|
How can you ruin a good email address!
SPAM! How to avoid it!
Ever wonder how you get so much SPAM! Well,
SPAM primarily has four main sources when it comes to grabbing
your email addresses. Details on how do implement this solution
will be posted in the General Information area titled SPAM
and UBE - How to Avoid it, and Fix it.
1.) You sign up on a website for some type
of information, and in the privacy policy, or in the signup
form you agree to get periodic emails from them, or their
third parties. This is a dead give away.
What constitutes a third party? Anyone who does business
with that company. How simple is this? Well, if you give
your email address to that company, and they sell a targeted
list to someone elses (Third Party), then you are agreeing
to allow them to sell/give your email address to that company.
How bad can that be? Well, usually the people buying those
lists are compiling data for the "Mass Emailers".
They break down their lists into categories. If you sign
up on a list related to some hobby that you have an interest
in, and you all of a sudden start getting all sorts of spam
related to that type of site. That is one way! Now, others
buy these targeted lists (And Pay Good Money) because they
generally contain "More Valid" addresses than
other lists. They buy them by the millions of addresses.
A good SPAM mailer, can send out 10 or 20 million SPAM's
per night. Wonder why you get so many emails now?? Ever
wonder why you get 3 or 4 SPAMS about the same thing? These
are web sites that promise to you, that they will send out
1 Million emails, and advertise for you. You send them the
letter you want them to mail out, they send out to 100k
addresses 10 times, and you think you have gotten your money's
worth. More realistically, it is because most of the SPAM
softwares are written by LOWLIFES, and they are crap programs
that don't work worth a flip. And, when they hang up, and
you have to reboot, then they start sending to that same
list all over again, to make sure they get everybody.
b.) You sign up on an web site, to get more
information, and you take the time to read their policy,
and you read in their policy that they keep your information
for their own use, and will not distribute that information
to Anyone, for Any Reason. And "THEY ARE AN ABSOLUTE
LIER, THE LOWEST FORM CRAWLING AROUND ON THE EARTH, ON THEIR
BELLY COVERED WITH SLIME". "A TRUE SCUMBAG!"
2) Web crawlers and Spiders, and Search Engines:
Have you ever taken the time to go to 4 or 5 search engines
and search for your own Email address? Well' you might be
surprised. If you can see someone elses address, when you
are viewing the forum, or the site, then if you post, by
goodness, they are going to see yours! And if they can see
yours, so can every computer robot that exists on the Internet,
and there are quite a bunch of them! So what happens now?
Search engines use Robots to search the Internet looking
for web sites. When they find an IP address that responds
back on port 80, like this one would respond back to a http
request at 66.98.130.65:80. Then the Robot looks for a Robot.txt
file. It is a file that tells the robot, "DO NOT GO
HERE!". About 99% of the time, they don't. Why, because
you can tell when a Spider, or Robot is crawing your site.
It shows up in your logs, and you would be able to spot
them, if they were in areas that you told them (with your
robots.txt file) not to go. But, lets say that you have
several forms on your site, and you are putting your email
addresses in a flat database file (Fancy word for a text
file), and you have not told the robot not to "Index"
that area. The poor robot is just following his (Program,
or instructions) and he grabs everything off of the site
that he can, and adds it to a searchable database, that
he in turn sells to the search engines. (Email addreses
included) Then other people writing other types of software
have access to it also.
3) Do you own a domain name? Well if you bought
one from NetworkSolutions.com, you probably get a pile of
spam from them too. They will sell your name faster than
you can say "Don't". And, you can say "NO!"
to their emails, and their 3rd party promotions, and you
will get them anyway! So, don't trust anyone that you give
your Email address to!
4) SPAM (Professional Software): SPAM software
suites, always have an email grabber built into thier suite
of softwares. How do they work? If you want targeted Email
addresses, related to some topic, these engines go out and
search the search engines for links related to the "Broad
Topic" that you suggest. Then they go out and scour
the pages looking for anything that has "Text"@"Text"."TLD".
Do they find anything? You Bet! They search News Groups,
Forums, Web pages, etc... So, if you are proud of your website,
and you list your Email address at the bottom of your site,
you WILL get Spammed. Generally the Spam software filters
out all "Webmaster@" and "*.gov, *.mil, *.edu,
TLD or Top Level Domains. The government and military don't
take too kindly to getting slammed with SPAM. The *.edu
are a bunch of college kids, that might take offence, and
part of their Computer Engineering degree might be "Unix"
related, and they just might track thas Spammer down and
give him a taste of his own medicine. Why do they not bother
WebMasters? Well it's because we know what they are doing,
and how they are doing it, and we think they are the SCUM
of the Earth.
So we fire up our browser, go on over to http://www.erin.net
and we find out who their upline ISP is, and we file a complaint,
(Sending the email to them with all of the RFC-822 headers)
and the ISP doesn't like it either. Spammers are wasting
their resources also. Then within a short period of time,
the SPAMMER is looking for another way to connect to the
Internet. And if they send you an email that sends them
to a web site, then what we do is "Also" send
a complaint to the SPAM UBE list, and put that domain on
notice. If the keep getting complaints, their domain will
be added to a "Black List" and let me tell you
something. It really makes your life difficult.
