I’ve finally learned how to get Thunderbird to ban a whole site: highlight a piece of spam in the inbox, go to “message/create filter from message”, choose not ‘is’, but ‘contains’, and get rid of everything but the part after the @.
Unfortunately if your e-mail is being hosted by a site that has sent me spam, you may find I am not getting your e-mails. Thus far I am not getting it from ordinary sites: these guys are mostly evident by sitenames containing ‘click’ and whatnot. Right now I am getting about 800 spams a day, and have just signed up with Spamcop. This should help. I’ll at least be getting the satisfaction of reporting these people to someone who can cause them trouble.
*800* spams daily…!???!!
Ahh, the price of fame and notoriety.
I loath unsolicited advertising in all forms, be it commercials, radio ads, telemarketers, spam, or junk mail.Unfortunately, it is a war you cannot win. Though there are always small victories.
Firefox web browser with Adblock Pro installed cuts down on most while surfing and pages load much faster. You can pick and chose what it doesn’t catch.
Anyone who sends me a postage paid envelope gets a asphalt shingle with “Please remove me from your mailing list.” in sharpie. If it happens again, they get their letter back duct-taped to a brick, which they have to pay postage on.
A DVR cuts down on commercials on the little bit of TV I watch.
Telemarketers get speakerphone. Where I can hear them, but they can’t here me till they hang up in frustration after giving their spiel. Then I caller ID them back and ask them to remove my number and never to call me again.
Now to Spam. At this point, about all you can do is get a hotmail type address and start over, carefully filtering who you will accept messages from. For a commercial site you are pretty much at the mercy of the web and the general public.
I know all this seems a little extreme, but I really value my privacy and vehemently fight to protect it. Just ask the poor Mormons and others I have chased all the way back to their cars after driving past my signed gate.
If it wouldn’t get me arrested, I would install a second gate having the first close behind them and leaving the vehicle locked-in over night, or lay a toothed thresher part across the lane with a sign that would act as a tire shredder for those who can’t read.
You know, getting on the “do not call” list has seriously reduced the number of telemarketer calls I get. It’s actually down to just people looking for previous people with the phone number, and someone looking for the father of a guy I dated like 10 years ago. I have no idea how those folk got my number, especially since I never liked his dad.
https://www.donotcall.gov/
Yesterday I was livid: I got a call at 3 a.m. (!) local time from a political soliciting group (I’m Hawaii time; these guys are apparently East Coast). While I may be sympathetic to the causes this group believes in, you will NOT get any help or money if you call at 3 a.m. Shouldn’t someone in the telemarketing department at least be checking the phone lists to make sure the callers don’t cheese off a whole area code? Do Not Call list FTW, but it doesn’t work on these guys.
I got one that started out trying to be ‘friendly.’ You know the kind. “How are you doing?” I respond, “What’s it to you? Make it fast.” They try to go on with their text. I say, “Get to the point.” They try to improvise, and it only goes downhill from there. I have absolutely no mercy for phone sollicitors. If they ever do get to the point, and I agree with their cause, I demand they send me a physical letter of sollicitation, and I will not give them any information on the phone.
I’ve noticed a marked increase in the amount of spam I’ve been getting since my ISP merged with another company. I don’t know why the amount has increased, but I haven’t figured out where the leak is occurring as of yet. I get maybe 20 per day, but even that is more than I got before. Some are for prescription medications that I don’t need, or UPS delivery problems from non-UPS addresses. I have my email application set up to display the entire heading of each message, so I can look to see if the routing information agrees with the originator’s address. That also helps when I forward such messages to the fraud department of the companies that are being misrepresented.
Well, I’ve fought the spamcop registration to a standstill. What I like about Spamcop is you get an addy to which you can forward any spam. They then send a notification to the domain server of the culprit. That appeals to my less charitable side. I like the notion so much I’m unchecking all my filters so I can collect ALL my favorite spammers and send them to Spamcop. I’m in a combative mood today. 🙂 [simper and curtsey cutely]
UPDATE: I just watched, oh, about 10 spam messages go byebye automatically: I have 300 so far this morning, and this new program just showed all of these little idiots the gate. La!
Forgot a couple, the National Do Not Call Registry is a good way to cut down on unsolicited calls.
For spam you can have a send message box htmled into your site so people have to type in a random word before sending. This will eliminate spam bots, then the filter will catch the rest.
I am not as anti-social as I seem and am generally a very nice guy. I just like people to make an appointment first before seeing me.
One good solution for dealing with spam is to use a Gmail account to filter your mail.
The way to do this is:
1. Create a Gmail account
2. Set your normal account to forward your mail automatically to Gmail
3. Use Thunderbird to download your mail from Gmail – minus 99% of the spam.
You can test this without risk, since you can keep your mail on your normal account as well.
