Why is Del eating my spam?

Hi Del,

Surprise surprise you are the first to reply

We don't like spam so much either but the question is what do you do about it?

Who cooked that lovely sounding meal if I may be so bold to ask?

Come now Case, it was "Fancy Feast" of course!

http://www.fancyfeast.com/#title=home&page=home

I rather hope that Del our cat isn't as ugly as that beast and I hope for Del our cat that Mrs cat is just as pretty as the girl in that add

I love cats but Persians are an abomination

Hello case491

You can always fight back with some of this lovely stuff.

Kind Regards....

Friends of mine went to the States last year (or the year before) and visited the "spam museum".........WTF

Enough to turn any holiday into a disaster I would have thought.

Still no thoughts as to what we could realy do about those rotten nerds that write the spam. I am sure we can do better than natter about over processed meat from a tin.

hello sparky trust you to come up with something like that.

now if you would like to try a SPAM grrmet treat put this together

one can of spam chilled in the ice box for a day or two;

about a cup of musshy peas

a small can of crushed pineapple the real stuff not M-6's (the casting might make the stuff taste better4 the slivers are hard to chew)

and a bottle of cognac.

slice the spam put it over a low to medium fire put the pineaplle on top of the spam slices heat them up untill it just is under a boil throw in the mushy peas. when you have the cognac the spam mix won't tasteto bad after the third slice who cares?

'da ber

Hello anonymous Guest,

Thanks for your interesting recipe.

Sadly, I am sensitized to alcohol, even in small amounts, as it makes me quite ill.

I shall leave it to some brave reader, to try your recipe.

Kind Regards....

mmmm....canned delights....

Hello again case491

The best solution I've found is to use a combination of two Software Utilities developed right here in New Zealand:

A) MAILWASHERPRO

MailwasherPro using both of its "First Alert" and "Smamcop" options.

This keeps the email on your Gmail/Hotmail/POP3 Sever, and you can "user selectably " read the emails/select/delete/bounce as needed.

The advantage of MailwasherPro is that you can do all the operations on the emails before you "Process Mail", at which time the deleted ones are deleted, bounced ones are bounced, and the only emails downloaded to your computer are the ones you selected.

The unwanted emails never get to your computer at all.

Firetrust also have a free version of Mailwasher, but it does not have the "First Alert" and "Smamcop" options.

B) PEGASUS EMAIL

Pegasus Email is the most powerful Email client, with many options, including "selective download" of emails from the POP3 server at your ISP.

Pegasus is not targeted by malware writers, because most of them use it, and they prefer to target Outlook Express.

We deal easily with sometimes more than 1,000 emails each day, and no spam gets into the local computer, all deleted at the main mailbox by MailwasherPro.

None of that Outlook/Outlook Express rubbish here thanks.

C) Software Firewall.

We use ZoneAlarmPro, in which settings can easily be made to prevent malware entering the local computer, and also to prevent unauthorised smtp engines, which are often included as part of a malware package, from sending emails.

Most spam you receive will be transmitted by a "Spam Zombie" computer. That is one used by a person who did not protect their computer properly, allowed malware in, and their computer has thence been hijacked, sending thousands of emails each day, pretending to be sent from many different email sender addresses.

There seems no way to educate computer users, some of whom don't even bother to use free antivirus at all.

Security Software in your own computer is very important, and several different Security Utilities are needed, run on a "guard" system, which operates 24/7/365+ basis, plus auto-updates several times per day and full scans during the night.

Note that the "on-line" scans offered by some vendors may actually give your computer malware.

Finally, the proposal was made some years ago, that emails should be charged for at point of origin. This seemed a good idea at the time, but it would mean that spammers would just increase their efforts to convert ignorant user's computers into "Spam Zombies", leaving those unwitting folks with large bills for all the emails that they send.

D) Address List Hijack - How you can know:

A simple precaution is easily made, in case your computer is ever hijacked, and you want to be sure your address list has not been compromised.

At the alphabetical start of your address list place a non-existent email address. this can be (for example: abc1234@aaaaabbbb.com ). Ensure the address is non-existent, by trying to send it an email.

If the non-existent email address you chose, is truly non-existent, soon after sending it a email, you should receive a reply advice, saying "user/domain unknown" or similar message.

