Help With Porn!!!

[Stubby]

Okay, now that I have your attention!! Lately have I have getting ALOT of e-mail directing me to porn sites, which I have no interest in at all. Anyhow, I reply to their e-mail and tell them what I think, but it always comes back as undelivered. Is there any way to find out who sends this garbage? Obviously the cowards can't, or won't, put their real address in the e-mail that they send. Is there any kind of software that will block this kind of junk? Honestly, I'm not a 'prude,' but I do have a son who is just beginning to use the computer and internet and, granted, he needs to learn about sex, but not through garbage like this. My son will grow up to learn that sex is a beautiful thing, and not the ugly garbage that these sites make it look like!!

[Statica]

There are a lot of ways to deal with spam, but there is nothing you can do to prevent it. Believe it or not the reason a person gets spammed is largely the user's fault. This has a lot to do with the emailing & surfing patterns that you use.

Firstly, tracking down the email sender. Depending on what email program you are using, you can view the hidden headers of the email. On OE, this is usually attained by right clicking on the mail and then looking at details and message source. The visible reply address can be spoofed by a blind monkey, but the IP addresses and the originating SMTP (the mailserver used to send out the address) address can rarely be spoofed or covered. (yes they can be done, but most spammers rarely have the time or inclination to do so, nor do they have the resources to dedicate to a remailer). The originating SMTP address and the sender's IP address are valuable clues as to the identity of the perpetrator. Using reverse lookup tools or simply typing 'tracert aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd' in a DOS window should get you close to finding out the server/ISP used to send the mail. At which point, you could start sending out email addresses to the administrators telling them about your problem, and they might be inclined to check on this for you, and perhaps stop the miscreant from using their sendmail server. The person to talk to is usually listed on the website of the ISP etc. or you could use the resources at www.abuse.net to help you out.

However, as you probably see, this relies on the kindness of strangers, and would show you that you will get nowhere. Most sysadmins, though should be vigilant, don't care too much when the problem is with someone else. So it is up to you to stop spam.

Here's a rough list of things that you can do:

PRESERVE YOUR ANONYMITY ON THE NET.
- Though the net is the best thing since sliced bread, it is a lousy place to leave your identity lying around. This means your IP address (especially if you own a static IP), your email address and other ways of identifying you.
- remember you cannot be spammed if the spammer doesnt know you exist out there!
- this would mean creating a temporary junk email ID (like yahoo/hotmail etc etc) that you can use for public places .. like forums or newsgroups etc.
- removing your email ID from places like your website (esp. if it is a high traffic site) or other places where it is posted.
Possibly the most important piece of code that spammers have is something that searches & mines addresses. They can take out lists of addresses from websites, from newsgroup postings from pretty much any site that is supposed to have some contact information.
- REFRAIN FROM TRYING TO TYPE OUT YOUR PIECE OF MIND TO A SPAMMER.
consider yourself lucky if you get a bounced back email. cos if the spammer gets a hold of your reply, and is able to establish that there is such an email address out there (s)he will be sure to target you and will be sure to pass it on to other such spammers. Basically most spam also originates as a random trial of possible email addresses. Say you were an @home customer, with the ID: myname@home.com .. spammer's have tools that will mass mail to lyname@home.com,myname@home.com,nyname@home.com,oyname@home.com,pyname@home.com,qyname@home.com,.... u get the gist. By writing back to them would only confirm your identity.
- Be careful of what cookies are allowed on your computer and what sites you surf to. Cookies can send back a lot of information about you
- Be mindful of any spyware installed on your computer, the same as cookies.
- Use a clean email address for YOUR work.. amongst people you know and trust, and those you can be sure will not attach you to some form of a long mailing list.
- Try to tell your regular emailing "friends" to use the BCc: (blind carbon copy) option as opposed to the Cc: . Its there for a reason .. to prevent others from seeing the list of emails. (nothing more annoying than getting a 3 sentence fwded joke with about 300 lines of email address)
- Unfortunately, these may not be failsafe methods, but these will go a long way to protecting your inbox.