So Are there ways to Combat SPAM? Yes,
Absolutely. What can we do first?
Well, remember that person who you communicate with
on a regular basis! Everytime you get an email from him,
he has included everyone in his address book in his email!
Don't give him a good address! What if it is your Mom, or
Sister? Well, use your rules based email program to create
a rule that says, anytime I get an Email from this person,
put it in a folder called Mom, or Sister, etc. Then when
you go into your SPAM box, there is one less mail for you
to worry about deleting. Create rules for every address
that you want to keep. Now you are beginning to wean yourself
off of the Email address that you are currently using.
What now? Go out on the search engines, and
look for "Free Email" and "Pop3". All
in one search. then go and take a look and see, if you can
forward your email from your free account to your real account,
or see if you can get your mail via "POP3". (Post
office Protocol version 3). If you get an address where
you can use Pop3, the probably don't advertise it, but they
probably have "SMTP after Pop3". This will allow
you to send and receive from your new account. But don't
worry, as long as you are connected to the internet, you
have access to an SMTP server to send mail. One such Email
company that I use is http://www.myrealbox.com
.
Now that we have a new Email address, what
do we do? Well, you protect that email address! How bad
is your existing email address. Are you gettting 100 messages
a day? Well, if you are, just stop checking your mail with
that account. Let the mailbox fill up, and every email that
you get at that address will cause an email to go back to
the sender saying your box is full. Now what do we do. Get
a second email address. Either at a different carrier, or
at the same one. Anytime you sign up for something on the
web, use one of your addresses that you will use for SPAM,
and the other one that you will keep private. As private
as possible. Then, every time you sign up for something
on the web, sign up with your SPAM account. Watch that account
for several weeks. If you do not see an increase in those
type of mails, and you want to be sure you get the emails
from that company, then go back, and change your email address
with that company.
What is a good way to find out if someone
is selling your name? Well, it does not always work, but
you can try this. Lets say we are signing up at www.snot.com
for a weekly joke list. And yes, believe it or not, it is
out there. Then I would sign up with my First Name: Mark,
LastName: Thomassnot, and my SPAM box for my email address.
If I begin to get personalized emails saying "HELLO
MR. MARK THOMASSNOT", guess where it came from! This
doesn't allways work, but about 75% of the time it does,
because marketing tells people that a Personalized Email
has a much better chance of bing read!
So, Lets go over it again:
Start identifying "Good Email Addresses" that
send to you and you wish to keep getting these mails.
Create a Folder under your Inbox to put all of these Good
Mails. Then create RULES that will forward emails from these
"SENDER ADDRESSES" to the New Folder. Now you
have all of the people that you want to give your new address
to. You will eventually stop using this old address completely!
Create a new account on a free web server that will allow
you to Forward, or gather your mail via POP3. This is the
standard way that you get mail into Outlook, etc.. Create
another email account that you will use for SPAM, or use
your existing account, if it is not too bad already. Then
any time you sign up for something on the web, use this
account to sign up. A lot of times you will sign up, and
have to have a valid email account where they will send
you a password, to gain access to the site. This is where
you send all of this information. Then later, if you sign
up like I mentioned before, you will know within a couple
of weeks whether their Privacy policy is real or not. Then
you can go back and change your address on this site to
your private account.
How do I do these rules? There are many different
mail programs. The most popular is Microsoft "Lookout",
oops, or Microsoft Outlook. Just go to help, and search
for "Rules". That will get you started.
Next, I will address virus propogation, and
will tell you why you should not be using Outlook. First
of all, if you use Outlook, you better be using a good Anti
Virus program. McAfee and Symantec Norton Anti virus are
the two best on the market. My preference of 10 years has
be Symantec Norton Anti Virus. I have never gotten a virus
through Email, since I have been using it. The next option
is to get an Email program that does not alow such Virus
programs to activate using the Email program. One such program
is "The Bat" by Rit Labs. I will write about that
in another Info Update. I have never gotten a virus through
this Email. Remember, that it does not stop the Virus from
getting on your computer, it just does not allow them to
Automatically Activate themselves. The Bat, along with an
Anti Virus program will stop Viruses, Dead in their Tracks.
I hope this has helped a few of you that think
you are ready to throw your computer out of the door because
you have to go and drink a cup of coffee while all of the
junk is downloaded to your computer. This situation is very
easy to resolve.
Just a few notes: I have an address mcthomas@pobox.com
that I have been using for 8 years. I made two mistakes
back two or three years ago, that have rendered this address
just about unusable. I am in the process of weaning myself
off of it now, just the way that I have explained how to
do it earlier. For those of you who are interested, I will
show you where the source of my problems came from. This
is a search that I did on Google, for my email address,
and it's results. I'm sure there have been no less than
50 or 100 spiders who have picked up this address from this
forum, and sold it to many other Spammers. Here are the
results:
All of these Messages were from a list
that I thought was secure. It was a Qmail list that is a
mail program used on Unix. I was investigating the software
when I was building some commercial web servers. The only
problem was that they did not have their mailing list protected
from the search engines. You can check this by knowing where
the data is being kept, and checking the root of that server
to see if the Robots.txt file includes that data area as
being restricted.