Then if your Address list is later hijacked, you will receive one of those "saying "user/domain unknown" or similar message" messages, and can take urgent steps to mitigate the damage.

Kind Regards....

Hello Steve S.

Kind Regards....The only problem with that, is the spammers would use the same software

Kind Regards....

No he said "SMART BOMB"

I agree with Steve, we need to get smarter and fight back. All this hiding in the dark corner and protecting ourselves is not as nice as actually beating the the mugger up to pulp.

I am in no way proposing violence here, just an analogy. I think if you behave like a victim, you are.

Unfortunately I am no software programmer.

Hello Sparkstation,

I am using Mailwasher based on one of your earlier recommendations, I can't remember where. I am using the free edition (as opposed to the pro edition) but it is quite good. As well, I loaded Pegasus, but, for some reason or another, I can't seem to get it to work so I've continued with Outlook Express. I have tried a few times to get Pegasus working, but it keeps telling me it does not recognize the address of my email server. I want to get the situation corrected, but haven't really had the time...(okay, so I have had the time but not the inclination).

That reminds me of a story an old friend Keith used to tell before he died. He said "did you know that the Italians are planning to install a clock in the Leaning Tower of Pisa". I said "no, why would anyone do that?" He said "well, they say that there's no point in having the inclination if you don't have the time."

Okay, so it's Friday night, I've had a couple of drinks, my wife has gone to bed and I'm rambling. So sue me!

Best personal regards

To All, Just a question, being barely CL, is it possible that when one receives the hated afforementioned fake meat protein product, one just sends it back, forwarding it each time, about two dozen times? I did that once with ad for a feminine Hygiene product. After two weeks the web site crashed. You see I also sent it to my self and just kept forwarding it. It was amusing.

Dragon

Unfortunately most spammers will "spike" the header of their outgoing mail so that the original address from where it was sent is not the real one anymore and most often don't even exist.

Your method only works if the spammer was dumb enough to not know that spamming is illegal in 2,397,381.98 countries in the galaxy. They leave themselves open for easy prosecution and nowadays they will get prosecuted.

Ahhh SPAM, the much loved topic of many Sys-ops, list admins, web hosts and the like..

I use DSPAM for my email filtering, with spam catchers on the mail programs that mostly catch those that slip thru the first barrier (and they do)

Here is the stats for 1 year of operation...

[code]

TP True Positives: 106536

TN True Negatives: 267400
FP False Positives: 144
FN False Negatives: 7748
SHR Spam Hit Rate 93.22%
HSR Ham Strike Rate: 0.05%
OCA Overall Accuracy: 97.93%

[/code]

Thats about 267,400 Spam hits in the last year..

What can we do about it?

Hit the "Remove from spam list" at the bottom of the E-mails, that all it does it just verify that that particular E-mail address is valid?

Use RBL, or other black lists, then find out that your own address as it was on a dynamic host previously is also on the banned short list.

Bounce the E-mail multiple times to the originator of the address, but not realising that the "supposed" address is faked in the headers, and your really mail-bombing the CIA or Microsoft, or someone else that really doesn't like people doing that (Mail bombing is illegal)

grep out the originators address and flood ping, or punching multiple hits to their web server, and closing the server due to port overload? not knowing that some poor guy is getting hits out of nowhere, for no reason, his ISP shuts him down just as he realised that his server was comprimised, and converted into a mail-relay using PHP code..

I actually had a break-in on my server thru a users extreamly simple password (4 letters of his 1st name) my server was running code that scanned all of eBay for E-mail addresses, then sent those off to a destination in Malaysia.

Reporting the infiltration to eBay, all they said was "Not to worry about it, people get spam all the time, just adjust your filters to suit" But I have the program that grabs the E-mail addresses from your web site... They just kept sending the same "quote" on each time I sent them information about it...

Hello case491

After much research, I have discovered the true reason that Del is eating your spam.

This careful research shows that Del is related to an older well-known friend.

Yes, folks, none other than Pacman himself, and indeed these actually multiply, if they are not stopped...AAAARrrrgggghhh!#@!$#%&$*()

Kind Regards.... - the wretched things have invaded my keybrao....d

Do I see light at the end of the spam tunnel?

This spammer gets 9 years behind bars.

Check out this article: http://www.insidetech.com/news/articles/1450-virginia-upholds-felony-spam-conviction

Sorry it's a bit old, I just found it this afternoon.