How to kill the Junk mails - serious thread, use yer common sense to post here

[KidD01]

Junk mail...the ever annoying junk mail. Some of us mostly got flooded with these unwelcome emails. It's a royal pain to see your email suddenly out of quota. Now it's time to fight back to those junk mailers !

Here are some tips to get rid of those junk mail and perhaps shut down the junk mailer site for good.

First option : Manual Report & Complain to their ISP
Every email from yer ISP or online one like Yahoo, Hotmail etc got specific header. They rarely can be manipulated. Check on the sender IP address on the received from. Then you can do back track to their ISP. Some junk emails use drop off to fool you somehow. To reduce the length of this post you can check on how to examine the receive line here

To back track to their ISP and get contact email for SPAM abuse contact simply get the IP address from the junk mail and do search here or here. One of those links should provide the search and also come out with SPAM abuse contact email of the Spammer ISP

<EDIT>When filing a complaint to a spammer ISP simply forward the junk mail as attachment and rename your email subject from "Fw : Spam mail name here" to something like "Junk mail report". For Outlook Express users you can check on above links for reporting details.

Second option : Join the Anti Spam community
Now this is not a promo to certain anit Spam site. Since some junk mailers capable to mask their email header - even though you already use full header option on your online email option, some of anti SPAM organisation provide help to decipher the header and automatically give proper address where to report the SPAM.

Example :
SpamCop. They first ask you to register and provide one valid email address. The email address you submited was used by SpamCop to send feedback on the SPAM you have reported. The feedback got link which you need to clikc in order to complete the SPAM report to their ISP.

You can report SPAM from any of your online email address as Yahoo or Hotmail by forwarding them into an address given by SpamCop. But the feedback to report the SPAM to ISP go to the email address which you register to SpamCop.

Be careful when reporting the Spam via SpamCop service. Try to read the details before click on every report links.

Third option : Install Spam Filter Software on your PC
This option may work for your real ISP email addie and some online email provider who support POP forwarding. Some like Yahoo free-email type doesn't support this

If you have low HDD space or don't want to cause prob for your OS, try the first and second option.

Some Junkmail filter like SpamWeasel is good to get rid of this pesky emails.

There's also a news group in the net dedicated for Spam Fight

How they manage to get your email address ?
Some of them use porn site as bait, where you register you email addie. But there are some cowardly act which apparent. Some of them use fake IDs to join mailing list group. FYI some mailing list have feat where you can see member email address. This is the hole of security where they grab the email addresses and flood them with Spam I'm not making up stories on this one but as mod on a Yahoo mailing list I see some people simply sign in and then sign out after several minutes. The best part is their Yahoo ID is a fake one ! Just be careful when you sign up to anything

The next is progs with Spyware. These Spyware progs mostly ask you to provide email address. That's where they got your email addie. Try key in FAKE email addie IF YOU MUST use the prog anyway. Also clean the Spyware with Ad Aware But keep in mind some progs can not function if you clean their spyware.

One thing to keep in mind :
NEVER EVER CLICK ON REMOVE LINK PROVIDE IN A JUNK MAIL OR SEND A REMOVE EMAIL EVEN THEY PROVIDE ONE. NEVER TRUST JUNK MAIL SENDER EVEN THEIR SITE PUT UP ANTI SPAM SPOLICY OR SOMETHING SAYS THEY SUPPORT ANTI SPAM POLICY

Pls post your anti Spam info here, especially to minimise those annoying junk mails.

[fable]

Interesting thread, @Kid. I detest spam, but most spammers don't really care how they're viewed. The important thing to them is being viewed at all. Worst by far are the proxy all-in-one providers like AOL, where you have no control over who gets your address, and no way to see, much less remove, any cookies set by your Web travels.

There are anti-spam filter products out there as you mention, but typically I've found their rules too rigid: either they hit all my email at once, forcing me to undo some of the email they've eliminated, or they miss much of the spam. At this point, I just look for email titles, and delete all the junk before opening anything.

[KidD01]

Actually I come up with this thread after some chat with fellow SYMers who apparently got severe spam prob in their online email accounts.

I happen to obtain some of the spam fight knowledge during my vacation from SYM. I also got real prob with spam in my free online email addies. Some free email addie can boast that they have installed spam filter to make certain the spam mail goes to bulk mail folder instead of Inbox folder, yet some or in severe case most of junk mail end up in the inbox folder.

The idea of filter option on most free online email services are good but spammers can out smart the filtering by simply altering certain things in their junk mail i.e. "from" line, "subject" line etc. I happen to use most of the filter on my free online email addie and some spam still goes to my inbox.

Having fed up with deleting spams which obviously a royal pain, I dig as much info on spam fighting and anti spam movement around the net. That's where I get most of my spam killing knowledge.

I'm happy to inform that I manage to reduce the spams in my inbox from 30-40 mails to 4-6 mails after some spam reports which i've made to their ISPs. And the best news is the ISPs terminate their service to the spammers mostly 2-3 work days after they receive my complaint.

<EDIT>FYI a citizen of California once filed a lawsuit to a junk-emailer company.

Taken from numerous site :

Quote:

The US Federal Trade Comission monitors the spam situation on behalf of the US government and has asked that you please forward every spam you get to: uce@ftc.gov US Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin: "[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands." Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court "Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."

[VoodooDali]

I use an excellent program (it's freeware, I believe) called Spam PI (Private Investigator) - it is very effective at uncovering the origin of masked spam, so you know who to complain to, and will automatically generate an email to them. However, that being said, I've found that the ISP's simply don't care and their abuse teams have never tried to deal with these companies. Some free email is worse than others. Hotmail has the most spam by far, but I seldom received spam on my yahoo address.

[Xandax]

Am currently looking into: http://www.mailwasher.net/
It should be a program that allows you to identify spam mail on your server and will bounce the mail back to sender with a message that the recipient doesn't exist.

I'll test it out to see how effective it is.

[Azmodan]

hmmmmm.... i never really get junk mail.... for me it just helped to get adaware to remove all the stupid spyware. And sking not to get mailed every time someone posted in all the stupid yahoo groups im a member of