Spam Out Of Control

[johnwest]

One of my POP accounts is getting too much spam -
I've tried sending the e-mail that gets it off of the lists - but it just keeps coming back - what SPAM control measures does POWWEB have?

Can I disable one of my POP accounts? Only problem
with that is *@domain_name.com gets forwarded anyway. The only way I can think of to stop the SPAM is to force the abused e-mail address to bounce for a while so it will be removed from the SPAM daemons.

Thanks In Advance For Any Help,
John

[MarkHutch]

Welcome to the SPAM club, John. Everyone on the Internet seems to be having the same kinds of problems you are having. There are some good ideas in this forum you might want to try in regards to getting rid of it. What I do is have a special POP account for the catch all address which I check and clear out once per day via IMAP. That way I don't actually have to download all those messages to my computer. Other folks have used "mailwasher" or other anti-spam software. There are also some people in the forum that are members of spamcop.net which will filter your email before you check it. There is no real way to get rid of SPAM, just measures you can take to keep it more in check. I hope this helps you some.

[LexF]

Hi John,

Can you tell if most of the spam is coming to a specific email address @yourdomain? If so, you might want to consider pointing that email address to some unused 'free' account you can set up with HotMail or Yahoo!. That way, the spam doesn't get stored on PowWeb's servers (against your mail quotas), and you never have to see it, either.

(You can set up the email forwarding like this within the SMTP section of the Packages tab.)

-Lex F.
PowWeb Support

[johnwest]

How does Earthlink or someone like that deal with spam?

I think passing the buck on this isn't a position that POWWEB
wants to take - is it?

To add insult to injury - spam is charged against our e-mail quotas?

I suggest taking a look at how Earthlink (just one example) deals with this problem and seeing what the costs would be to implement it at POWWEB. If you think about this for just one second - a competitor could 'SPAM' you out of business. All they would have to do is send enough spam to your users and then game over - do you follow?

Regards,
John

[LexF]

Hi John,

Believe me, PowWeb's on your side in the fight against spam. That's why we have strict policies in place to boot any customers using our servers to send UBE and UCE.

At the same time, it's also our policy not to filter your email. Email filters in place like those at Earthlink or mac.com, without fail, will block messages that aren't actually junk. As much as we know you get bogged down by ads about getting rich quick and getting strong fast, we don't want you to miss a birth announcement, or a deal-clincher.

PowWeb's own Helpdesk software doesn't filter spam, because we'd rather have our support reps delete dozens of advertisements and come-ons a day than accidentally delete a single customer's query before we could reply.

[MarkHutch]

I agree that email filters don't work that well. The sites we host with Powweb are business sites and I don't want to miss an email from someone wanting to do business with us because it got block by some spam filter. No one likes this stuff, but I don't think Powweb filtering possible spam is the answer, either.

One thing you might try is to forward all your doman mail to an earthlink/hotmail/msn email address and they will filter out some of the spam for you. I know some members do this already and have reported some good success.

P.S. Thanks LexF for your quick reply to my billing inquiry today.

Updated (9:45pm Tuesday) - John, I just ran across this story in the Washington Post you might like to read. It's about a company that's trying some new stuff to fight SPAM.

Washington Post Story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41559-2002Nov26.html)

[johnwest]

Here's yet another variation of this SPAM E-Mail -
some people think this has a life of it's own:
(maybe a simple filter here is that any e-mail that
has $65,000,000.00 has to be SPAM):


FROM: CHARLES OBI.
UNITED BANK FOR AFRICA PLC.
NIGERIA,
E-MAIL: charles_obi064@consultant.com

ATTENTION: PRESIDENT/C.E.O:

I have the honour and confidence to introduce to you this view of the fact that you are trustworthy and reliable.

I am Mr.Charles Obi the District Bank Manager of United Bank for Africa(UBA).There is an account opened in this bank in
1980 and since 1990 nobody has operated on this account again.After intensive investigation i discovered that the owner
of this account was president of Gun finance PTY LTD,A foreigner and he died in 1990 and since then the account has no
Beneficiary.My investigation proved to me as well that the company does not know anything about the account.The account
involve is sixty-five million United State of American Dollars $65,000,000,00.

In the light of the above fact,indeed your assistance to open door to this opportunity by providing your account of your choice
where the fund will be remitted.Your assistance as a foreigner is necessary because the management is ready to welcome
any person a foreigner who has corrects information of this account,which i will give to you immediately if you are interested
to conclude this transaction with me.You should be informed strictly that i would burn all the documents in your presence
immediately after this money been remitted to your account and you should bear in mind that we shall meet face to face for
sharing in your country.

