[modeleng] Modeleng - problems with spam

Hi there Alan,

Ouch - 585 e-mails just isn't funny.

It is worth having a look if any of them show any patterns - for example 
do they all appear to be sent from people you know, and if so are they 
from a particular group of people that one person would know (ie spammers 
not only hit you with junk mail, but also sometimes fake the address it 
was sent from - which is why I'm so against people who use software to 
automatically return the mails to the spammer, it isn't the spammer that 
gets hit, it's people like Alan).

Be immensely careful to not open any attachments though - make sure that 
your system is set to not auto-open attachments (though that should be par 
for the course these days).

Also make sure you have all your Windows and virus checker updates up to 
date to counter any nasties that do arrive.

The other thing is that sometimes that thing causing the problem, can 
actually be your own machine. Bits of Spy software can hang about on your 
machine, and can broadcast information to others about you, and this could 
be resulting in the spam you're getting.

To a lot of peoples suprise, Spyware isn't necesarily removed by virus 
checkers, infact some of it is installed by what we regaurd as legitimate 
web sites. To get rid of these kind of nasties, try using free software 
such as Adaware. Spybot is also free, and helps stop things getting put in 
place in the first place.

What do other think?


Yours,


Rich.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007, Alan Stepney wrote:

> I had ignored the messages about spam.
> Although technically it is off topic, it does, unfortunately, affect
> everyone who uses the internet, so is of general interest.
>
> However, for me, it has just becoe much more personal.
> At 6pm yesterday all was fine. When I logged back on at around 9pm, I had
> over 300 emails, all but 3 of which were spam.
> That has since increased and since noon today I have got 585 of them!
>
> Although I have good filtering for spam, plus all the usual precautions
> against "nasties", that level of unwanted emails is way above anything I
> have expereinced before and is a real pain.
>
>
> Alan Stepney
>
> http://www.alanstepney.info
> Model Engineering & steam engine information pages
>
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