Google spam filters are *good*, and don’t require any settings. But you can refine the filter by clicking on ‘report spam’ or ‘not spam’, in which case it learns automatically.
Other advantages of redirecting your mail via Gmail, besides dealing with spam are:
a) Online backup of your mail, available via a browser
b) Google-powered searches of your mail
c) Automatic grouping of emails into ‘conversations’
d) Labels – tags which can be added automatically or manually
e) Send from the web interface as though you are sending from your normal email address
f) Filtering, forwarding, automatic collection from other accounts, etc.
I have not have any spam for months, possibly because I am an Apple. The spam I did get came to my smarcat address not my other one.
I have been on ‘do not call’ for years. I get strange calls that either don’t answer when I pick up or hang up after the third ring…always from a 900 numbers, which I have never returned.
I hadn’t realized it was *that* bad! (I only get 50 or so). My dad, for some reason, is also plagued. I’ve set up filters for him at the server level that have knocked his spam down to fewer than a dozen/day. I’ll see what I can do to add some filters on our server.
It’s seriously bad. I spend up to half an hour a day cleaning it up. I can check my email at any time, as I do several times an hour, and there are almost always 10 or so. Overnight, the load hits hundreds.
I must be really lucky. My earthlink account has the highest spamblocker setting, and I never get spam. I think two have managed to make it through in the past year.
re: Xenophon: I find that the best way to chase off Jehovah’s Witnesses is to to chirpily say, “Atheist! Sorry!” The conversation pretty much stops there. 🙂
If only that were true. Usually they come back with reinforcements because it is their god given mission to “save” me.
Do you know Jesus? Yes, he’s the Hispanic guy that works at the hardware store.
I am an atheist. Anyone who has spent enough time on a battlefield comes back either swearing the lord hast blessed them, or cursing the very idea of his, her, its, their existence.
I exercise instead of going to church. I pay penitence twice a day for my weekly sins through push-ups and long runs, and other forms of self torture, and even feel guilty if I miss mass.
I have allot of respect for those that believe in deities and actually are committed to it, and are not just going through the motions for whatever reason. The various religious texts have many words to live by. But all and all I feel religion is just organized prejudiced because they all feel they are God’s chosen and better than the rest.
My views may be about as politically correct as the Third Reich, but they are honest and entirely my own, and do not reflect this site or its wonderfully benevolent moderator.
The methods for protecting privacy I have listed previously have worked very well for me. I occasionally get a catalog when I buy something from someone who sold my name. But now rarely get bothered unless I wish it.
Yeah, earthlink has good spam filtering; that’s one of the things keeping me there for my ISP when my cable might be faster and cheaper.
I have a smallish Buddah statue not far from my door; it’s an aesthetic choice rather than religious, but I can point to it when religious solicitors visit. It’s not always a sure-fire way to send them away; sometimes they want to talk and debate what they imagine are my beliefs. “Go away” and a loud door slam works for all, including people who start by saying “I’m not selling anything”.
I must be lucky. I only get 2-3 a day on one account and 3-4 on another. Neither of them is gmail and I don’t do anything particular to block them.
I just got an interesting spam today — the name on it was my husband’s, and the email address was mine. Sigh.
I have a different problem at Forward Motion. People sign up to get updates to threads or boards, and then rather than going in and take themselves off the list when they don’t want them, they report us for sending them spam. There is only one way to get those emails, and that’s to be logged into the site (with an already verified email address) when you choose to get updates. If they even email and say they don’t want them, I can take care of it.
Nah, pigs have some class and style, and are higher mammals, besides. Spammers, on the other hand, lack class or style and are most definitely NOT higher lifeforms.
Unfortunately, spammers really, really like any website’s, forum’s, or blog’s typical webmaster or admin email addresses. Whatever tools your website’s control panel (likewise forum’s or blog’s) have to filter out spam on your email account, use those aggressively.
Most forums nowadays have the administrators validate and approve all registrations, to throw any obvious spambots out the airlock…not accompanied by a patched up old suit…nor an uruus.
If your webmaster or admin emails are being forwarded to your personal email address — unlink that forwarding and either view them directly or forward them to another email address altogether.
Spammers are…there are not enough four-letter words in Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, or enough polysyllabic Greco-Latin words…. I only like Spam with ketchup and/or pineapple. Most certainly not in my email box (nor my snail mail box nor my voicemail…). The old Monty Python skit, however, is fine.
And yes, having been a forum admin, I have seen masses of spam in an email account or attempts (or successes) to post onto forums. It is NOT welcome, and weeding it out is a pain and a half.
Besides, why should anyone with an ounce of intelligence, let alone programming talent, do somehting so spectacularly anti-social and counter-productive and aggravating, when there is so much that might benefit people, whether it’s plain fun or improving society or simple, workaday utility? It’s always boggled me.
and what fool would take financial or medical advice from pond scum?
