posted on April 15, 2003 04:18:05 AM new
I just switched internet providers (my old provider is going out of business in two weeks) and set up my new business mailbox. I went to Paypal, Ebay, and Vendio and changed my email address. I did not use this address anywhere else, nor forward it to any customers yet, nor anyone else. The name is not used anywhere else on the net yet.
Within two hours, I had my first spam for human growth hormone. That means either an employee at Vendio, Ebay, Paypal, or I guess possibly Earthlink violated the privacy policy and is feeding addresses to spammers or is the spammer themselves.
No, I did not include my email addy in my Vendio profile that can be veiwed, for that very reason.
I thought I might get at least a few weeks without receiving any. So much for privacy policies! Sigh!
Patty
[ edited by meadowlark on Apr 15, 2003 04:19 AM ]
I know the feeling all to well. When I switched service providers I thought "Yea! No more spam." Wrong! I even get sex site notices through my windows messanger. They just pop up right in the middle of typing sometimes. No matter how many times you click on the Remove link, you are somehow never removed.
posted on April 15, 2003 06:52:44 AM new
I started using MailWasher a few weeks ago and the spam has dropped dramatically. This fantastic program is also free...
posted on April 15, 2003 07:55:36 AM new
"Remove" links are almost always a trap to catch the unwary. Rarely, if ever, are they used for any purpose except to confirm that the email address is in fact being read by a live person (making it more valuable to the spam outfit in the future.)
The only time I ever use remove links is when 1) I actually signed up for something in the past and no longer wish to receive it or 2) The email comes directly from the company referenced in the email AND the company is a reputable firm. (You have to know how to decipher email headers to figure this out. Many spam messages you get that refer to reputable companies are actually sent out by spam-faced jerks scamming for referral credit.)
posted on April 15, 2003 08:12:56 AM new
I hear what you are saying,
but here's the thing:
I had not emailed ABSOLUTELY ANYONE yet from this account, except Ebay and Paypal if it was required for confirmation that I had changed my email address. I simply went to each site and changed my email address on file. And I went to my account here at Vendio and updated my account info. An employee in one of the companies is spamming me or is harvesting addresses for sale. The spam arrive after no other activity occurred under that address, and within two hours of the above.
I know very well about not responding to "remove" instructions. It just leads to more spam.
I have not signed up anywhere else with this email address.
The reason I won't use mailwasher is that I heard one must disable one's virus software to use it. I use both a firewall and virus program that are constatntly running and I'm not willing to turn them off.
posted on April 15, 2003 08:18:53 AM new
Meadowlark, sorry to tell you it is Earthlink and if you use MSN groups that is even worse than Earthlink for sending unsolicited mail.
We use Yahoo web mail for most of our important mail and they have a spam blocker that is very effective. Also you can report the spammers to Yahoo and they block it from all the mailboxes. I have not received a single spam email for over two years in my inbox. The junk mailbox gets about 15 per day and those are just deleted in mass.
Also you should check your spam mail to see if it addressed directly to you. Much of the junk mail is sent by robots that are able to send to all mailboxes without the addressee's name on it.
If you use a email address for your Ebay auction ID, robots harvest those addresses also for spam. I haven't seen any evidence that PayPal or Vendio are sending spam.
We recently were hit by the Backdoor Litmus 2 virus that cleaned out all our data and it was attached to an Earthlink email from one of our Ebay customers. The nasty little bugger cost us $90. plus three lost days of work and it was three days before tax day.
Yahoo seems to be the safest email as they are very careful about screening attachments. A lot of our bulk mail has been prescreened for virus attachments and those emails come in blank. I would highly recommend them even if you are connectly to the internet through Earthlink like we do. Don't use Outlook Express email as that can also be a problem and you will never get rid of the spammers.
posted on April 15, 2003 08:27:56 AM new
Patty - I would say it has to be earthlink. I have three email accounts that are linked only to ebay, Paypal and Vendio/AWorks (depending on the account). Of my 6 email accounts - they are the only ones that get no spam. None. I would do anything to be able to say that about my business account which aquires about 30 pieces of spam a day.
posted on April 15, 2003 08:38:39 AM new
My mail box is full of junk mail and I never open it. If I don't recognize the subject it is gone. If I delete something important so what. Some come directly to me but lots come in bulk. where they use my numbers and preceed the numbers with letters so it goes to anyone with addresses like that. I only use one email address and that is my main one. Porno from the UK on a Yahoo address if far the worse and most have a virus attached to it. I have a hotmai address and they have a spam blocker where they delete the spam. I get about 4 emails a month in that one but the junk is outrageous and that is dumped every week. I never see that. Earthlink is the problem not eBay, PayPal or Vendio.
posted on April 15, 2003 08:59:17 AM new
You don't even really have to blame it on Earthlink - spammers now use programs that enter all combinations of letters and numbers as email addresses and flood them out to the big providers, assuming that servers will bounce back the bad addresses. They may have just happened to hit Earthlink the day you created the new account.
