-=PCTechTalk=- Re: Alert: FBI issues Valentine's Day Email Warning
- From: GMan <gman.pctt@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:49:00 -0500
Warren,
First of all, congratulations on your remarkable streak of good luck in
these endeavors. If you're not exactly sure what to do with all that money,
might I suggest flying all of us in for a PCTT beach party somewhere in the
Caribbean? :O)
Barring that (or if you have to wait for financial delivery until the
check clears), there's not a whole lot you can do that makes sense,
time-wise. The only thing you can do that has even a remote chance of
curbing the flow at the source is to report each piece to both your own ISP
and that of the Spammer. The problem is that you'll need to include a text
copy of the Spam's headers in their entirety for both ISPs and, most likely,
the Spammer's ISP info will not be accurate anyway. The Spammers use forged
headers which basically means the headers are full of lies. This makes it
very difficult for your ISP to track down the true origin of the Spammer, so
having even one of your reports make a difference will be a long shot, at
best.
I currently run ZoneAlarm Security Suite on my home systems and it uses
a service called MailSafe which can take care of this stuff either
automatically or semi-manually. When a message is determined to be Spam, it
sends a copy of the entire message, including headers, back to MailSafe to
be analyzed for possible inclusion to their blocking filters. These filters
are then downloaded to the utility and then acted upon like virus definition
files. When a post is downloaded that matches one of the filters, that
message is banished to a special folder for Spam, freeing up your Inbox.
You have 30 days to go through this folder to look for any false positives
before they are deleted by the utility. I prefer the manual option as it
allows me to double-check what identified pieces it will report back to the
'home office'. This allows me to prevent false positives from being sent
back to them for future blockage. All in all, this is probably the best
type of option for handling these issues. There are some standalone
utilities that work in a similar fashion, but I have no idea of their names.
A simple internet search should bring them to light.
All told, the absolute WORST thing you can do is to click on any links
that say something to the effect of "If this email was sent to you in error
or if you would like to opt out of any future mailings, click HERE". In far
too many cases, those links only serve to verify that yours is a working
email addy and working email addys are worth a whole lot more to these scum
than unknown addys that may or may not reach someone. If you reply to one
of these, expect your amount of incoming Spam to multiply instead of
decrease.
Peace,
GMan
http://tinyurl.com/2s8x23
"The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask!"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Warren Standifird" <wstandifird@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2008 2:09 PM
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: Alert: FBI issues Valentine's Day Email Warning
> Seems like I have won just about every lotery on the face of the earth
> despite the fact that I never buy lotery tickets. Plus numerous scams
> involving the Bank of Nigeria. Is there anything that I should be doing
> with these messages besides just deleting them, such as forwarding them to
> some law inforcement agency?
>
> Warren
> _________________________________________________________________
> Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star
> power.
> http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan
>
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Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything
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To unsubscribe or change your email settings:
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