Someone sends spam using my email address

Hi all,

I was stupid enough to publish my email address in this forum quite some time ago http://www.thereminworld.com/Forums/T/28103/other-off-topic-and-misc?page=1

and now someone sends spam using my email address (I myself receive up to 20 spam messages every day, in which my address is shown as the sender). So someone is spoofing it. I have just googled and found out that this forum is the only web site where my email address is shown publicly.  I have already written to the forum moderators asking to hide or remove my email address from the post, and hopefully they will do it soon. Just in case you have ever received spam from me, please understand it's not me who's sending it.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Good luck with that (seriously). 

I'm now getting somewhere between 50 and 100 spams a day.  Outlook filtering helps a lot (only those on the contact list, in which my own email is not an entry) but the twit bucket still needs careful scrutiny before emptying. 

It's really getting out of hand, we need the email equivalent of the National Do Not Call Registry.

Hello,

Just my input, all my email goes through Verizon.net and I have email addresses on many webpages including at TW once in a while.

I get absolutely no spam as I guess Verizon has filters but dewster uses them also?  Yeah they took away our puny 10 meg online storage.

I do not belong to social media like facebook, twitter, etc. so I would suspect the issues may arise from there.

Christopher

"It's really getting out of hand, we need the email equivalent of the National Do Not Call Registry" -

Trouble is that "National" is not enough - it would need to be international - And there is NO chance of that!..

There possibly is another way which governments might be happy to do, as it would generate revenue - Charge a small fee (tax 1p / 1c) for every email sent - It would not be too burdensome on average users or businesses, but for those sending millions of spam emails, could be discouraging.. I would be happy to pay a small fee to free up the time I must waste checking dodgey emails and creating outlook rules.

"I'm now getting somewhere between 50 and 100 spams a day..." Me too - I had to close one of my email accounts [fred at psoc dot co dot uk] because I was getting 200+ spams / day.

As I understand it, lists of active emails are circulated / duplicated / traded, and one only needs to get your email address onto one highly active list to become inundated with spam.. I made a huge mistake on my psoc email - I replied to a spam email which I found offensive .. Days later my spam intake jumped from about 20 / day to 200+. Clicking on "remove me from your mailing list" can also be dangerous (clicking on anything in an email can be dangerous!) - it confirms that you have recieved the email, and this makes your email address more valuable - I have created an outlook rule to delete emails on reciept, and add spammers adresses to this rule.

Fred.

"I get absolutely no spam as I guess Verizon has filters but dewster uses them also?"

No, after dealing with many of their employees on the phone I'm leery of using their filters.

"Yeah they took away our puny 10 meg online storage."

For "security reasons" associated with FTP, even though they offer the same scary FTP access with higher tiered accounts.  Grrr.  It's one thing to not offer something, quite another to offer it and then take it back under false pretenses, and with no concomitant lowering of the monthly bill.  Though you can still use the 10 meg to store and hot link photos to (if you have the stomach to wrestle with their horrid Site Builder app).

I used to think Verizon was kind of an OK company until they smelled money and took away my paltry 10 meg (and with it my web pages).  I don't get it, I have 2 gigs of space on their email server.

Just when I said no spam it showed up like it is a Facebook alert with four friends. I have no association with social media, ever!  ok TW

The email address was my personal one that I use when exchanging emails with friends. I use an old Agent mail reader from 1995 just for the protection and lack of interest a hacker would have.

Someones email program has been compromised by viral infection and that is probably the main method the hacker is getting personal addresses.

Verizon flagged it as spam: It probably is virus infected!!!

Subject: ***SPAM*** Notifications pending
From: "Facebook" <password_change+christopher@advancedlock.ca>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 01:34:12 +0200 (CEST)

"There possibly is another way which governments might be happy to do, as it would generate revenue - Charge a small fee (tax 1p / 1c) for every email sent..."

I'm not normally big on punishment, but how about the governments go after spammers and charge them with crimes?  Remember in the old days when they scoured the earth looking for the latest teen who released a nothing virus, claiming billions in corporate damage and coming down like a ton of bricks on the poor sod?  These days getting your OS intentionally and maliciously hijacked to the point where many just chuck it and go buy a new computer (!) is the norm.

There possibly is another way which governments might be happy to do, as it would generate revenue - Charge a small fee (tax 1p / 1c) for every email sent - It would not be too burdensome on average users or businesses, but for those sending millions of spam emails, could be discouraging.. I would be happy to pay a small fee to free up the time I must waste checking dodgey emails and creating outlook rules.

 Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( x ) legislative ( x ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( x ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( x ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( x ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( x ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( x ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( x ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( x ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( x ) Jurisdictional problems
( x ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( x ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( x ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( x ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( x ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

I'm not normally big on punishment, but how about the governments go after spammers and charge them with crimes? Remember in the old days when they scoured the earth looking for the latest teen who released a nothing virus, claiming billions in corporate damage and coming down like a ton of bricks on the poor sod? These days getting your OS intentionally and maliciously hijacked to the point where many just chuck it and go buy a new computer (!) is the norm. 

Your post advocates a

( ) technical ( x ) legislative ( ) market-based ( x ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( x ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( x ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( x ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( x ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( x ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( x ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( x ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( x ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( x ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( x ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( x ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

"I'm not normally big on punishment, but how about the governments go after spammers and charge them with crimes? ........."

Dewster, I absolutely agree... But I am becoming a realist! If the internet was restricted to / policed by (shudder at the thought..) one nation, then it might be possible to go after spammers..

There is, however, one common factor which all governments are subject to, and that is greed. Lets imagine that the USA was to start charging senders for every email coming into the country, and every email sent within the country - and (following a period of notification) blocked every email from senders who never signed up and gave contact details etc..

This unilateral approach would be a worst-case scenario - Ideally, anouncing the plans and going into negotiations with other nations to implement plans for revenue collection etc would result in international agreement, in a gun-to-the-head sort of way... "you cannot send emails unless you pay, we cannot send emails unless we pay" - Even at 1c / email, we are probably talking about tens of millions of dollars daily.

Someone sending a million spams will be forced to pay $10k (and spammers often send 10's of millions of emails in a single hit) .. This revenue would pay for the implementation within a few months.. someone or business sending 100 emails a day will be clobbered with a $1 per day - but we are talking about a small business or extremely active emailer to do that many emails... Oh, I do know people who send stuff they dont see as 'spam' to everyone they know - irritating chain letters etc.. Well, they should pay for their hobby!!

LOL - All hot air really - Like everything we have created over the last 50 years, its grown exponentially and beyond our will or ability to deal with.

Fred.

"I have already written to the forum moderators asking to hide or remove my email address from the post, and hopefully they will do it soon." - Ephemeris

Uh...since the upgrade, you have the ability to edit your postings yourself.  Simply search the site to find all of the instances of your email address.

I was slightly dismayed at how many times I posted my email address.  I may get anywhere from five to a hundred spams a day.  I accept that as a fact of life on the internet.  Norton's does a pretty good job weeding it out for me.  MS Outlook allows me to safely determine friend from foe if need be for the rest.