General gripe regarding email spam...

[sisco50]

Here it is Sunday morning and I am spending time deleting email spam. Most of it (80%) is from clowns trying to sell various forms of ED products/pills. If I were in need of these products I think I would be seeing a doctor and getting a Rx rather than buying from someone on the net that does not speak english and can not put a sentence together without misspelling every other word. lol

Anyway, back to my gripe regarding email spam. During the course of a week I delete 500 to 600 emails. I have in the past tried to unsubscribe to all of the spam that offered a link. Funny thing about that is that as soon as I would unsubscribe one, I started receiving 10 to 12 more in it's place. So from about 40 per week I now get over 500. Has anyone else had this experience? It almost seems as if by unsubscribing, I am verifying that my email addy is valid and I am open to more of the same from others. :( I am now getting 4 and 5 of the exact same email but from a different email addy. I guess this tells me that my addy is on a list being sold all over the place as a valid email addy, never mind that I have never inquired nor ordered anything from any of these people spamming me. :(

Does anyone have a cure for this disease? Anyone else have this problem?

[avago181]

Same problem. I now have a seperate e-mail addy, which i only give to friends and companies that won't spam. I get about 400 spam e-mails a week in my old account.

[Ferret]

Sisco, never unsubscribe from spammers
Your diagnosis is correct.....

You should only unsubscribe from legitimate
companies that you signed up for

I don't have a spam problem, I only get a few a day
and never see them
Very rarely I have to mark a few as spam
Get a gmail account as they have a very good spam
filter using bayesian logic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_spam_filtering)
Never delete spam in gmail....
Always mark it as spam as you are training the filter
to correctly score spam for deletion
Also mark any good emails as not spam that get put
in the spam box
You will get a very high accuracy rate

Also set up an email address to use with dubious
companies so you don't contaminate your good
email addresses
For the real spammy ones use www.mailinator.com
but some places won't let you use this now

[avago181]

I use Gmail for my primary e-mail, it is very good.

[sisco50]

Same problem. I now have a seperate e-mail addy, which i only give to friends and companies that won't spam. I get about 400 spam e-mails a week in my old account.

Yes, good idea. I have 2 others now myself but would like to salvage and keep the 12 year old addy as that is the one I use for my business. It can be done ofcourse but will most likely cripple the business for a while. Along with having to replace all of the business cards, letterhead, envelopes, etc. The worst part would be in dealing with a large project in midstream as the disruption could be catastrophic to our relationship with our clients and vendors both. Changing horses in midstream is usually not a good idea.

[sisco50]

Ferret,

Thanks for the info. I will start to look into this today. My gmail account is not the one I am having a problem with. It does have some good features and I like it.

[sisco50]

I use Gmail for my primary e-mail, it is very good.

Yes, I am having very good luck in using gmail for a personal email account. I also use Safe-Mail.net and am liking that one as well.

[Webwatch]

Same problem here.
I think Ferrets solution is a good one, but I also have a business e-mail addy (Not online Bizops though) which gets about 50-100 spam messages a day.

I can't take the risk of blocking any customers e-mails so I just live with it for now.

I agree that unsubscribing just shows the spammers that they have a live addy and will generate even more spam to it.

I get so many sexual enhancement spam that I once thought my wife was trying to tell me something, turns out when I asked her that she was, although she admitted to never using spam e-mails.

[sisco50]

Same problem here.
I think Ferrets solution is a good one, but I also have a business e-mail addy (Not online Bizops though) which gets about 50-100 spam messages a day.

I can't take the risk of blocking any customers e-mails so I just live with it for now.

I agree that unsubscribing just shows the spammers that they have a live addy and will generate even more spam to it.

I get so many sexual enhancement spam that I once thought my wife was trying to tell me something, turns out when I asked her that she was, although she admitted to never using spam e-mails.

Exactly the same problem with not wanting to chance blocking clients emails in the middle of a project. But maybe in between projects when the time comes. :)

[MatrixWatch]

This is a good topic, and I'm moving it to our new "Spam" discussion sub-forum within the Email Fraud (http://matrixwatch.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=105) folder.

[mercinary]

The free email sites (hotmail, yahoo, etc) have pretty good spam detectors set up. They allow you to report spam also, which makes the system continuously learn what is and is not spam.

-Merc

[concerned]

Does anyone have a cure for this disease? Anyone else have this problem?

Sorry Sisco

You know me well, so you know I have to be a blunt pain in the rear right now.

I was looking at your old posts, and saw that when you first came here, you were signing up for a mess of free ipod/computer/etc sites. You might have been in a matrix, but couldn't remember, and didn't go thru too many of your old posts.

Well, if you used your main email address, you can thank yourself for signing up for those sites.

Even if you didn't this is a good point to make anyway in this thread. Once you leave your email address at ANY site on the internet, you don't know what they are going to do with it. It doesn't matter what the site is, but especially when you fall for these free sites, how do you think they are going to do what they promised for free? They need revenue, and they will sell anything they have to get the revenue, so if the email address you are refering to was used for all those programs, you can be assured to know where some of the spam is coming from.

[sisco50]

Sorry Sisco

You know me well, so you know I have to be a blunt pain in the rear right now.

I was looking at your old posts, and saw that when you first came here, you were signing up for a mess of free ipod/computer/etc sites. You might have been in a matrix, but couldn't remember, and didn't go thru too many of your old posts.

Well, if you used your main email address, you can thank yourself for signing up for those sites.

Even if you didn't this is a good point to make anyway in this thread. Once you leave your email address at ANY site on the internet, you don't know what they are going to do with it. It doesn't matter what the site is, but especially when you fall for these free sites, how do you think they are going to do what they promised for free? They need revenue, and they will sell anything they have to get the revenue, so if the email address you are refering to was used for all those programs, you can be assured to know where some of the spam is coming from.