If you care to see how it is done, this
site keeps it's data in a subdirectory called /formdata.
Here is where I keep all data of all of our members. I also
have the /forum area protected as well. Look at the Robots.txt
file here Http://www.mark-thomas.com/robots.txt
It will bring up a text file showing the protected areas.
qmail list archive: RE:(Clarification) Installation
Quesiton on ...
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sun Sep
19 1999 - 01:09:18
PDT. Next message: sean: "<> question";
Previous message: Rick ...
www.ultraviolet.org/mail-archives/ qmail.1999/10619.html
- 11k - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: Re: http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html
... Ilya ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Johnson
<cjohnson@palomine.net> To:
Mark Thomas <Mcthomas@pobox.com> Cc: <qmail@list.cr.yp.to>
Sent: Saturday ...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10733.html - 7k -
Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: Re: http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html
... Ilya ----- Original Message ----- From: Chris Johnson
<cjohnson@palomine.net> To:
Mark Thomas <Mcthomas@pobox.com> Cc: <qmail@list.cr.yp.to>
Sent: Saturday ...
www.ultraviolet.org/mail-archives/ qmail.1999/10733.html
- 7k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: RE: http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sat Sep
18 1999 - 08:12:36
PDT. Next message: Bryan J. Ischo: "Re: qmail LWQ installation
...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10641.html - 7k -
Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: RE: http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sat Sep
18 1999 - 08:12:36
PDT. Next message: Bryan J. Ischo: "Re: qmail LWQ installation
...
www.ultraviolet.org/mail-archives/ qmail.1999/10641.html
- 7k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Fri Sep
17 1999 - 23:54:40
PDT. Next message: Russell Nelson: "Re: "."
in an email address ...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10649.html - 6k -
Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: RE:(Clarification) Installation Quesiton
on ...
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sun Sep
19 1999 - 01:09:18
PDT. Next message: sean: "<> question";
Previous message: Rick ...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10619.html - 11k
- Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: qmail-smtpd-wrapper error.
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sun Sep
19 1999 - 20:46:11
PDT. Next message: jackie@macro.com.hk: "auto-forward
email ...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10596.html - 7k -
Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
qmail list archive: New qmail install help.
... From: Mark Thomas (Mcthomas@pobox.com) Date: Sun Sep
19 1999 - 15:20:07
PDT. Next message: James J. Lippard: "Re: http://pobox.com
...
www.ultraviolet.org/archive/qmail.1999/10584.html - 10k
- Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
Notice that this is a different list, who tries to protect
the addresses as much as they can. they have a way of changing
the address mcthomas@pobox.com into Mcthomas-pobox.com@xxxxxxxx.
So, any time they see "Text"="Text"@,
they replace the "=" sign with the "@"
sign, and the send the mail out to that user. This is usually
pretty effective. The next way to sign up on this type of
board when your address is going to be displayed is to do
it is such a manner that only a logical human being would
understand how to put your address together. This one is
being used heavily, so it would not be suggested anymore.
Mcthomas@nospam@pobox.com. Some slick programmers look for
"Nospam" and rebuild the address. Something else
more effective would be mcthomasatpobox.com. Something even
more effective would be mcthomas at pobox dot com. There
would be almost no way for a spider to grab an address out
of this. How many times does "at" show up in a
document. But then again the "dot" might give
that away, and the programmer do a reverse search from dot,
and look for a non-real name, and delete everything in between.
Replace dot with "." add com to the .com, then
add pobox to the .com, and then remove at, and add mcthomas
replace at with @, and add it to the pobox.com.
Now granted that is much more difficult, and it would
add so much margin for error, that the results would probably
not be worth the programmers effort. Then you might use
"[]" or "()" or all Caps in combination
of the above. Usually something is brackets or parinthasis
is not checked, or something in all caps is usually ignored
also. So use your imagination, just make sure users of the
forum that might want to contact you can visually tell what
you are doing. Just look at some other addresses in the
forum, and see what you think is unique. If you are unique
you are way ahead of the game.
Knowing some very basic rules has allowed me to use
this address for over 8 years!
RE:(Clarification) Installation Quesiton on Qmail. init.
...
... See Below: ((((Original Message----- From: qmail-return-35998-Mcthomas=pobox.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:qmail-return-35998-Mcthomas=pobox.com ...
www.ornl.gov/cts/archives/mailing-lists/ qmail/1999/09/msg00783.html
- 12k - Cached - Similar pages
Has this article helped you? If it has, drop
me a note! Maybe you would like to share your own personal
experiences. Maybe you have some tips or tricks that you
would like to share also. I'd be happy to update this page,
or if you want to re-write it, feel free to do so, and re-submit
it to me. Just "Right Click on the page" and View
Source, or Edit Select, and Copy and paste if you want to
modify it in a text editor, or a Word Document.
Do you have a topic you would like to discuss? Let
us know!
Return
to the Home Page.
|