Regarding your current problem of spam in your mailbox ... get a new email address

[Stubby]

Thanks alot Statica, I honestly apreciate your prompt and detailed reply. I guess, as you said, there really isn't too awful I can do about it, but I am going to take your advice and change my e-mail address. If it was just me, I wouldn't worry about it, I'd just delete it as soon as it appeared in my mailbox, but I have my son to think about. BTW, I do run OE and I'm going to follow your suggestions about finding out where it came from. However, I have no intentions of replying to it. I certainly do not need anymore garbage in my mailbox!! Again, thanks a million Statica !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Demosthenes]

I do not get porn mail, but every month I put all my junk mail together into one message. Then I pick some lucky winner who sent me an unsolicited message and forward it all to that person / company through a temporary anonymous account. If someone I know really pisses me off, then I get access to their account and send the message through their email (the people at the ISP can be so kind if you forget your password ), so all the flak is directed towards that person.

Not that I recommend this, but it makes me feel better.

Respectfully,

Demosthenes

[Stubby]

Hey I like your idea Demosthenes, so remind me never to piss you off!!! Hell, I get enough junk as it is, I sure don't need yours also!! Seriously though, it's weird how some people get that garbage and other people do not. Have a GREAT day!!!!

[Statica]

Try it out .. create a webmail ID, and then subscribe to some mailing lists or make a couple of posts on a newsgroup and kaboom you start getting hit.

If it is a known address esp an acquaintance that is sending me junk against my repeated requests to stop, I use a slightly different way to retaliate. Linux has some wonderful bulk X-posting tools with posts of requests of some sort .. except I spoof the reply-to address. I know its successful cos eventually I get a "Change of email ID" circulation from the person.

[fatboyjim]

I don't get many porn emails myself, but I signed up for another temporary email address for my Dad. And, without telling anybody the address he is getting 8 emails a day at least with porn links. It's not in danger of going near young children but it pisses us off having to sift through this **** day after day

Do hotmail sell out their email add list or something?

Because he started getting the emails a couple of days after i set the account up, before even HE knew the address


Thanks,

[nulab]

May I also suggest you look under help in OE and type in the word FILTER. There is a lot of useful information there that may help you to alleviate some of your porn e-mail problems.

The following is taken from the help in Outlook 2000.

About the automatic filtering of junk or adult content e-mail messages
In much the same way that retailers and businesses use mailing lists of postal addresses to send potential clients catalogs and other information, there is a growing business in using e-mail messages as a direct marketing tool. If you do not wish to receive these kind of messages, Outlook can search for commonly used phrases in such messages and automatically move them from your Inbox to a junk e-mail folder, your Deleted Items folder, or any other folder you specify. The list of terms that Outlook uses to filter suspected junk e-mail messages can be found in a file called Filters.txt.

You can also filter messages based on a list of e-mail addresses of junk and adult content senders. There are third party filters, which are regularly updated, that you can add to Outlook. These filters have the latest lists of commercial and adult content senders. For more information, see the Outlook Web site at http://www.microsoft.com/outlook.

Outlook also creates a list of the e-mail addresses of senders of commercial or adult content, which you can add to as you get unwanted e-mail messages.

[jessho]

Whatever you do, don't block the address from delivery. You will get the same message in triplicate from other addresses and a load of other unsolicited e-mails.

[Nuclear Krusader]

There's a program called "Bounce Spam Mail" that sends a fake bounce message back to the spammers, making their targeted mailing list manager think your address was invalid. The program works in a lot of cases when you can't get to the real sender of the message.

You can download it from here:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...id,5402,00.asp

[azscary]

One mistake you are making is by replying. E-mail bots scan the internet looking for mailto: designations and store those for later spam. The reply to address is a fake, but the simple act of replying verifies that the email bot struck a valid email address. If you high lite the message WITHOUT OPENING IT and right click on it a window will come up. Select options or properties (depending on which e-mail program you use) and another window opens that shows the message header. Copy and paste all of this into an email addressed to your ISP abuse department such as abuse @ yourprovider.com and tell them it was unsolicited spam. If you use Outlook 2000 you can then assign it as adult content, after you turn on the adult content filter, and future mail from that address will be blocked. If you use Outlook Express 6.0 When you tell it to block the first time it will automatically block it from then on.

Hope this helps.

[dldz]

This is sort of related, you know those ads & crap they send you in your bills every month ? I asked them not to do it ..they say they can't help it. So I send them back with the payment and they write and ask me not to do that.. I say I can't help it LOL

[fatboyjim]

Superb

But related?

[Penguin]

dldz,

I did the same thing and got a nasty phone call telling me to stop sending the junk back. I gave them a piece of my mind, and told them that when they stop sending it to me I will stop sending it back to them.

[doctorgonzo]

I started doing the same thing, so far I haven't gotten any mean letters back, but I may be lucky in the future