Forum Moderators: phranque
test f0h1jtri2k5rer489klkhd0r3uil9854gfhii14tgjk2o58ybfw4uo8lmbc2sae4h8ngfju3kncsd5yh
Anyone else seeing this?
Is it bounce tests?
Can they be stopped?
Not only dont i spam, but i dont have a mailing list and have never sent out any mass mailing in my life! :)
I assume its possible for others to send emails that appear to be from my address, or has my address as the reply to.
Is it possible to prevent this?
Scott
Either a professional spammer is trying to verify your address. In practise, however, I don't think a pro would do this without including some kind of message, be it to actually advertize something, or to inform you that you have now "opted-in" by not unsubscribing.
The other thing to remember is that most "self-service spammers" are terminally stupid. It seems quite likely to me that those messages are simply the result of someone not understanding the super-duper mail blaster software they just bought. Fortunately, most of those software packages generate messages with a characteristic "footprint" in the headers, so they can be bounced without even looking at the content.
I use multiple domain names but all the emails goto one address.
I have been receiving emails from some spam head from me to me?
I have reported him to his ISP but since I have done that the spam is getting worse, so far today I have had 23 spam emails all from the same nob head, it is sending me wild
but what else can I do?
Zero
CK
Yes, that's trivial to do.
Is it possible to prevent this?
No, at least not on a technical level. If you have proof of the identity of the real sender, you could try to sue them...
HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
I would really like to bounce the 30 other spams I get every day too. We are talking about making it look like your email address is not active right?
I don't bother with the unsubscribe link because it either tells the real spammers I am alive and well or the mail system is down (or was never up).
HOW DO YOU DO THAT?
You don't expect me to post information here that would help the spammers improve their software, do you? ;)
You'll have to study those headers for a while, and then dip into the relevant RFCs. A basic understanding of statistics also helps. Mix this with lists of well known domain names and IPs, and you'll end up with a very reliable custom spam filter.
Of course, if you're running Windows only, things get a little harder. In that case, I'd recommend another approach, such as checking out spambayes [spambayes.sourceforge.net]. That seems to be the most reliable content based spam filter I am aware of.
I've recently been looking into bouncing back unwanted e-mails and read conflicting reports on whether this is actually effective in reducing/stopping this type of mail.
Anyone else seeing these? If so, any blocking tips?
In two accounts - webmaster@mydomain.com and webmaster@myotherdomain.com.
Presumeably they are going to create a list of addresses that dont bounce back.
Im not that technical, but would this work:
Create a custom message to appear like (or be identical to) the bounce back message that they would recieve if the email address wasnt active?
That way it could be sent out manaually (or perhaps automatically in some cases) and fool spammers to thinking that the email address was no existent.
I assume that spammers wont manually check bounce backs (too many of them).
Any thoughts?
Scott
However, at work I don't have this facility, and your idea is a good one. Basically just compose an undelivered message and send it as the reply?
I guess we could just copy and an existing bounce and reply that way?
I think it would work in most cases, not least for for this reason - not all mail servers process bounces the same way, and so any good spammer would have a system that looks for certain text strings (like 'mail returned' in the emails so as not to be left with loads of useless addresses - you get these in legit emailing software too.
I guess this would have to be done manually though, I'm using Outlook so unless I could get a 'bounce plugin' to add this option to the menu it would be tricky.
The message headers might present a problem. I will have a look at some genuine bounce emails and see how easy they would be to recreate and get back to you. In the meantime, any other spam-fighting suggestions would be apprciated.
These types of messages are pretty damn hard to block with filtering/rules as they come from yahoo addresses and don't have any real unique text to look for.
- You see a list of all mail sitting in your mailbox before you collect it and you can select the emails you want to: bounce and delete.
- It then deletes those emails and sends a bounce.
- Then you collect the remaining mail.
- Mail washer is a separate application (not a plugin) so it doesn't matter what mail client / account you use.
I've only been testing it for a week but is seems really good. And its free :) . I think my spam has reduced already.
Those headers are fake, and easy to detect automatically. I don't think you'll ever see a legitimate message that lists more than two different popular mail services in its "Received:" headers (or maybe three, if it went through yahoo groups in between).
i need to turn the catch all feature off on this account
