Archive for the ‘Spam Talk’ Category
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 |
There is a plethora of unwanted email newsletter space and lots of chatter surrounding "birthday of spam"
Amongst all of the moaning, complaining and waffle being written, it’s so obvious that the complainers have chosen, yes chosen, to be victims of spam. They wallow in their pity and mouth off about how horrible it is and how much time it takes up and that there is little that can be done to stop it.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is utter diatribe.
I’ve just checked my email account traffic for the past week
- My 15 stand alone email accounts (POP3) had 2 spam messages.
- Gmail Account 1 had 125 spam messages including 5 Google alert emails (Go figure … Google sends mail that it classes as spam!)
- Gmail Account 2 had 195 spam messages all of which were spam
I don’t use any filtering programs on my desktop nor do I use Spam Assassin or other solution on my web server.
Yeah I’m bragging, but this is pretty much a normal week for me as I use the Spam Strategies outlined in the guide..
How do I do it? I use the Spam Strategy Guide
Fixing the blame on Gary Thuerk for sending the first spam email and fixing the blame on all the others who send the unwanted email you receive is not, and never will make one iota of difference to the spam in your inbox. That’s a victim mentality approach.
Action: Fixing the problem is about taking responsibility for how you manage your email addresses and the Spam Strategy Guide is a front line to preventing spam ending up in your inbox.
Posted in Spam Talk | 2 Comments »
Thursday, May 1st, 2008 |
If you’re like me, when you check your email every morning, the first thing you’re met with are emails touting the latest and greatest sexual enhancement drugs, get rich quick schemes, weight loss dream pills and many other wonderful products that spammers love to promote. Have you had enough?
If you answered yes, then I have a solution for you. For those of you who’ve been reading my blog for quite some time, you know that I don’t normally post articles about products. However, a friend of mine recommended a product to me the other day that I fell in love with. It’s called XXX and it truly is a necessity for everyone this day and age.
J. Anthony from Positive Pelham expresses so well what so many of us experience when we try and use filters and software to act as a barrier to spam related emails.
What he doesn’t realise, or may be he does, that software can’t overcome psychological reactions of people.
Action: Blatent plug .. the Spam Strategy Guide overcomes psychological reasons for responding to and how emails arrive regardless of the filtering process. It also doesn’t impose gateways, please tell me you are a human, on people you already have an existing relationship with.
Posted in Spam Talk | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 |
The issue of having publically viewable email links that aren’t able to be harvested is still occurring
If this makes sense to you then please comment and explain how?
- I want a visitor to my site to be able to easily copy my email address to their email application.
- I don’t like images or feedback forms because of the above reason
- I am receiving copious quantities of email spam from my web site email address
To me the solution seems obvious … if someone is serious in making contact with you then they will complete a contact form in the first instance. Once they have proven their bona fides and you respond they then have the privelage of spamming the heck out of you (pun intended).
Andreas from Zargony has an article Scramble email addresses in views to reduce spam … the interesting thing about this article, which relates to the use of Ruby on Rails to achieve the scramble, is that nowhere did he provide a live example to prove that it actually works.
I figure that if it actually worked then this statement would not be there … The question is left open, if this method is worth anything.
Action: If the value proposition you place on your web site is compelling to the viewer then a simple form will not be a mountain to climb. The next thing to think of is if that form is getting punished with tyre kickers then make the form longer, collect more data, to get the serious people to contact you.
Posted in Simple Suggestions, Spam Talk | No Comments »
Monday, April 21st, 2008 |
Today three things have happened that serve to remind me that we get what we ask for when it comes to spam.
David Hinson - has written about how his email communication is clogged to the extent that he may give up using it.
Spoofing Madness - A client and I have been inundated with spoofing bounces the likes of which we’ve never seen. He’s about 12 hours ahead of me from a start view point but I’m running at around 300 a day.
So with all this spam happening … why are we receiving this unwanted mail?
Because we asked for it.
In all instances we’ve plastered websites, forums and more saying click here and send me an email … and we’ve been receiving just what we asked for.
- I’m working with my client to address his issue.
- Mine I’m not fussed about as it’s part of my spam activity tracking process.
- David … I can’t answer for but there are some pointers as to why on his blog.
Action: Remove all mailto: links from your site and adopt Actions 3,4 and 5 and things will improve markedly
Posted in Simple Suggestions, Spam Talk | No Comments »
Sunday, April 13th, 2008 |
Spammers are increasingly relying on legitimate content and web sites to cloak their messages, attempting to bypass traditional controls by passing their messages off as genuine. IT Week
And this is new?
Come on this spamming strategy has been round for ages.
"… spammers are stepping up attempts to bypass traditional content analysis protection. Spammers are using reputable web sites and content to weaken traditional anti-spam protection"
"Because anti-spam products aim to minimise the number of legitimate messages they flag as spam, spammers are seeking to exploit this by making messages appear authentic."
What email security firm Commtouch Software doesn’t realise is that they have just highlighted the issue that is the biggest weakness with filtering software. It doesn’t work
In one case, Commtouch identified a massive outbreak of spam in January 2008, when 250m spam messages were being pumped out, where the message HTML appeared to be a Hotmail welcome message; anyone opening the message was offered Viagra.
ACTION: Implementing Action 3 ensures that you don’t receive emails such as this. Occasionally one may slip through, if so it is immediatly obvious it’s spam … and you just hit delete key.
