[pchelpers] Re: Mountains of spam

Hi Eric

> Ekhart, to your suggestion to use a filter - I already do.

Then all the returned mail should already be automatically going to the 
trash and not annoying you as you described.

> The computer that I receive all the spam on is the one
> I use at work.

Messages about returned mail is not spam; it's legitimate mail caused by 
spam sent in your name.

> It is on a LAN with wireless connection to the Internet.
> 
> We have 18 machines all networked but I feel the weak
> point of the network is that 15 of them are used by our
> medley of students. I need to share files with our other two
> admin machines so can't hide access to mine. I have
> controlled access to sensitive files per password. Also my
> machine acts as the printer server for our Sharp digital
> printer/copier.

Your email address is probably not being passed on to spammers due to 
your network architecture or security. Did you post it on a website?

> On my XP machine I use Firefox and Eudora and have set
> Eudora's filter to trash the spam. Trouble is - they vary the
> subject line and To addresses so that the filter doesn't block
> them. My firewall is Zone Alarm Pro.

Homemade filters are useless against spam; they only work against and 
with legitimate mail such as the returned mail messages. Only Bayesian 
filtering is effective against spam.

> I've tried Spam blockers but training them to recognise all
> sources takes way more time than just to moving them all into
> the trash bin.

Spam blocking is more or less counterproductive; even one blocked 
legitimate message, a false positive, is usually worse than a large 
amount of spam and time spent pressing the Delete button. Good spam 
filtering is much better than spam blocking and is based on Bayesian 
filtering. A good Bayesian spam filter like in Thunderbird is trained 
within less than 5 minutes and catches more than 99% of spam with 
virtually no false positives.

> Changing my email address and all the possible business
> related emails I might miss - even after notifying all in my
> addressbook  - is not a risk I wish to take.

My suggestion about new email addresses was to avoid getting more spam 
and to avoid more spammers starting to send spam in your name; i didn't 
mean that you should stop using the old address.

> I note that the article in Wikepedia URL you supplied treads as
> follows:-
> 
> "By periodically performing an Internet search for one's own
> email address, and if necessary getting the appropriate website
> administrator to remove it".
> 
> My question is, how do I perform and Internet search for my own
> address?

By simply putting it into Google.

I'm not sure you understood or answered the following parts of my message:

> Contrary to what the subject says, this returned mail is not spam; it's
> legitimate mail caused by spam sent in your name. Be happy it's coming
> from automated systems and not angry individuals. The former enables an
> easy automated response; the latter requires, at least in principle, a
> personal response and often lengthy discussion with many different
> individuals.

> Installing Thunderbird or any other good email program with a spam
> filter will probably be able to also deal with such incorrect, "spoofed"
> returned mail. In addition, it's easy to make a filter that
> automatically sends all returned mail into the trash. You can then check
> the trash a few hours after sending an important mail to see if you got
> a message saying there was a problem in delivering it. Tell us if you
> want help making such a filter.

> You can easily get many new free email addresses by subscribing at any
> number of free email providers. I'm guessing that your problem, Eric,
> was not caused by you telling your main address to a company but by
> posting it in forums or on webpages. I even seem to dimly remember you
> talking about posting it on your own site.

> The operative verb in the question is "get" not "use". The spammer "got"
> i.e. was able to use your address by harvesting it from a public source
> such as a webpage or by turning into a zombie a computer that belongs to
> an acquaintance who has your address on that computer. Another big
> problem is people who put addresses into the "To" or "CC" fields when
> sending several copies of an e-mail instead of using Bcc.



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