Attached Link: http://www.bluesecurity.com/landing/consumers2.asp

Here's another way to fight back at spammers, using software called "Blue Frog". From PC World Magazine: "Blue Frog [software] analyzes the spam that goes into your Blue Frog e-mail accounts (and those of other community members) and identifies messages that are not compliant with... CAN-SPAM. It then identifies the form fields at the spammer's site (where you're asked to input credit card data, for example) and then uses the software you installed to direct your PC to insert in those fields a request to unsubscribe you from the site's mailing list. Blue Frog's software causes all of its connected users to submit the request/complaint simultaneously-- and repeatedly-- for a period of time. The influx of tens of thousands of requests exactly at the same time floods the spammers' Web site, causing it to become inoperable." Read about it here: [Wired Magazine](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.10/posts.html?pg=4) [PC World Magazine](http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,121841,00.asp) --John

Most 'computer people' frown upon these type of spam attack programs because they not only flood the spammer (yay), they inundate the ISPs and the internet in general (boo). I'm all for returning the love to spammers, but it would be better if it did not involve clogging the already clogged arteries of the internet. ;) What is really needed is a 'cluster bomb'. Something that sits on their direct ISP and generates a flood directed at their IP address, maybe using P2P or some other direct link so as to avoid civilian casualties.

Using unsubscribe links is a bad idea as it's likely to confirm that an email is "live".

There is also the possibility that the unsubcribe information is fake, so this tactic could cause problems for an innocent third party.

I would also advise against this. could they be trying to use their software clients in some kind of pay-per-click scam? I admit I'm not an expert.

My ploy is to reply feigning interest. With a few well chosen phrases I am able to infer that (a) I have lots of disposable income and (b) I'm not too bright. Once the fish is on the line its just a matter of playing the catch. Useful phrases include:-

"I'm not sure that I knew my great uncle that well and I'm saddened to hear of his fatal accident in West Africa, but yes I'll be happy to help you expedite his estate. Your offer of 15% however is hardly worth me getting out of bed for. I expect to have made at least that by the time the markets close tonight. Increase that to 25% and we can talk.

p.s. the caps lock key on your keyboard appears to be stuck.

At the very least I aim to make them waste half an hour of their lives writing a reply. :)

I have used Blue Frog before. It seems to work very well. It DOES, however, use your computer to help in it's DOS attack. Take that for what it is worth.

Quote - Most 'computer people' frown upon these type of spam attack programs because they not only flood the spammer (yay), they inundate the ISPs and the internet in general (boo).

I'll have to disagree with the "flood the spammer" portion of that statement. Nearly 100% of the time if you bounce an email it never reaches the party who sent it. My original ISP email address started to get some spam in it. Sometimes it was only a few a day, but often it was at least 10 a day. Someone suggested I use Mailwasher Pro to bounce the spam emails. I thought it was a great idea! WRONG! Once I started using Mailwasher Pro and bouncing the emails, it seemed that the spam increased! I used the program for almost 6 months and when I finally called my ISP asking for a new email address, I was getting 50 or more spam in that original email box. I still check my old address on the web once every couple of weeks in case I've missed giving my new address to important parties, and each time I check the webmail box it's filled to capacity with nothing but spam. A couple of techs at my ISP explained why these programs that bounce emails don't work and usually result in increased spam. I can't remember exactly what they said, but it had something to do with the fact that it often indicates that your email is alive and well. There really is no way to effectively stop email spam once it's started. Applying for a simple house utility like Hydro and providing your email address will get you on an email list and these lists are often sold and resold. I'm even finding that is happening among some of the Poser sites. I've gotten newsletters from Poser sites that I've never been to or signed up for. For example Eclipse Studios sent me an email telling me that they hired someone to set up a database for them and discovered that this person had added in hundreds of email addresses to their database and they knew that they didn't have that many subscribers so they were nice enough to go through the list and contact everyone.