Classic account of scambaiting. Be certain to read all the way to the very end; lengthy, but well worth it. You will howl!
http://www.419eater.com/html/john_boko.htm
😆
Quite off-topic, but I just noticed the date. — Vive la France, vive la liberte! — Today is French Independence Day, so don’t lose your head when you eat that cake!
Darn, can’t yet find how to type accent marks on this silly iPhone keyboard.
Yes, Bastille Day! Vive la France!
vive la liberté!
Leave it to Spence to find his accent marks! 😉
Well we’re on the Do Not Call list and we still get calls, usually when we’re out during the day. Occasionally, I sit down and go thru the caller ID on the phone and turn the buggers in using the Do Not Call list complaint form. No sure how much it helps, but I really enjoy the opportunity. I just wish it would cover those soliciting a supposed worthty cause or for politicians, or the idiot local politicians who want me to sit on my phone for hours in a rah-rah session of what wonderful things they’ve done for me lately, or the damn bank. I get snippy with them too, like when they just called the other day to have me do a survey on how my latest experience with them went. Give me a break — I deposited money. How the hell was it supposed to go! I usually come back with demanding to know if there’s a problem with our account — when they sputter no, I tell them that we’ve repeated requested to only be contacted if there is an issue, we’re not the least bit interesting in knowning the oh so wonderful new and improved etc., and hang up.
I’m with you CJ on the stupid email spams. Ain’t gonna believe them and as I tell those soliciting contributions, we don’t take those over the phone. I have no way of knowing if they are who they say who they are or some spammer. I refuse to fell guilty about not donating to such and such horrible emergency relief. Sorry but I can pick my own worthy groups.
I’ll never forget one joke my dad would tell where the punch line was, no I’m not going to answer the phone, it’s there for my convenience. Annoying me with dribble gets what it deserves.
LOL Xenophon; gonna have to remember some of those!
I remember the C & S Green Card lawyers who sent their message to 30,000
newsgroups on useNet. The people who paid for access disliked seeing this
so often, and it was when the Net wasn’t for real people. The vindictive
Geeks, Nerds, Techs and Neophiles ran them off the net and when they got another
account it only took 5 minutes before the service provider went down under
the barrage. They also had every detail of their checkered lives exposed
to public scrutiny because if it was on a comp record anywhere it was
transparent to their newfound enemies. Like a tranquil pond full of Pirahna
a spammer needed to step lively after dropping the material to survive.
As the Bastille governor said “if we don’t get de Sade out of here, something
is going to happen.” He was moved, but it was already too late.
I think the saddest commentary was Carlyles saying that at no time in history
of France was the peasant as well off as during the Terror.
The plan is to try to be free, nothing else seems to make sense to me.
I have been getting calls that show up as “AGI” on my caller id. No clue who they are but they call 4 – 6 times a day. Finally changed my voice mail message to say “This phone monitored by caller id. I will not pick calls where I do not recognize the number. If you are a friend, start leaving a voice mail message and I will pick up when I hear your voice if I am home; or call back if I’m not.” I guess the VM messages sounds like a person answered: they start their sales pitch before realizing they are talking to a machine (I still haven’t figured out what they are selling). I am on the do not call list – it’s not a politician or pollster, so somehow, I must have proivded my phone # or have a relationship with the product.
I, too, hate those calls that ask me how the service was. If I didn’t like the service, I would have taken the time to write and let the company know the problem. One time when I got a call about the service at the local dealer for my car, I gave them a series of obviously insincere responses (who complains that the yellow paint in the waiting room is too mustardy?, or that the fabric on the chairs had too much polyester?). The next time I went in for service, the technician asked me why I complained about the waiting room — since the excellent work he had done on my car wasn’t mentioned, he had been demerited during the quarterly review from the manufacturer and told to improve his (perfectly adequate) waiting room. So I stopped doing that…it had a negative impact on someone I needed to trust.
I have noticed recently that telemarketers will often spoof their Caller ID numbers, or have it appear as ‘unknown’ or ‘private’. Combine that with call centers moving offshore to places where the Do Not Call list has zero effect, and you get one more reason why I want to mute the phone ringer between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. DH needs it for legitimate calls, and MiL has a ‘private’ number, so that won’t work 😛
I will do a survey if I got extraordinary service, because I figure these workmen have a stake in it. But these tripwire surveys just because you visited a website, no.
But the callers—many of them trigger at the word ‘hello,’ so I don’t always speak when I pick up the phone if I suspect a bot: I just let it stew, or cycle, or whatever a bot does. If it doesn’t quickly speak up and advise me it’s really a friend calling, I just quietly hang up.