I will apply for annual leave immediately i hear from you that you are ready to act and receive this fund in your account.This
is to enable me use my position and influence in effect of the onward transfer of this money to your desire account. At the
conclusion of this business you will be given 20% of the total amount, 80% will be for us.

I look forward to your earliest reply.

Yours Truly,

MR. CHARLES OBI.

====

In CA - there's allegedly a law that says once you've
contacted the SPAMmers - that if they SPAM you again -
it's an automatic $5 fine (per e-mail, cumulative). For FAXes - it's $500.00 - seems like a tremendous opportunity for somebody to cash in on getting these laws enforced...

The e-mail law has been on the books in CA for a few years now.

Regards,
John

[johnwest]

Lex,

What is UBE and UCE?

Thanks,
John

UPDATE

OK - I found this at:

http://www.stassen.com/chris/anti-spam/

Unsolicited Bulk E-mail (UBE) and Unsolicited Ccommercial E-mail (UCE) are annoying. It wastes your time. It chews up network bandwidth. And almost all of it peddles scams which are extremely lame (e.g., "hire us to send UBE!"), if not outright illegal (e.g., the "make money fast" pyramid scheme).

[johnwest]

This is an excerpt of an e-mail I sent to members of a non-profit ORG I belong to - we've even discussed how we could raise money for some of our programs by taking SPAM Faxers and SPAM E-Mailers to small-claims:
(I thought some of you may find this helpful:)

Here's the URL of the Direct Marketing Association for removing your
name/phone numbers from mailing lists:

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumerassistance.html

You may also want to do this if you haven't already -
(I recommend everyone do this plus go to Radio Shack and buy a TeleZapper
for $50 - it's worth it.)

Opt-Out Contact Information
TransUnion wants to help companies give American consumers the choices they want. This choice includes the right to say, "No, thank you" to their offers. If you want your name and address removed from mailing lists obtained from the main consumer credit reporting agencies — TransUnion, Experian, Equifax, and Innovis — call 888-5OPTOUT (888-567-8688), or write to the following address:

TransUnion LLC's Name Removal Option
P.O. Box 97328
Jackson, MS 39288-7328
Include the following information with your request:

First, middle, and last names (including Jr., Sr., III)
Current address
Previous address (if you've moved in the last six months)
Social Security number
Date of birth
Signature

Junk FAX/E-Mail info:
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/ca1.html (be sure to look at this one)
http://www.markwelch.com/faxlaw.htm
http://www.tigerden.com/junkmail/laws.html

Anti Spam Sites:
http://www.doofus.org/spam/
http://www.spamhaus.org/spamlaws.html

Regards,
John

[johnwest]

Lex,

Please take a look at the URL's in the previous e-mail - some of the money that can be sought is much more than a small claim - in CA - you may be able to rake in the money - since you've remarked that SPAM goes against e-mail quotas - perhaps you guys have a 'gold-mine' of sorts in CA and don't know it.

Take the time to look at the URL's - you may be surprised at what you find - and also wonder if these spammers have rocks in their heads (they do). A colleague explained to me that the ner-do-wells sell 'boxes' as a 'business' to unsuspecting 'entrepreneurs' that plug in these boxes to the internet that are nothing more than daemon e-mail spam machines and in some cases also send FAXes - the ner-do-wells sign neat little deals that legally distance themselves from the 'entrepreneurs' so that if a big settlement is sought - it just bankrupts the enterprising business person and not the ner-do-wells - but if you dig deep into the law - the ner-do-wells don't have immunity.

Again - I think there's gold in them thar e-mail caches - why isn't someone cashing in - man, plenty of people are out of work - seems like someone would have the time to pursue this.

Regards,
John

[LexF]

John,

Thanks for all your research. I have read through the links you provided and will discuss your findings with the administrators here at PowWeb.

I know you're concerned about spammers (even competitors) could shut down your account from excessive email. Just so you know, your site would never be shut down for excessive email. In the worst case scenario, if you had a PowWeb pop account that accumulated over 10 megabytes of undeleted spam, that pop account would just begin bouncing messages with a 'mailbox full' message. Your site wouldn't get pulled offline or anything like that.

Can you see what email address most of the spam appears to coming to?

[Starr]

We do not block or filter email. You need to handle this at your email client.

This thread is closed.