As an example, you could have signed up as coolpatty @earthlink.net ... and you would have ended up right between coolpattx @earthlink.net and coolpattz @earthlink.net.
Hotmail recently had their servers go down under the weight of a mass spam "dictionary attack." (Here's a Wired story about it.)
The unfortunate thing is that because spammers change IP addresses and other info so rapidly, the filters are always going after a moving target. Along the way, they're filtering out valid email. More than once, my mom's email to me has ended up in Yahoo's bulk email folder, along with replies to a question I sent to Sephora customer service. I always flick my eyes over the bulk folder before I dump it in the trash.
posted on April 15, 2003 09:31:06 AM new
What really burns me up is that ultimately we pay for that spam. The providers are inundated with it and pass the cost on to us.
posted on April 15, 2003 09:36:54 AM new
Look into your states laws on spam. In many states now you are able to sue the sender. The law being discussed or recentl passed in California has a $500 limit so it is a small claims thing, simple and easy, as more companies get inundated with these suits from all over the country they will stop sending spam. Rather than sit back and complain and ignore, take a proactive stance
posted on April 15, 2003 10:05:40 AM new
I have an email address that I never use. I registered it with ebay & AW. I open it up about once a month & clean out the spam. I opened it over the weekend & it had 186 spam emails. With the new MSN8 almost all of the spam is dumped into a "junk mail" folder. misingognito is right, The spamers take a word & the program does the rest. i.e sanmar etc. etc. They will do this with each ISP & run thousands of emails almost instantly.
posted on April 15, 2003 10:28:28 AM newpatty One more thing ...
When my old ISP went very abruptly out of business and took the address I'd had since 1994, I got stuck with a real mess.
ANY places where you are registered with the old address, you should update with a new one (even if it's not going to be the main address you use) if you ever plan to do business with them again. Many places require you to confirm a change of email address through an email sent to your old address or you have create an entirely new account. I got to most of the accounts in the 48 hours' warning I had, but I forgot the account that hosts my (currently parked, but someday hopefully active) business website and the site I used to prepare my taxes last year! Fortunately I had enough printed documentation to get back into both accounts, but it took several phone calls and a bit of effort on my part to prove I was who I said I was.
posted on April 15, 2003 12:21:50 PM new
Greengate, you said: Much of the junk mail is sent by robots that are able to send to all mailboxes without the addressee's name on it.
I didn't realize that. That makes more sense.
And you said: ...Yahoo...have not received a single spam email for over two years in my inbox.
But does it treat any of your good mail accidentally as junk?
And you said: Don't use Outlook Express email as that can also be a problem and you will never get rid of the spammers.
I've been using Outlook Express for about forever, and am reluctant to change. What further details can you give me? I am updating McAfee as soon as new virus definitions are released. I get emails daily that are blank and probably contain viruses but delete and block all.
---------------------------
Libra 63, you said:
I have a hotmail address and they have a spam blocker where they delete the spam.
I have a hotmail account, but I guess I hadn't seen that option and must wade through spam there as well. By the way, I have an old hotmail account that will let me block unlimited numbers of senders. All newer hotmail accounts (starting some time in 2002?) will only let you block 200 senders max.
------------
Neon, I had decided you were right about it being Earthlink until I read Msincognito's post. That makes complete sense. I figured that the programs running the made-up email addresses would only pick known words. One word in my email address is misspelled on purpose. I see now.
---------------
Msincognito,
Yeah, I figured that out by the time the installer arrived. I've been hours at doing just that all weekend and part of Monday. I still have about 100 sites to visit to change my data for personal and business! Everyone from Eckerds to the IRS and beyond.
Get this; I have two ISPs right now. I have a DSL cable(old) and a cable modem(new). To email from my old address to a site to submit a change of email address, I have to plug in the DSL cable in the ethernet card slot. To then email from my new email addresses to confirm that yes, I did want to subscribe now from the new address, I must switch back to the new cable modem.