From reading the article, the way this works is your real e-mail address is not used at all. Blue Frog sets up fake accounts, as bait. When it starts getting spam, your computer is used to hammer the spammer's web site. So it's more a public service than a personal spam filter.

Sounds like fun, but I'm not sure this is legal. A DDOS attack is a DDOS attack.

1. Yes, randymm77 is correct. These programs use fake email accounts to harvest for the attack on the spammer's email address.

2. Yes, Acadia, it is true that most spammers use fake/non-existent return email addresses. And this is another reason why programs like this won't work. They do, however, usually perform a verification first before launching the attack. I use Mailwasher on occassion, but the bouncer is disabled just for the reasons that you mentioned. Never reply in any form to spam (even if to give the spammer a migrane as in PhilC's strategy). Once the spammer knows that he/she has a valid email address, invite them in for dinner - they are your frequent guests forever!

3. Yes, this is the reason for my first statement. Many consider these anti-spam attack programs to be nothing more than DDOS attacks themselves.

Here's my take on how to stop (or reduce) spam. It is painful and it affects everybody, but it would affect spammers so greatly as to curb their demonic drive. Charge a small amount for every email (say $0.001 or even $0.0001). If you are emailing hundreds or thousands of people for real reasons, it will only cost a dollar here and there. But if you are a spammer sending out hundreds of thousands or millions a day, it will not be cost effective soon enough (say $100/day or more). And to avoid causing undue costliness to valid businesses and such, there could be a registry with verification for a greatly reduced cost for bulk emails. Let's face it, there is a Postal system in just about every country in the world. This is where internet mail may have to go. Hit the spammers where it's gonna hurt: in the wallet! Why? Because that is where they are hitting us. Spam is calculated to be nearly 60% of all email. We pay for that with every click on the keyboard while online.

Source
*C. How much spam is blocked or filtered by the ISPs?

The three major email service providers AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! have more than 200 million email account holders, making them an attractive target for spammers.

The spam problem has shown a tremendous spiral, according to figures provided by AOL (see chart below). �In a single 24-hour period in March 2003, America Online says it trashed a billion spam emails using its software filters. AOL said its members used report spam'' buttons on their email software 5.5 million times during the same period. AOL said it blocks an average of 28 junk emails per account, per day. Graham saidan extremely small fraction'' of the messages snagged in AOL's spam filters were legitimate ones. He declined to reveal any figures for that mail.�

Yahoo! offers comparable statistics, noting that it intercepts 1 billion spam messages a day.*

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 19:11

Actually, the absolute #1 way to stop spammers is to stop purchasing from them. As long as one person buys their $29.99 "generic Viagra", then the spammer has made money. But, if people stop buying, spammers will have no financial reason to continue sending out e-mails. --John

kuroyume0161, even spam filters don't always work. I have my ISP spam filter on and I still get spam in there. These people have found devious ways to get around most spam filters. I sometimes get emails in my mail box that contain someone else's name and email address entirely. It drives me crazy!!!!!!!!!!

Yahaoo have a new idea. They are going to sell your yahoo address to spammers, the spammers will have a special code so when it arrives, yahoo will automatically deliver it to your inbox and not the bulk folder. Nothing in the article says if you can block it or refuse it, but it does say Yahoo will 'carefully vet' all companys. There'll be no XXX or ads for enlargments etc etc. And where was this gem ? On Yahoos front page on their "in the news" panel. John and everyone else has suggested it are right,the only way is to use something like mailwasher. Previewing your mail then deleting the rubbish before d/loading and never buying from spammers.

I have a friend who gets a printout of no good credit card numbers and if he is bored, he just goes and inputs several of those into their fields with other fake data. If just a 1000 people did just 10 different accounts each time Paypal got pished or some other bank it would make that form of attack pretty useless!

What's the difference between deleting the spam mail in Mailwasher or deleting it from your in box? It doesn't matter where it is you still have to delete it manually.

are we talking about the same mailwasher here? th version I use bounces spam back with an adress not known message (same as my ISP's own address not known message), links to the Spam lists and deletes spam automatically. oh. and using it, my spam dropped to near zero in a week or so.. soo.. I'm kinda puzzled.

