Members LiveMusic Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 For the past couple of months, my Yahoo email has been getting several of these each day. Between 10 and 20. These emails are always from a personal name, although, sometimes, the names are a bit odd. Examples... Mortimer CrumHetty BlankenshipSiegried Lowery Subjects: prose blemishedraspberry receptacleevidence If you look at these, they contain NO TEXT. The entire email will be an image. And they are promoting stocks to buy. Since they are an image, I don't know how spam detectors could catch them. I also note that these spammers are using what appear to be legitimate, EXPIRED domains. Like if you had a domain that expired, say, JoeSchmoe.com, these spammers buy these domains. I assume they do it because it costs so little to buy a domain and when they get caught spamming, no big deal. Plus, you might try to buy it back and they'll try to extort big bucks out of you. Any idea how to combat this type of spam? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nursers Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 You might as well ask how to cure cancer.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members franknputer Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 I doubt they buy the domains - more likely, they spoof them, i.e. make it appear they are coming from a legitimate domain, when it's actually being routed from somewhere overseas. I get a ton of returns from one of our domains that's being spoofed - mostly with the same type of thing, bogus stock offers - but in reality they all come from various places around the world. Frankly, I don't have a clue about any way to stop it, & it kinda pisses me off, but there you go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 4, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 Originally posted by LiveMusic For the past couple of months, my Yahoo email has been getting several of these each day. Between 10 and 20.Subjects:prose blemishedraspberry receptacleevidenceAny idea how to combat this type of spam? They use words like that in an attempt to get past spam filters that toss messages with obvious spam subjects. Since you're using Yahoo mail, if you haven't set up a Bulk mailbox, do so. 95% of those will go in there. At least that's what I've found with mine. You can set an option that immediately deletes anything that goes to your Bulk mailbox, but every once in a while something legitimate gets in there. It takes only a couple of seconds to look through it to see if there's anything legitimate in there, and then one click deletes it all. I think that Yahoo does a very good job of managing spam. You can't avoid it, but there are ways that make it easier to ignore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members techristian Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 What is worse than NO WORDS in a spam message.....GIBBERISH in a spam message. Some of these that I have received have nothing but a bunch of unrelated words !!! I can't even figure out the motivation for such a thing. Dan http://teachmedrums.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 The solution is pretty obvious, although computationally intensive... Apply optical character recognition technology to email graphic attachments, and auto-delete based on the same SPAM filters now in use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BLAblablah Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 Originally posted by techristian What is worse than NO WORDS in a spam message.....GIBBERISH in a spam message. Some of these that I have received have nothing but a bunch of unrelated words !!! I can't even figure out the motivation for such a thing. Dan http://teachmedrums.com Like this...? mid-mouth wry-eyed folk medicine charnel house earth-ball meadow mussel false-face bloom-colored shoestring lily well-explained wagon ceiling strong-mindedness tool examiner Scoto-saxon re-reflect meadow titling stretcher bar un-hunh arrow-smitten wonder-sharing cross-plow khaki-colored card bends love-smitten night chair devil-tender Cape cod turkey action theory thrust shaft roll film co-widow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 4, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 Originally posted by techristian What is worse than NO WORDS in a spam message.....GIBBERISH in a spam message. Some of these that I have received have nothing but a bunch of unrelated wordsThat's another attempt to get through a spam filter. Since there's no recognizable pattern of words, the filter doesn't know to reject it. There might be just a couple of bytes of code (or a Java script) in there that attacks your computer when you open the message. Hope you have a good virus and spyware checker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zenchin Posted July 4, 2006 Members Share Posted July 4, 2006 Hey...my name IS Hetty Blankenship. Anyway..as far as the first question about particular kinds of spam, I've been using Cloudmark for a year or so and it's r-e-a-l good on my Outlook based systems. It gets most all that junk with very very few zaps of good mail. I think it's only grabbed good mail once or twice in an entire year. Worth every penny of the 39.95 per year. Two systems here get hit with over 400 spam messages a day and Cloudmark gets them all. All those embedded image spams and "messageless" jobs too. On my occasional visit to the spam box to see what Cloudmark is catching, I did notice a bunch of those buy-this-stock-image type messages a month or so ago. I hadn't really been seeing those much in the past but Cloudmark zapped them like clockwork. Don't know if it integrates with Yahoo or the other freebie mail systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 If it's an ad for public stock, then it must be easy to find the company involved and persecute them. Ring their CEO in the middle of (his) night, and ask about his exciting offer that you've just read about. Flood their email with similar requests. Let them know they've really got your attention - just don't buy any stock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zenchin Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 ......"then it must be easy to find the company involved and persecute them...."