This is gonna take a few days!!!!
Bummer!
My old provider will go out of business on April 30th, but I wouldn't be surprised if they pull the plug before then, so I'm scrambling.
So if I seem to disappear from time to time, you know what I'm doing. I've already got my 6 new email boxes set up and transferred my archived files in to the new accounts and handled the emial addy change at the few most highly critical accounts. Now, I'm just notifying all the rest, one after another.
posted on April 15, 2003 01:00:55 PM new
::Neon, I had decided you were right about it being Earthlink until I read Msincognito's post. That makes complete sense. I figured that the programs running the made-up email addresses would only pick known words. One word in my email address is misspelled on purpose. I see now. ::
The only problem I see with the theory is that like I said, I have three email accounts which recieve zero spam. One is very common words, all correctly spelled, one is spanish, one is this name followed by two initials. None of them get hit. Granted my emails accounts are thru AOL but my company account is getting slammed and its an AOL account too. My three non ebay mail acounts currently have emassed spam totals of 27, 8, and 65 pieces of spam since they were emptied Saturday...
posted on April 15, 2003 02:53:20 PM new
reddfoxx: Thanks for the link & info on Norton. I also have A/V & Internet Security. Glad to hear that they are compatible.
posted on April 16, 2003 09:16:21 AM new
"Yahoo...have not received a single spam email for over two years in my inbox.
But does it treat any of your good mail accidentally as junk?"
Patty,
Yes, Yahoo will on occassion place a good email into the bulk mail box. They have a system that allows you to identify that email as "not Junk Mail" so that if the sender mails you again it goes into the regular inbox. Works the same way in reverse for bulk mail. You can do a visual scan of the bulk mail before you delete the junk in mass.
Greengate wrote
"Outlook Express email as that can also be a problem and you will never get rid of the spammers."
Patty.
Here's the issue with Outlook Express. Any email with a virus attachment is now sitting on "your computer". It could sit there until activated by some action or code. If you use Earthlink "Web mail" you have the option to delete email from unknown users without opening the mail. The email with the virus attachment is on the Earthlink server. Yahoo is a better bet however since Earthlink Web mail doesn't sort the mail. Their virus screening is dismal.
The other issue I feel is that hackers are more likely to hit mass programs they are familiar with such as those from Microsoft. If you don't have a firewall there is not much to keep a hacker from getting in via one of your programs such as Outlook if you leave the computer unattended for awhile. Recently in a conversation with Symantec Tech support I was told that a virus can also be picked up when you visit an unknown website. Yikes, I was searching the web on sites in China and Bangcok, Singapore etc. for Betta Splendens and sure enough I picked up a virus even with Norton Anti Virus in service.
I was notified immediatly that we had a virus and I did the worst thing in a panic. I shut down Windows which moves the virus from the Temp file, where it could be eliminated, to the Winn file where it launches and acts a Trojan horse. All my business files lost. Its a good reminder to back up all your files on a regular basis on a floppy or zip drive.
Firewalls will only protect your computer from hackers. They do not protect you from virus attachments on emails. Your computer sends out its location on the web when it is not active and that is how hackers locate your PC and can get in and delete and move your files just for fun. Most hackers however are more interested in the servers rather than individual PC's. Just make it a practice not to be inactive when online and don't leave the computer for long periods of time still connected to the net.
If you update with a firewall make sure it is compatible with your operating system. It's not really necessary if you remember not to let your computer go inactive while on the net.
Mailwashers I haven't tried and not sure how effective they are.
posted on April 16, 2003 01:34:51 PM new
I use AOL as my primary email address and get spam like everyone else...i just go down the list of incoming mail and delete all of it without opening...you can tell by the subject whether its something real or spam. I never open attachments any more unless i know the person sending and half the time I don't open those unless i have to..i've been hit twice by the trojan horse viruses and was able to get rid of one and the other is residing "in quarantine" so I am trying to be EXTRA cautious...scary about picking up a virus from a web site though..how does it attach itself to your pc?
posted on April 16, 2003 10:54:07 PM new
If I do not recognize the sender, I DO NOT OPEN the email, I delete it, period. Like my answering machine handlin all my calls, those people that need to get ahold of me know how to do it.
Mailwasher sounds great, and I have Norton internet security as well as the norton suite. I will try it since it sounds like they work together ok.
Cheryl