Posted in Spam Talk | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 |
Paypal phishing is on yet again.
Read this carefully …it’s totally nonsensical to begin with and secondly Paypal wouldn’t send you such an email.
Due to upcoming May 2008, and recent changes in PayPal’s Service Agreement you need to submit additional details on your PayPal account. Starting from June, 2008 all PayPal accounts will come with complete detailed information! Identity protection matters. And PayPal works day and night to help keep your identity safe.
Here’s the pretty email that goes with it.
The tell tale is the Get Verified link.It sends you to gogouk.com wich certainly isn’t a Paypal site.
ACTION: Make sure you have an excusive Spam Protected email address just for Paypal and you can then ensure that these emails just get deleted at worst or you never see them if you use the Spam Strategies from the Guide.
Posted in Spam Talk, Spam of the Day | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 |
The PayPaI phishing is back again.
Initially this email looks very plausable but still has the PayPaI address.
Dear PayPal Customer,
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. During a recent screening, we noticed an issue regarding your account.
Our system detected unusual charges to a credit card linked to your PayPal account.
Case ID Number: PP-xxx-xxx-xxx
For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
To secure your account and quickly restore full access on your account, we encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible by clicking the link below:
There was more but be assured PayPal won’t be sending you such an email.
ACTION: If you implement Action 3 emails such as this don’t arrive or you just hit delete deleted because they arrive in teh wrong place.
Posted in Simple Suggestions, Spam Talk | 6 Comments »
Monday, March 10th, 2008 |
I thought you would want to know about this e-mail virus.
Even the most advanced programs, and not even the Spam Strategy Guide, cannot take care of this one.
It appears to affect those who were born prior to 1970.
Symptoms:
- Causes you to send the same e-mail twice. done that!
- Causes you to send a blank e-mail! that too!
- Causes you to send e-mail to the wrong person. yep!
- Causes you to send it back to the person who sent it to you. who me?
- Causes you to forget to attach the attachment. well darn!
- Causes you to hit "SEND" before you’ve finished. oh no - not again!
- Causes you to hit "DELETE" instead of "SEND." and I just hate that!
- Causes you to hit "SEND" when you should "DELETE." Oh No!
IT IS CALLED THE "C-NILE VIRUS.
ACTION: There is no action required just a change in attitude and thinking beofre you act. This applies equally to many other age groups who do this as well as respond to all sorts of emails that are blatant phishing
Posted in Spam Talk | No Comments »
Monday, March 10th, 2008 |
Reports of Malware via IM is causing confusion.
Whilst this isn’t a spam issue as such the same concept applies to IM as email
Yahoo and Microsoft’s instant messenger applications are under attack from malware that is able to infect a PC without any interaction from the user.
The malware can automatically infect a user’s contacts or "friends" lists across both company’s instant messenger platforms.
Unlike conventional malware delivered through attachments, reports suggest this latest attack can infect a machine even when the recipient does not open the file delivered to them.
According to a ZDNet.com.au reader whose PC was affected by the malware this afternoon, it installs itself in the Windows Registry.
Once infected, whenever a user visits any Web site, ads that should be displayed are replaced by ads from a third party.
Also, when the reader attempted to boot up their PC after removing the malware in question, the machine shuts down.
"It gave me the blue screen," he said.
The malware is not detected by McAfee and also bypasses Spybot Search and Destroy, the reader said.
Microsoft and Yahoo were not available for comment at the time of publication.
ZDNet
What’s happening here I really don’t know … it’s a report you ahve when you don’t have any information or what information you do have is sketchy or you are fishing for information.
Whichever it is it serves as a reminder to be vigilant .. don’t accept files from people you don’t know
ACTION: Adopt Action2 and Action5 and don’t accept IM contacts from people you don’t know.
Posted in Spam Talk | No Comments »
Thursday, February 21st, 2008 |
I know the likes of Blogger/Blogspot can’t control what the hordes of people actually "do" with their blogs but in the last two days our spam attractive email ahs received hundreds of these types of emails.
Given that Google filters heaps of emails for many people it would seem trange that some form of trackback system wasn’t in place to remove these recalcitrant sites from their network. May be I’m expecting too much <grin>
They all lead to blogname.blogspot.com (url removed)
Here’s one of 20 I received last night
Real men! Millionss of people acrosss the world have already tested THIS and ARE making their girrlfriends feel brand new sexual sennsations! YOU are the best in bed, aren’t you ?
Girls! Develoop your sexual relattionship and get even MORE ppleasure! Make your boyfrriend a gift!
http://blogname.blogspot.com
And slowly, word by word, she managed to convey remember
his name in connection with the policecourt kindled, and,
like the lights of saint elmo in to safety. The girl turned
toward barney with that he continued in secret intent upon
the chronicle the showers of bullets flying round him, he
remained members. But though this was one of the crimes
to mrs. Westlake her dislike for aunt bessie, girl. I know
all her family very honest and superior. Down altogether.
already she felt weak. The strain attention to himself in
the box, he dragged it to date But i didn’t fancy doing
that sort of cavate lodges occurdimensions of ancient pueblosdoorways
one else will touch it while she has got it. But coming
from the hot glare the august sunshine.
What happens when you click on the link?
You get to go to the blogspot address with an auto forward to the spammer/scammer site.
ACTION: Apply strategies 2 and 3 and you won’t get these sotrst of things
Posted in Spam Talk, Spam of the Day | No Comments »
