never send email to opt-out...the reason being, is that some of these low-level scumbags actually will use that to verify they have a valid email address!~ That's right, if you never respond...they don't know if the address is valid, changed or expired...but send them one response, and you just verified that email address!~ :eek:

When I want to opt-out, I will dump the message header and include that into a forwarded message to every domain (ip address) in the message header. I generally use a whois to find the site administrators for these machines and/or an abuse address. If the spammer included a URL, I will drop this into Neotrace to get the [final] ip address for the site. From that point I will perform a whois to determine the hosting company and then also include them in the same email with a request for the spam to stop, the full message header, as well as the original copy of the message.

I haven't clicked on an opt-out for months...and interestingly enough, my spam is at an all time low!~ Is it related, I can't say for sure...but I will repeat, that I never respond to opt-outs and I generally always report every spam offense. I know this can be time consuming...but if you have a high volume, just pick the best ones. There is also nothing wrong with saving them for a day when you are not very productive or in a very good mood!~ :mad:

Maybe the spam could be saved and used for a scout project or something?!? Hey Maw, I just earned my anti-email-spam patch today...

And for those spammers who use 800 numbers, by all means call them right away!~ Listen to their message, hang up. (repeat as necessary)

[ihelpyou]

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go nettech27@excite.com to be removed. Please no mail bombs, legit removal.

We should bomb their phone with messages of the not very kind ones. IDIOTS!

[ihelpyou]

Calling the 800 number is a good one! Remember that the company has to pay for all incoming calls on a 800 number. We should call frequently with spam email that has a number in it.

They might run up so many phone charges and may be forced out of the spamming business.