Information@mail.powweb.com spam

[Codicus]

Why am I getting telemarking spam email that is addressed to the following email address?

Information@mail.powweb.com

[Starr]

Send yourself an email and leave the "to" and "cc" fields blank and ONLY fill in your email address as the "bcc" field.

When you receive your email, you will understand "how" they do it.

Unfortunately nothing can be done about this on our end. Look at the email headers to find out the senders MTA (mail transit authority) and complain to their admins (abuse@ will always get to the right person). Most all ISP's have very strict anti-spam policies in place (as we do).

[esccanada]

Well Powweb is not immune to spammers.

Even thought the email may be addressed to information @ mail.powweb.com, that may not be who it was actually sent to.

The email protocol (SMTP) has quite a few holes that need to be addressed.

It isn't difficult to make an email appear to be to someone else and yet actually be sent somewhere completely different.

The TO: header isn't the only method of addressing an email.

Without seeing the entire email (including ALL headers) it's difficult to say but it could actually have been secretly addressed to your domain. Remember that Powweb's default setup is that all email addressed to your domain is delivered (*@domain.net).

While my personal opinion is that all providers should provide spam filtering options, I understand that at $7.77US / month it is probably not economically feasible for Powweb.

Not only can spam clog SMTP servers, it can eat bandwidth to the point of looking like a DOS attack on the email server (from a layman's viewpoint).

My website looks like it displays email addresses when it really doesn't. It uses some Javascript tricks to foil spammer's robots. These are the robots that peruse the web gleening addresses from web pages.

There isn't a whole lot you can do about it without spending some $$. There are services, such as SpamCop (http://www.spamcop.net), that can help (I use them for my personal email).

You could also determine where the email originated from, and use one of your forwarding addresses to forward it back. Remember that this isn't necessarily the FROM address. Most of the time it isn't.

Well I've gone on long enough. Spam really gets my goat.

Hopefully somewhere above I've answered your question.

Cheers.

[hutchreport]

I've had a business on the Internet for the past five years. SPAM has always been around and I've watched several ISP's try various filtering methods to try to stop it, including SPAMCOP. In my opinion, the more an ISP tries to stop it, the more they cause their mail systems not to operate correctly and non-spam mail doesn't get through because of all the filters. About a month ago, SPAMCOP was blocking email from Powweb. I know Powweb doesn't allow SPAM, but there they were being blocked by SPAMCOP. I found out by sending a get well message to my uncle who had been suffering with chest pain while he was on vacation. My message to him was returned by an ISP that used SPAMCOP and they were not delivering messages from Powweb. When I brought up the fact that this message to my uncle was not spam to his ISP, they told me that was just too bad that the message didn't get delivered and that it was all Powweb's fault. I told my uncle about this situtation and he dropped his ISP and moved to an ISP that doesn't use SPAMCOP.

I'm bring this up because SPAMCOP is not a solution to SPAM problems, they are just making the problem worse by causing regular email to be blocked. I wishes everyone would just hit the delete key and handle SPAM the same way they handle junk mail. Put it in the trash can...

[esccanada]

Except that it isn't SpamCop that was responsible for blocking Powweb (I'm a Beta tester there). SpamCop will block email from an ISP only if it continues to receive reports for the same ISP. After a week of no reports, the block will be removed.

This means that someone had to report an email that originated at Powweb. Just because Powweb has an antispam policy doesn't mean that someone wasn't using Powweb for spamming. It just means that some got through (and reported) before Powweb caught on and stopped it.

If I receive a single unsolicited email, I report it. How many others also received this email? I don't know but I see it as my responsibility to report UCE (unsolicited commercial email).

The fact that your uncle's ISP didn't investigate your claim that it was a legitimate email, tells me that they weren't much of a reputable ISP anyway. Your uncle is probably better off with a different ISP.

SpamCop utilizes blocking lists:
ORBD (http://www.ordb.org/) - Open Relay Database
ORBZ (http://www.orbz.org/) - Open Relay Blackhole Zones
ORB UK (http://www.orbz.gst-group.co.uk/orbs/) - Open Relay Block Zone
Fabel (http://www.fabel.dk/relay/) - Fabel - Åbne mail relays
MAPS RSS (http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/) - Relay Spam Stopper
Osirusoft (http://relays.osirusoft.com/) - OsiruSoft’s Open Relay Spam Stopper

The problem with just deleting spam is that it's not solving 100% of the problem. That's just the old "ignore it and it'll go away" approach. There are so many people with that viewpoint that it's primarily the reason the spam problem is as bad as it is today. More people need to take a stand to irradicate spam.

