Home › Forums › Email Tips › Examples of spam email and ways to get rid of them?
This topic contains 16 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by DSTM 9 years, 11 months ago.
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March 6, 2009 at 12:06 am #28585
Hi guysI have just got this new email address with a different company and now I am getting loads and loads and loads of spam emails.. I have never seen anything like it before...Even the email addresses I freely pass around do not have this much spam to them. No way... It just doesn't happen!!!Anyway I am collecting the emails in Outlook express so I have set some message rules to combat the problem. I have found that it is no good to just simply block the email address as this does not stop them. One thing I did notice is that alot of these Spam emails have these words in them. DEAR< DEAREST< DEAR ONE< DEAR FRIEND< BANK ACCOUNT<So I set a message rule to delete a message if it has these words in it... And yes I have thought about it and no one I know sends me an email with dear in it...Here is How to set message rules just in case you don't know.Now this is all fine to stop the majority of the spam, but what about this email below? How can I stop spam like this? ...not mentioning any common words...AAAHHHFrom Mr. Alan Jacobs Contacting You I am Mr. Alan Jacobs From Harlsden, North West London, here in England. I work for Natwest Bank Corporation London. I am writing you from my office that will be of an imense benefit to both of us. In my department,being the assistant manager (Greater London Regional Office, I discovered an abandoned sum £15 million GBP (Fifteen Million Great British Pounds) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers Late Mr.Thompson Morrison American citizen who unfortunately lost his life in the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed on January 31 2000, including his wife and only daughter. The choice of contacting you is aroused from the geograpgical nature of where you live, particularly due to the sensivity of the transaction and the confidentiality herein. Now our bank has been waiting for any of the relatives to come-up for the claim but nobody has done that. I personally has been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for 2 years now, I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin/Will Beneficiary to the deceased so that the proceeds of this account valued at 15 Million Pounds can be paid to you. This will be disbursed or shared in these percentages,60% to me and 40% to you. I have secured all necessary legal documents thatcan be used to back up this claim we are making. All i need is to fillin your names to the documents and legalise it in the court here to prove you as the legitimate beneficiary. All I require now is your honest Co-operation, Confidentiality and Trust to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee you that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Please, provide me the following details via my private email box (alanjacobs02@live.co.uk) as we have 7 days to run it through. This is very very URGENT PLEASE. 1. Full Name 2. YourTelephone Number 3. Your Contact Address. Having gone through a methodical search, I decided to contact you hoping that you will find this proposal interesting.Please on your confirmation of this message and indicating your interest will furnish you with more information. Endeavor to let me know your decision rather than keep me waiting. Regards,Mr. Alan Jacobs
March 6, 2009 at 3:02 am #31316i'm currently getting 40 spam replies daily on the opinion pages on my website lol.. fun isnt it?
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 6, 2009 at 3:54 am #31317If you have a wordpress comment system you can get a plugin called Akismet and it does a fantastic job. I have one on one of my websites because I was going crazy…Now I am going crazy with this new email address...It is my forum address...****@pctipforum.com
March 6, 2009 at 6:21 am #31318thanx mitz.. i have installed Akismet, I'll keep you posted on how well it works 🙂
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 3:58 am #31319On my website, I use WordPress for the opinion pages, to allow people to post comments on each individual post. I'd developed in the last week or so a major problem with spam, receiving up to 100 spam comments daily.On Mitz's advice, I installed a plugin for WordPress called Akismet. That was 2 days ago.Since installing Akismet, I have received 192 spam comments.. but not one of them got through to be published. Awesome! Thanks Mitz...
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 6:16 am #31320But what about my problem… Outlook is not even blocking the emails… Does anyone know of a spam blocker that can be added into outlook? I will have to change my name…LOL
March 8, 2009 at 7:18 am #31321I have used Mailwasher for ages,Mitz,and find it helps.The good part,it's free.LOL.http://www.mailwasher.net/
March 8, 2009 at 10:29 am #31322Another good one is Spamfighter. I personally don't use Outlook, but I know people who do use Outlook with Spamfighter.Spamfighter also works with other email clients such as Thunderbird etc.http://www.spamfighter.com/functions/download.asp It doesn't test just on keywords but uses multiple methods of detecting spam. The publishers are a microsoft partner, and involved in Bill Gates famous commitment a couple years back to 'rid the world of spam'. It combine blacklists, whitelists, and various detection methods, and those friends that I have who are using it tell me it almost immediately blocks about 95% of spam, and can be trained to the point where it blocks almost everything.Its totally free for personal use, all they do is add a small advert at the bottom of your emails, not unlike the 'scanned by avg' blurb you would get when you use avg to virus check emails.
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 11:24 am #31323If you aren't a person such as Mitz, who must necessarily accept emails from people she doesn't know, due to the forum and her pc help websites, there is one totally effective way to block ALL spam.Its called a whitelist. Obviously its the opposite of a blacklist. A blacklist will be a list of addresses from whom you will accept no emails. These aren't totally effective of course, as you don't have the address of every person or bot that is going to send you email. Most spammers use thousands of different addresses making blacklists next to useless. Of course, if you just want to block a particular address, like a spammer that consistently uses the same address, or a vitriolic ex-partner.. a blacklist works just fine.A whitelist basically only allows reciept of emails from those people who are in your address book. NO other emails will get through. This is the ONLY way to absolutely guarantee that you won't recieve any spam in your inbox.This too has its disadvantages though. If you want to recieve email from someone you haven't had in your address book, they'll need to let you know their address, and that they intend to send you an email, so you can add them to your address book before they can send you an email. If your existing
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 11:41 am #31324Spamfighter is not free,that I can see,DAK. 🙂
March 8, 2009 at 1:21 pm #31325There are 2 levels of spamfighter. When downloading spamfighter, you will download a free trial of Spamfighter Pro. It's a 30 day trial.At the expiry of the 30 day trial, you'll be given the opportunity to pay for Spamfighter Pro. If you decline, the software will be automatically downgraded to the less well featured Spamfighter Standard.The friends I have who use this software are using the Standard version and swear by it. As I have said, I don't use Outlook, and my Kaspersky Internet Security suite is also a very effective spam tool, so I haven't had cause to add this tool to my Thunderbird and try it out for myself.I have no reason to doubt my friends evaluation of it though, they are both very experienced users.
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 1:30 pm #31326I uninstalled Mailwasher,just to try Spamfighter.Got a shock, when I discoved 30 day free Trial. I have installed it, but didnt want to set it up, till I found out what happens after the free trial.If it continues like you say,will definately set it up.White papers seems the best way to go as I can copy all my Friends Email addresses,and dam the rest.Thanks DAK. 🙂
March 8, 2009 at 1:33 pm #31327for more info on this, try this linkhttp://www.spamfighter.com/FAQ_Payment_paymentinstructions.aspYou're welcome 🙂
Mitz from Tips4pc
March 8, 2009 at 8:29 pm #31328Might give this a go. I went to my email server and enabled spam filtering and now they send me the spam email as an attachment with the header SPAM on it. It is still very annoying though… I will also try this program. Sounds good.
March 10, 2009 at 6:52 am #31329Which one do you think is the best DSTM?? Have you tried both now?
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