Good point. When I first found MW it was a result of being involved in the old GotMatrix mess. I never signed up for a free ipod that I can remember but did show up at a few sites to see what they were about. I am not in the habit of signing up for anything at sites I know nothing about but do have accounts at places like Amazon.com. Legitimate businesses.

Anyway, my problem is not with scam spam as that is only about 5% of my total per day. My problem is mainly the 80% of spam coming from pharmacys trying to sell me viagra and everything else under the sun by way of ED products. I do know that I have never signed up at any of those sites because I have never heard of them and have never been there. This problem with the foreign pharmacys is failry recent and I can not see a real tie in with the GotMatrix site of four years ago. Likewise, I can't really see a legit business like Amazon.com giving out my email addy.

Bottom line is that what concerned says is good advice. Don't sign up for anything on the net and maybe you won't have this problem. :(

[concerned]

This problem with the foreign pharmacys is failry recent and I can not see a real tie in with the GotMatrix site of four years ago.

I know this is a far stretch, but the only way this could happen is if Greg just decided to sell his email lists, which is possible, but likely not probable in this case. Either way, this is one place where this could happen, and it wouldn't matter that foreign phamacys aren't related to matrix electronics. All they need is a list of addresses.

Likewise, I can't really see a legit business like Amazon.com giving out my email addy.

True on this. There are some legit companies that won't do this cause they have a reputation to hold, as well as making sure they get return business. Anyway, the lesson I am talking about like Sisco said is still good advice. If they aren't a well established place with a lot to lose by selling your email address, then you probably don't want to give them your email address, or do like I do, and use a free hotmail account to use at those sites that you expect the worse from.

[concerned]

I never signed up for a free ipod that I can remember but did show up at a few sites to see what they were about.

By the way, I looked at maybe your first 15-20 posts. This post is what stuck out.

http://www.matrixwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15585#post15585

You said, I joined in July originally, and the number of days you are looking for is 54 trading days I believe. Later.

I couldn't tell what you were refering to, but that's where I drew from for that post. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post from several years ago.

[Webwatch]

Aren't there also e-mail harvesting scripts that can get e-mail addys from website contact us pages and add them to a spam database.

A company I had dealings with in the past tested one of these opt in e-mail address lists you can buy and found them at best totally useless and at worst, well totally useless.

[sisco50]

By the way, I looked at maybe your first 15-20 posts. This post is what stuck out.

http://www.matrixwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15585#post15585

You said,

I couldn't tell what you were refering to, but that's where I drew from for that post. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post from several years ago.

Yes, I remember that quite well. The discussion was related to learning about a HYIP site by joining to get info as to how it operated. A very valuable lesson and well worth the time and effort invested.

Back to email spam. Regardless of how it came about, the question is how to recover at this point. "Does anyone have a cure for this disease?" Is there a way to eliminate this spam short of dropping the email account and opening a new one? I have had this one since I started the business in 1995.

[concerned]

"Does anyone have a cure for this disease?" Is there a way to eliminate this spam short of dropping the email account and opening a new one? I have had this one since I started the business in 1995.

I think if I had that cure, I would be a millionaire. In either case, there doesn't seem to be an easy answer. Are you using any anti-spam software? If so, can you list it here? There are tons of different ways to do this, depending on the way your email is setup.

[sisco50]

I think if I had that cure, I would be a millionaire. In either case, there doesn't seem to be an easy answer. Are you using any anti-spam software? If so, can you list it here? There are tons of different ways to do this, depending on the way your email is setup.

I am using Micrsoft Outlook with Junk Mail Options, Level of protection: HIGH.
Am afraid to use anything more severe as I may miss client and vendor emails while trying to filter spam. Would not be good.

It is starting to look like I am stuck for the time being. Living with this situation is not impossible but is quite the pain. :(

[concerned]

I would not ever recomend this product for a company, because I used it and it is crap in a work environment, because it takes too much time for IT staff to support for users, but for personal use, and for your need, it might be ok. It is called spambayes. It is a free download to use with Outlook.

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

The bad thing about it is it really doesn't block spam, but it is more advanced than the Junk Mail Options. In essence, it places the spam in different folders. One bad thing is all the spam ends up in your inbox. Then when you open your inbox, it scans and moves the spam. Sometimes you have to wait about 5 minutes to sort all the spam, if you get too much in your inbox. The good thing it that it is trainable. When legit emails are sent to spam, you just tell it it isn't spam, and the software learns. Like I said, it's not the greatest, but probably better than you have, and allows you to have the requirement to not accidently lose a legit email, because you can find them in the spam folder. The nice thing is you can just quickly scan the spam folders and know that most if not all is spam.

[sisco50]

I would not ever recomend this product for a company, because I used it and it is crap in a work environment, because it takes too much time for IT staff to support for users, but for personal use, and for your need, it might be ok. It is called spambayes. It is a free download to use with Outlook.

http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

The bad thing about it is it really doesn't block spam, but it is more advanced than the Junk Mail Options. In essence, it places the spam in different folders. One bad thing is all the spam ends up in your inbox. Then when you open your inbox, it scans and moves the spam. Sometimes you have to wait about 5 minutes to sort all the spam, if you get too much in your inbox. The good thing it that it is trainable. When legit emails are sent to spam, you just tell it it isn't spam, and the software learns. Like I said, it's not the greatest, but probably better than you have, and allows you to have the requirement to not accidently lose a legit email, because you can find them in the spam folder. The nice thing is you can just quickly scan the spam folders and know that most if not all is spam.

Thanks. Going to give it a try on my laptop as a test. Then load it on the desktop if it works out. :)