Many users are still on dialup and some of those even still without flat rate plans. Any spam they receive technically has a cost to them associated with it by the amount of time it took to download (especially with those HTML emails, yeesh). I personally view any time taken to manually delete spam as time I could have spent doing something productive and therefore chargeable. Ergo, I too have a cost associated with it.

Used properly, SpamCop is an effective solution. It is, however, not the end-all and be-all solution. Even Julian Haight would tell you that.

I've tried other tools too (like Brightmail where I was also a Beta tester) and they all have their faults. They also solve a portion of the problem.

My personal email doesn't use SpamCop exclusively. I have multiple layers of filtering and yet the occasional spam still gets through (down from 100+/day at one point).

Someday there may be a perfect solution but until then we have to use the tools we have at hand effectively.

[hutchreport]

I appreciate your reply and I agree with what you're saying about SPAM being a problem for everyone. However, I disagree that you or anyone else is going to be able to stop SPAM with SPAMCOP or anything else. I stand on the statement that the more you try to stop this SPAM, the more you're going to keep other messages that need to be delivered from getting through in a timely manner. Just my opinion. Also, if anyone is still paying for dial-up service by the hour, I can't feel sorry for their loss of income downloading SPAM email. There are dozens of free dial-up ISP's available. That statement about the cost to consumers to download SPAM is more of a pitch to Congress to get legislation passed than a real problem is this day and age.

Five years ago when I started my first website, there was talk everywhere in the ISP field about how the Internet community was going to ban together and get rid of SPAM on the Internet. I believe there is more SPAM today than there was back five years ago and EVERY ISP I know of has an anti-spam policy which prohibits its use by their members. The world is a big place and as long as there are people that can afford their own IP's and are willing to move and change their numbers on a regular basis, this problem isn't going away. My main issue is with the filters. I believe filtering should be kept to a minimum. It slows the entire system of email delivery because a few people don't want to hit the delete key. However, these same people will be the first to complain if an important message addressed to them is not delivered because of a SPAM filter.

I understand your position and I'm sure most people agree with you about trying to block SPAM. I don't like it either, but I do know how to use my delete button and I think it's time to find other ways to deal with this issue because the techniques in use for the past few years are not making the situation better, they are making is worse. Maybe the Congress will finally addresses this issue in the next session, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

[esccanada]

Originally posted by hutchreport
...I think it's time to find other ways to deal with this issue because the techniques in use for the past few years are not making the situation better, they are making is worse. Maybe the Congress will finally addresses this issue in the next session, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

I agree that there need to be other ways to deal with this issue however I disagree that the current measures have made the matter worse.

Even NASA had to go through Mercury and Gemini programs to be able to put a man on the moon (which was the original goal). Every major project requires several stages of discovery. As an engineer, I have spent many a year wishing I could have got to the conclusion of various projects without all the intermediate steps however I realize that they were necessary to provide an adequate knowledge of the problem and, thusly, a quality solution.

Spammers are seeing that they can take advantage of several technical loop holes, ISPs that haven't configured their servers properly (usually because they've got their heads so far up their a**), and the fact that the internet is global and thus far only the US seems to be making any attempt to thwart spam. I live in Canada where there is absolutely no governing of the internet (for the most part) and no anticipation of such in the near future.

I agree that I wouldn't hold my breath for the US Congress to address this issue. They don't seem to realize the dramatic effect it has on users. Possibly because most of the members of congress don't use the internet directly (that's what aides are for).

California has addressed the issue but, in my opinion, in a lackluster manner. They will allow spam as long as the subject is prefixed by "ADV". What's that? That's like saying it's okay to obtain child pornography as long as you hang a sign on your house stating that you are a pedophile. It doesn't address the root cause of the problem.

Any solution has to be global in nature and unanimous in implementation. That's not likely since human nature is a factor and the only thing constant about human nature is that it's inconsistent.

Oh well.

I think we should end this discussion since it's become severely off topic, political in nature, and really solves nothing.

I would recommend, however, that you seriously consider getting more involved with the antispam coalition. You admit that you don't like spam so why not do something about it? You say that there should be better measures but if everyone was to just sit back and hit the delete key there never will be better measures.

Cheers.

[hutchreport]

I enjoyed the pro and con debate with you. There are many sides to this SPAM issue and I enjoyed discussing them with you in this forum. It's so nice to have a honest debate with someone that doesn't end up in shouting and name calling.

Best wishes to you and hopefully we can talk about other issues in this forum in the future. Have a great day!!

Mark