Attached Link: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124841,tk,dn022406X,00.asp

Acadia..."whats the difference" Mailwasher allows you to delete mails direct from the mail server before it hits your inbox. Its more secure, you can a delete emails with viruses [most avaerage about 50k and have titles like "your account info" so you know what they are] before it hits your inbox. Which is always safer. Plus you don't get HTML spam emails with popups or trackers which show your account is live. It's very easy to call an activex script via an HTML email and hijack your home page. khai - yep you can bounce in mailwasher. But only if your ISP allows it. Yahoo UK doesn't. PS: The link above discusses Yahoo's and AOL's "Goodmail CertifiedEmail" plans. This is NOT a good idea.

"Using unsubscribe links is a bad idea as it's likely to confirm that an email is "live"." Thats what I've always heard too.

"khai - yep you can bounce in mailwasher. But only if your ISP allows it. Yahoo UK doesn't." aaah well, I use Cogeco which does ;) I only have yahoo for yahoogroups, since yahoo is on every spamlist on the net and therefore blocked......

Attached Link: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/management/qt/avoidvirusts.htm

PS: *YAYYY!!!!! I remembered to copy before pressing "Post Reply"!!*

Quote - Acadia..."whats the difference"

Mailwasher allows you to delete mails direct from the mail server before it hits your inbox.

Its more secure, you can a delete emails with viruses [most avaerage about 50k and have titles like "your account info" so you know what they are] before it hits your inbox. Which is always safer.

How is it more secure? Virus come in the form of attachments. Unless I'm behind the times and there are new ways to destribute email viruses other than by attachment, I've never heard of a virus being transmitted to email any other way.

If you don't open the attachment you won't get the virus. If you know enough to delete that kind of email using Mailwasher, then you should know enough to hit "delete" if you saw that same email in your in box.

The same goes for emails that have links asking you to go and verify your account. If you use mailwasher and delete that email from the web, you should be smart enough to click "Delete" in your in box.

Just having an email delivered to your inbox doesn't mean anything unless you open the attachment, click a link or hit "reply".

Quote - Plus you don't get HTML spam emails with popups or trackers which show your account is live. It's very easy to call an activex script via an HTML email and hijack your home page.

I've had loads of email spam and I've never had a popup result from an email.

I also have ActiveX disabled. I don't know what it is, but when I got my first computer, my then b/f told me that I should always disable ActiveX. So I've always done that.

I've only had 3 computer viruses and all 3 happened the day I installed Windows 2000 on my desktop a few years ago. I connected to the internet to get my virus updates and as soon as I connected I was notified that I had some virus. I cleaned it and tried again, and BAM! Another virus immediately upon connecting to the internet. I cleaned that one too and logged on to get my updates and BAM! Same virus! I just kept up with my download then cleaned the virus again.

The key to staying virus free are:

1. Good antivirus software with updated signatures;

2. Firewall if you aren't behind a router (no need to have both as it's redundant);

3. Don't open any attachment unless you know whom it's from and you were expecting it.

4. If you receive email with an attachment from someone you don't know, delete it immediately.

5. If you send email with an attachment to someone, let them know you'll be sending it so they don't think it's a virus.

6. Don't click links in an email asking you to verify account information;

7. Insist that those you give your email address to exclude you from including you in their bulk mailings or bulk forward mailings.

Explain to people that forwarding and bulk mailing is a high risk activity and can result in a virus. Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their email addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across their computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.

1. In the event you get emails containing worms (and your antivirus should catch those), do what I do and send an email to every single person in your address book titled "PLEASE VIRUS SCAN YOUR COMPUTER BECAUSE YOU HAVE A VIRUS!" and tell them to send a new email (not to forward that one) to everyone in their address book asking them to do the same thing, and have each of them do the same thing etc.

