Spammers are using new tricks, watch out! (1 Viewer)

[Kevin P]

Spam alert - some spammers are starting to use a new trick. They'll send out an email similar to the one I quoted below, in order to trick you into replying, so that they know you're getting email at the address, then they can pile on the spam!! So, if you get an email like this, don't reply to it:

Fred,
It was nice to talk to you today I will send the proposal tonight.
Thanks,
Heidi

They're trying to fool you into thinking that the message was sent by mistake, and many people will respond saying "you sent this to the wrong address". The spammer gets the reply, knows that someone actually reads messages at the address, and opens the floodgates...

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Kevin,

I've been getting emails like that since 1997. It certainly not new, but something to watch out for.

-Vince

 

[John Thomas]

Kevin, I received the exact same message you did yesterday. As far as replying and opening up the floodgates, it can't get much worse. I'm getting a slew of spam email every day. Mind you, this is on 4 different accounts - still, it's not unusual for me to get 20-30 junk emails a day. I'd really like to trace it back and flood their server with junk...

 

[Iain Lambert]

Personally, I feel sorry for the poor person whose address was faked for this. The one I recieved was claiming to be from a .ac.uk, which is a university. Someone either had their address faked, or is about to get sent down...

 

[Scooter]

I learned, without having to endure, to NEVER reply in any fashion...including the .."If you recieved this email in error" All that does is confirm you have a valid email addy to the program that spams.

 

[Kevin P]

Personally, I feel sorry for the poor person whose address was faked for this.

I think in this case the spammer owns (or has gained control of) some accounts on that domain, so that they can pick up the replies. Or at least they can pick up the "bounce messages" to remove invalid email addresses from their list.
Maybe I should set up a drone machine on my network and infect it with a worm or virus that responds to incoming email (Hybris comes to mind), then download all spam into that machine!
KJP

 

[Arthur S]

I use Hotmail as my primary email address. The Hotmail system includes a "Block" feature. This seems to work well except for spammers who are using say, yahoo to send from. Since I don't want to block all mail from yahoo, I can only block specific URLs as they come in.

My spam has reduced by about 80% since I unsubscribed from legitimate but unwanted entities and began using the block feature.

 

[Jeff Braddock]

John,

You said you wished you could hunt down the real culprit. Well, there is a program called "Visual Route" (I think that's the name of it) that will allow you to run a trace on an email address. It gives you an IP address, server information, etc. I used it when I got 640 pieces of the same junk mail in one day from the same person. I mailed the admin of the system and I haven't recieved any more from them. A side note, the program costs after some time, but I haven't used it enough to remember how long. Hope this helps.

 

[DeathStar1]

>>John,

You said you wished you could hunt down the real culprit. Well, there is a program called "Visual Route" (I think that's the name of it) that will allow you to run a trace on an email address. It gives you an IP address, server information, etc. I used it when I got 640 pieces of the same junk mail in one day from the same person. I mailed the admin of the system and I haven't recieved any more from them. A side note, the program costs after some time, but I haven't used it enough to remember how long. Hope this helps. >>

This reminds me of something thathappend a few years back. Anyone remember a company that kept on sending out a newletter to you, that you never subscribed to, that took a bit of time to download on a Modem? It was usually sent once a week, and was impossible to get off of. It made national news once it was shut down.

THAT was a real annoyance. Too bad they can't use this practice on all spam.

 

[MikeM]

The email program built into Mac OS X has a really nice feature. It allows you to send an email back to the spammers which appears as an automatic "bounce-back". This way, they think that the email they sent to you was no good and that your email address is not valid, and thus, it reduces spam even more.

I've never seen any other email programs offer this feature, but then again, I haven't really looked. Are there any PC email apps that offer this?