Help me!!!

Shane

A few weeks ago, someone got into my email account (left it on at the computer). Now I'm flooded everyday with porn in my inbox. The site is "4freegay.com", I went to unsubscribe. It said my unsubscription was successfull, but the emails are still coming. I tried again and was told "no account". So, I signed up again and tried to unsubscribe AGAIN!!! It just won't work!!! How can I stop it? For FREE?!?

lynchie

This is more a Net/Comms issue and should be posted there

Shane

A few weeks ago, someone got into my email account (left it on at the computer). Now I'm flooded everyday with porn in my inbox. The site is "4freegay.com", I went to unsubscribe. It said my unsubscription was successfull, but the emails are still coming. I tried again and was told "no account". So, I signed up again and tried to unsubscribe AGAIN!!! It just won't work!!! How can I stop it? For FREE?!?

Gordon

Apparently if you unsubscribe you just tell the site that your account is active, best not do that any more. Can you block the email address from your mail? What mail thing do you have - online browser Yahoo type thing or is it an Outlook express type thing?

Shane

I usually cross between Eircom Webmail and Outlook Express

Gordon

In that case matey bubbles you can block the mail address, I haven't actually used it yet on eircom mail but there is a way of doing it it seems. If you go on your browser onto eircom mail, goto filters, create a filter, -

"if the sender contains... gay pr0n web freeb, rrRRaaAAAooWWwww"
"then move to trash"
"add this filter"

I doubt your outlook express should pick it up, tho saying that the eircom.net free webmail is fairly pants nothing would surprise me.

Hope this works Mr Clary, be more careful next time

longword

Originally posted by ScottB
A few weeks ago, someone got into my email account (left it on at the computer). Now I'm flooded everyday with porn in my inbox.

Your situation will get worse, not better.

Pretty much the only thing you can do is find yourself a new email account. I find that if you're careful, an account can last three or four years before the spammers inevitably find it.

Failing that, you can try using filters to automatically delete some of the incoming messages. If you're on a UNIX machine try SpamAssassin. I'm sure there are similar solutions for other platforms. But these tools only take effect after the message has been downloaded - a pain on a dialup connection.

Matfinn

ScottB and everyone else I would just like to let you all in on a little secret and give you some advice.

NEVER EVER UNSUBSCRIBE TO BULK EMAIL !!!!!!!!!!

The way spammers work is they randomly generate a list of numbers and letters to form an email address and they send out a massive mailshot to about a milion addresses. Some but not all of these addresses are guarunteed to actually exist, and some might be duds. If you ever check spam mails and have a look in the "To: " field you will see there is about 30 addresses beginning with the same letter and some might have numbers after them.

Your email address was possibly generated this way, or else a spamot that checks webpages and harvests email addresses might have collected your address. The only purpose of the 'unsibscribe' link at the bottom of any spams you may recieve is to let the spammer know that they have a 'live' email address. If you reply, they add your address automatically to their database of live email addresses, and you will get even more spam. This is a dispicable act of the lowest order and it is the bane of the internet. What these people are doing is highly illegal, but since most spam originates from South-East Asia, South and Central America, north Africa, Russia, and China, there is no stopping it. Spammers in these countries can get away with that theyre doing because there is no law to stop them in these countries as far as I know.

As for stopping the spam coming in, I suggest putting in some email filters, or changing your email address. The latter option is probably best.

If you dont want to get spam in the future, you will have to take some slightly drastic measures.

1: Never post your email address up on a website or on a discussion board ever again. Web based spambots can 'harvest' addresses from webpages and add you to their list.

2: Dont subscribe to any newsletters. Alot of companies sell on the email addresses in their databases to spammers.

3: Only fill in your email address when you are requesting information from a reputable company, like an online shop that you trust, or a government service.

4: If you recieve an email address from someone your not familiar with, then dont reply to it. Look out especially for ones that look like this ( This is one I actually got, clever bastards )
---->>>>
Hi Matt

I saw your icq profile and I would like to meet up with you in your city. Im a 22 year old female. Get back to me.

Keri

---->>>>

I nearly fell for that one aswell and that was recieved about 3 months ago. These ****s are clever, so be careful.

Im only trying to protect people from getting flooded with emails. My eircom net email account is flooded with at leat 5 spams a day, I dont want anyone else to have to put up with that.

Matt

sceptre

^ agree with everything Matt posted.

Damned annoying - obviously the most annoying thing is that any company that sends you unsolicited mail is likely to be the kind of company that won't give a damn about its unsubscribe feature, using it primarily to prove to themselves that your email address actually exists and is active.

If you're using Windows, Spamkiller is a great product - not free though, but well worth the investment.

Outlook can be used to filter mail - it'll still be downloaded but will be moved into your Recycle Bin.

Shane

This email address is really important to me. I've just sent out a whole load of CV's all of them including my current address. Maybe a phase-out period would work... Anyways, thanks for the help!

Kali

with outlook express just have a look at the message rules and blocked senders options.. its not going to help too much (you'll still be getting the mail) but at least you wont be forced to read it or be seen receiving dodgy mail.

Gordon

Set up the filters in your eircom mail first. If you are only getting spam from one particular address then filter that address out as I said and you won't get them again. You can then filter your outlook also but I'd say you are using eircom browser as your raw data holder and outlook at lazy times? Filter at the root of the problem.

Does anyone know how to get back at these annoying ****s? I tried sending back a load of 1 megabyte files to some people on my spam account, I created a new account especially for getting back at the spam artists. I thought that if I sent them a few minutes of blank mp3 then it would fill up their crappy webserver and I would get a small amount of satisfaction from that. Unfortunately they all came back to me as their addresses are never real addresses.

So, in a nutshell, how do you spam the spammeisters??

EvilGeorge

Yeah new account or filters to delete at server end would be your best option.

NEVER unsubscribe thats asking for trouble.

Disable cookies if you want to stop a lot of the crap - just means you'll have to remember passwords n stuff - can be a hassle on some sites!

Saruman

true.. thought i was Un subscribing to one.. turns out i was Confirming my membership and now the only way to dissable it is to enter a password? i dont know what password.. might even mean my hotmail password.. eh no not going to do that! So i just set up filters and stuff and block the domains as they come in!! Not to worry its only my hotmail account.. plenty of real addresses i actually use!!

jmcc

Originally posted by Gordon

So, in a nutshell, how do you spam the spammeisters??

http://www.iol.ie/~kooltek/deadspam.html

Painfully effective and permanent. [1] :cool:

As a sysadmin, I tend to block servers based on IP and or domain names. I've been mulling over deepsixing all .kr as the only thing that I see from that area is spam.

The main problem is that most of the fast ADSL/DSL connections belong to drooling idiots who leave them open for spammers to relay through. This is one thing that worries me about Eircon's I-stream and Esat's ADSL products.

Regards...jmcc
[1] Consider it natural deselection.

Gordon

hehe, I thought you were posting a link to a cool trick to root out the feckers. But hey a 44calibre bullet can root out feckers pretty well! Will keep that in mind