2. If you have someone who "forgets" to exclude you from their forwards or bulk mailings, be blunt and tell them to delete you from their address book. I had to do that to someone the other day because I have asked them two or three times to not send me forward emails and they still "forget" and I end up getting sent one occasionally. All it takes is one!

There is a link attached that gives more tips. It talks about reading your email on the web instead of in your computer in box, but if you're savouy it shouldn't matter where you read your email.

Message edited on: 02/24/2006 23:55

Since I run my own mailserver, I just block the IP address of the spammer. PITB, but it works.

How can you do that? They keep changing addresses and domains etc, and they spoof the address. So you might block Joe today, but tomorrow Joe will send you new spam using a different email.

I use mailwasher and get hardly any spam, now.

If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express, you can activate a virus simply by having the view pane open. This makes sense; the view pane "reads" the first few lines of the email, and executes whatever code that entails. Which means that even with ActiveX off, you are vulnerable to Javascript onLoads and even XML and DHTML gadgets. And if you have an HTML reader activated to read your newsletters, you are vulnerable to scripted attacks when the HTML is opened, attachment or not. This is why I use Eudora (4.3.2, which isn't mucked up with MSCrap) and am switching over (once I get my filters rewritten) to Thunderbird. I also use Firefox exclusively, in spite of its CSS problems, with Opera available for spot checking pages and MSIE locked down by ZoneAlarm. This means that I don't see the cutesy bells and whistles that Poser vendors put in their emails to me. If I get something important-looking from a trusted source like Eovia, RDNA, or Amazon (and Eudora shows me the REAL URLs of links, so I can see where the latest PayPal phisher would like to lure me), I'll switch to HTML viewing to read it. Otherwise, they are out of luck; their ads go unread. And the HTML newsletters from new, less well-known sites never get read, which means I tend to forget about the sites. What I am saying is, if you want to reach people who keep their windows locked, then offer your promotional newsletters with a readable text option. Most vendors don't bother; the "Click here for a browser version" is convenience with no additional security... except that when I click, at least I go to Firefox and not Big Brother's Browser. M

They are going to sell your yahoo address to spammers, the spammers will have a special code so when it arrives, yahoo will automatically deliver it to your inbox and not the bulk folder. I suspect they may be doing this already. Why else are e-mail messages about "Geniuune ROlexx Watches" and "Generric V!agr1a" beging delivered to my inbox while the newsletters from Content Paradise go into my Bulk Folder? Does anyone really want messages about "generic V!gara" delivered to their inbox?? How many times do people have to click the "Spam" button to make Yahoo realize that these messages are spam. So, no, I don't think this "helps SpamGuard perform better". --John

"If you don't open the attachment you won't get the virus." Not quite. mickmca's absolutely right. Thats why you should delete any potentally nasty mail before it hits in your box.

I've used blue security for quite some time. There's something very satisfying seeing that they are reporting your drug spammer to interpol, or fake rolex scammers to the FBI... They actually send you announcements that so and so spammer has been reported, which I think is kinda cool.

I use MailWasher for years now and spam has been reduced to nearly non existent. How anyone keeps getting more spam mails because they are using MailWasher is beyond me.

"How anyone keeps getting more spam mails because they are using MailWasher is beyond me." Exactly. It's one the best anti-spam tools there is, simply because it's so easy to use.

BlueFrog doesn't target the spammers themselves, but targets the spammers' CUSTOMERS: the advertisers who are paying spammers to send out e-mail blasts ontheir behalf. After all, most spam is trying to sell you somehting. There must be a way for you to contact the merchant and buy the "something" otherwise, why advertise? So BlueFrog innundates the merchant's website with bogus orders and request to stop sending spam to BlueFrog members. Rather than trying to stop the spammers directly, BlueFrog is an attempt to drive them out of business by taking away their paychecks. It's not a DDOS in the classic sense, since it makes use of the facilities the merchant has supplied to enable commerce, rather than exploiting a flaw in the merchant's server software or the structure of the internet - Jimdoria ~@>@

I grabbed mail washer.. I don't see much of a difference yet though.

give it a week or so