-----------------------------------------------------------You're goin' down the wrong road with that one. The underlying company has nothing to do with whoever is pumping the stock in emails. If YOU start sending out a gazillion emails trying to get people to buy stock in CraigAndertonMiningCompanyOfAmerica...which would then pump up your stock value so you could sell it when all the poor know-nothings bought in.......nobody could sue the mining company. If they could find YOU, the guy sending the emails who doesn't even remotely work for the mining company...then you'd be the guy they sue. Going back to what you suggested...you could harrass the company itself....and they could then easily go after you in court bigtime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Kiwiburger Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 True. I just wonder what kind of thick-head moron would think that they could raise stock values by spamming people? The way my brain works - if some jerk did that, I would immediately boycott that company. Even if they turned out to have great products - if they stoop to spamming, I hate them. You raise a good point that the morons doing the spamming probably don't represent the company. The company probably need to know that some idiot is destroying their good will and reputation. You know what annoys me more than spammers? The fooking idiots who buy their products and services, and make spamming worthwhile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 "Any idea how to combat this type of spam?" I use thunderbird and any spam I getI just click the junk mail button.... If that doesn't work I make up a Message Rule that will send the offending emails to the Trash can..... It's an ongoing process but not too painful with ThunderBird.... The best way I know of to avoid spam is to not use your email address for anythingother than emailing trusted friends... Never use it to sign up to a forum etc etc USe gmail or hotmail for that.... if the addy starts attracting spam just stopusing it .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 Originally posted by techristian I can't even figure out the motivationfor such a thing.] Probaly contains a virus or trojan..... Trying to infect your PC to turn it intoa Zombie Server for whatever nefariouspurpose they've dreamed up .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 5, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted July 5, 2006 Originally posted by Kiwiburger I just wonder what kind of thick-head moron would think that they could raise stock values by spamming people?Spamming works. There are a lot of people with Internet access who haven't figured it all out yet, and think that they're personally being given an offer they can't refuse. You have to be careful with those messages. If you don't have a good virus or spyware blocker, when you open it, it will install a program on your computer that will start using YOUR system to send out spam. That's how spammers can send out 50 million e-mails in an afternoon - they send it to systems that they believe are infected and let those "remote" spammers do the work. Spammers make a good living by tempting people to look at advertisements. It's not about selling stocks or giving away free laptop computers or pictures of lesbians giving blow jobs, it's about getting an ad on your computer screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 regarding the use of Gibberish to evade spam filters, who ever would have believed that the Dadaist and aleatory literary techniques of Duschamp and Burroughs would ever have a practical business application? But there is is: rasperbrry receptacle. I often threatened to hire a programmer to help me develop a really advanced random text processor called "The Aleator," advanced in that the user would get to tweak various levels of randomization applied to the input text--a very controlled approach to text scrambling. Maybe the time has come... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Billster Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 Originally posted by LiveMusic If you look at these, they contain NO TEXT. The entire email will be an image... And if the image says "click me" it may contain embedded code that will hijack your browser upon opening the link. Another way to get a virus into your system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GCDEF Posted July 5, 2006 Members Share Posted July 5, 2006 Thunderbird is good about spam with images. If you look at the link to a lot of images, it's got a really convoluted URL. That URL is unique for your email address. Just viewing the image at a minimum will show that you have an active email address. Thunderbird won't download images like that unless you specifically tell it to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted November 24, 2007 Members Share Posted November 24, 2007 Spam Spam Spam Egg and Spam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ7YedEopp4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted November 24, 2007 Members Share Posted November 24, 2007 Came thru the spam & egg filter today - Are you eligible? ECO-BANK PLCCOMPENSATION OFFICE ECOBANK/ UNITED NATIONS 2007 SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS. ATTN: Customer REF/PAYMENTS CODE: ECB/06654 $100,000. USD. This is to bring to your notice that we are delegated from the UNITED NATIONS in Central Bank to pay 150 victims of scam $100,000 USD (OneHundred Thousand Dollars Only each).You are listed and approved for this payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount,get back to this office as soon as possible for the immediate payments of your $100,000 USD compensations funds. On this faithful recommendations, want you to know that during the last U.N. meetings held at Abuja, Nigeria, it was alarming on the money lostby various individuals to the scams artists operating in syndicates all over the world today. In other to compensate victims, the UNITEDNATIONS Body is now paying 150 victims $100,000 USD each in accordance with theUNITED NATIONS recommendations. Due to the corrupt and inefficient Banking Systems in Nigeria, the payments are to be paid by Central Bank Nigeria as corresponding paying bank under funding assistance byBRITISH GOVERNMENT. Benefactor of this compensation award will have to be first cleared and recommended for payment by ECO BANK PLC. According to the number of applicants at hand, 114 Beneficiaries hasbeenpaid, over a half of the victims are from the United States, we stillhave an outstanding of 36 scam victims left to be paid. Other victims whohave not been contacted can submit their application as well forscrutiny and possible consideration. Your Cheque have been forwarded to Affiliated Parcel Express Delivery Units. We have paid for the delivering charges and insurance fee.The only money you have to send to them is there security keeping fee which is $850.00 Us Dollars to received your cheque. This is their Contact Address, Contact Chinedu Eze Director Affiliated Parcel Express. E-mail: ( affiliatedparcelexpress@yahoo.co.uk) Phone number +234 8023089035.Registration No; Eg2272 Code Number::01721457 Try to contact them as soon as possible to avoid increasing the security keeping fee. Below is the information you required to send to them; Full name...................... Home address..................... Telphone............... Age...................... Sex................ I gave them your delivering address but you have to reconfirm it to them again to avoid any mistake on the delivering. Send your response and payment code to their officer: Yours Faithfully,Mrs. May Udoh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted November 24, 2007 Members Share Posted November 24, 2007 I doubt they buy the domains - more likely, they spoof them, i.e. make it appear they are coming from a legitimate domain, when it's actually being routed from somewhere overseas. I get a ton of returns from one of our domains that's being spoofed - mostly with the same type of thing, bogus stock offers - but in reality they all come from various places around the world.Frankly, I don't have a clue about any way to stop it, & it kinda pisses me off, but there you go. Right. Likely just spoofed. I've received spam 'from' bogus addresses at my own domain (that I own and control). One thing that can help is to use an 'auto-whitelist' type agent on your mail server (if your host offers it) that automatically rejects the first mail from a new sender. Most legit email servers will just resent -- spambots just skip over and don't resend, as a rule. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members BlueStrat Posted November 24, 2007 Members Share Posted November 24, 2007 If it's an ad for public stock, then it must be easy to find the company involved and persecute them Or prosecute them, though persecution might be more fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members John Sayers Posted November 24, 2007 Members Share Posted November 24, 2007 you guys really should look at Mailwasher - it solves all the problems you mentioned. http://www.mailwasher.net/download/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Paully Posted November 26, 2007 Members Share Posted November 26, 2007 Right. Likely just spoofed. Spoofing has happened to me twice; once about a year ago, and again about three days ago. I was told by my service(AOL) that simply changing you logon password will usually stop the annoyance. It seemed to work the first time, and recently changing it again seems to have stopped the newest instance. Best, Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted November 27, 2007 Members Share Posted November 27, 2007 Came thru the spam & egg filter today - Are you eligible? ECO-BANK PLC COMPENSATION OFFICE ECOBANK/ UNITED NATIONS 2007 SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS. ATTN: Customer REF/PAYMENTS CODE: ECB/06654 $100,000. USD. This is to bring to your notice that we are delegated from the UNITED NATIONS in Central Bank to pay 150 victims of scam $100,000 USD (One Hundred Thousand Dollars Only each).You are listed and approved for this payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount, get back to this office as soon as possible for the immediate payments of your $100,000 USD compensations funds. On this faithful recommendations, want you to know that during the last U.N. meetings held at Abuja, Nigeria, it was alarming on the money lost by various individuals to the scams artists operating in syndicates all over the world today. In other to compensate victims, the UNITED NATIONS Body is now paying 150 victims $100,000 USD each in accordance with the UNITED NATIONS recommendations. Due to the corrupt and inefficient Banking Systems in Nigeria, the payments are to be paid by Central Bank Nigeria as corresponding paying bank under funding assistance by BRITISH GOVERNMENT. Benefactor of this compensation award will have to be first cleared and recommended for payment by ECO BANK PLC. According to the number of applicants at hand, 114 Beneficiaries has been paid, over a half of the victims are from the United States, we still have an outstanding of 36 scam victims left to be paid. Other victims who have not been contacted can submit their application as well for scrutiny and possible consideration. Your Cheque have been forwarded to Affiliated Parcel Express Delivery Units. We have paid for the delivering charges and insurance fee.The only money you have to send to them is there security keeping fee which is $850.00 Us Dollars to received your cheque. This is their Contact Address, Contact Chinedu Eze Director Affiliated Parcel Express. E-mail: ( affiliatedparcelexpress@yahoo.co.uk) Phone number +234 8023089035. Registration No; Eg2272 Code Number::01721457 Try to contact them as soon as possible to avoid increasing the security keeping fee. Below is the information you required to send to them; Full name...................... Home address..................... Telphone............... Age...................... Sex................ I gave them your delivering address but you have to reconfirm it to them again to avoid any mistake on the delivering. Send your response and payment code to their officer: Yours Faithfully, Mrs. May Udoh That name sounds so familiar.... Could she be related to Obodie Udoh? The one whose little lambs eat ivy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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