Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
lately.

Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.

Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
their ISP?

Miguel

On 22 Aug 2006 02:39:27 -0700, "Miguel" wrote:

|Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
|good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
|lately.
|
|Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
|a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
|ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.
|
|Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
|their ISP?

My spam has also reduced considerably, I am also with BT connect, who have
antispam and antivirus systems. This happened last night/yesterday.

One of the listservers I subscribe to, has also stopped. If nothing
appears today I will run a test.

--
Dave Fawthrop dave hyphenologist co uk Google Groups is IME the *worst*
method of accessing usenet. GG subscribers would be well advised get a
newsreader, say Agent, and a newsserver, say news.individual.net. These
will allow them: to see only *new* posts, a killfile, and other goodies.

"Miguel" wrote in message
ups.com...
Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
lately.

Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.

Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
their ISP?

Miguel


I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts in your
area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long may it last!

H

The message
from "HLAH" contains these words:

I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts in your
area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long may it last!

I've been getting a lot of the financial Pump and Dump ones that are
just a .gif file with a picture of the text. I suppose it's done to make
it hard to scan for keywords.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember "HLAH"
saying something like:

I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts in your
area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long may it last!

The only problem now is if one does need a supply of floppy stiffeners,
one wouldn't know where to look.
--

Dave

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote:

The only problem now is if one does need a supply of floppy
stiffeners, one wouldn't know where to look.

Screwfix? (pun intended)

--
LSR

"Guy King" wrote in message
...
The message
from "HLAH" contains these words:

I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts in
your
area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long may it last!

I've been getting a lot of the financial Pump and Dump ones that are
just a .gif file with a picture of the text. I suppose it's done to make
it hard to scan for keywords.


I get Viagra and Pump and Dump ones but never "meet sluts in your area" -
how d'you get them then )


--
Bob Mannix
(anti-spam is as easy as 1-2-3 - not)

Bob Mannix wrote:

I get Viagra and Pump and Dump ones but never "meet sluts in your area" -
how d'you get them then )

You have to visit lots of dodgy pron sites and take their "free tours".....

um........ so I am led to believe!

--
http://gymratz.co.uk - Best Gym Equipment & Bodybuilding Supplements UK.
http://trade-price-supplements.co.uk - TRADE PRICED SUPPLEMENTS for ALL!
http://fitness-equipment-uk.com - UK's No.1 Fitness Equipment Suppliers.
http://Water-Rower.co.uk - Worlds best prices on the Worlds best Rower.

HLAH wrote:
"Miguel" wrote in message
ups.com...
Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
lately.

Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.

Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
their ISP?

Miguel


I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts in your
area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long may it last!

H


I don't get that much anyway as I have spam filters customised by me at
thw ISP HQ.

been a few viruses and 'HSBC: Urgent, update your account' stuff though.

In article . com,
"Miguel" writes:
Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
lately.

Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.

Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
their ISP?

Apparently there's a very large spamming going on at the
moment, which is delaying much email (and regular spams
no doubt). If you are not subject to this large spamming,
then you will probably see a drop off in email until
systems clear the backlog. Sorry, don't know any details,
just a warning put out by my ISP (not Demon, contrary to
what you might think).

--
Andrew Gabriel

Guy King wrote:
The message
from "HLAH" contains these words:

I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts
in your area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long
may it last!

I've been getting a lot of the financial Pump and Dump ones that are
just a .gif file with a picture of the text. I suppose it's done to
make it hard to scan for keywords.

I've been getting a lot of spam with a innocuous header and the body text
full of unconnected words e'g' "lucky hands yet UNO Major Nelson During
fatal immediate subside serial multidose binge Material Drama".

What's that all about?


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

The message
from "The Medway Handyman" contains
these words:

I've been getting a lot of spam with a innocuous header and the body text
full of unconnected words e'g' "lucky hands yet UNO Major Nelson During
fatal immediate subside serial multidose binge Material Drama".

What's that all about?

It's supposed to defeat anti-spam systems which look for a high
proportion of spammy words by diluting them with unspammy words.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:
The message
from "The Medway Handyman" contains
these words:

I've been getting a lot of spam with a innocuous header and the body
text full of unconnected words e'g' "lucky hands yet UNO Major
Nelson During fatal immediate subside serial multidose binge
Material Drama".

What's that all about?

It's supposed to defeat anti-spam systems which look for a high
proportion of spammy words by diluting them with unspammy words.

So how am I supposed to know what he message is? Which words in the above
are which? I'm confused!


--
Dave
The Medway Handyman
www.medwayhandyman.co.uk
01634 717930
07850 597257

The message
from "The Medway Handyman" contains
these words:

It's supposed to defeat anti-spam systems which look for a high
proportion of spammy words by diluting them with unspammy words.

So how am I supposed to know what he message is? Which words in the above
are which? I'm confused!

Oh, I didn't say it worked! It's often used by gormless twit who send
you spam that doesn't actually have a message. Of course, that could
just be a ploy to get you to reply so they know it's an active email
address which are worth a lot more.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

The Medway Handyman wrote:
Guy King wrote:
The message
from "HLAH" contains these words:

I'm getting a lot less on Pipex. And they are only the "meet sluts
in your area" sort, the Viagra and porn spams have disappeared. Long
may it last!
I've been getting a lot of the financial Pump and Dump ones that are
just a .gif file with a picture of the text. I suppose it's done to
make it hard to scan for keywords.

I've been getting a lot of spam with a innocuous header and the body text
full of unconnected words e'g' "lucky hands yet UNO Major Nelson During
fatal immediate subside serial multidose binge Material Drama".

What's that all about?

Its o make sure it has a body, but not magic words like "penis
enlargment" or "$$$$ today" nthat might cause it to get ID'ed as spam..

On 22 Aug 2006 19:15:55 GMT, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

Apparently there's a very large spamming going on at the
moment, which is delaying much email (and regular spams
no doubt). If you are not subject to this large spamming,
then you will probably see a drop off in email until
systems clear the backlog. Sorry, don't know any details,
just a warning put out by my ISP (not Demon, contrary to
what you might think).

I seem to be a recipient. In the last three days my spam rate has gone
from about 20 a day to over 1000 a day, mostly the sort where my email
address has been used to randomly email all over and so what I get is
the 'not known at this address' bouncebacks. At least they are easy to
filter out

Does anyone know an authorative source where I can keep an eye on the
'world state of spamming' It would be good to know I am not alone and
more importantly if anyone is likely to get caught and stopped.

I have a 'third party list' ISP spamtrap in place and also one on my
email program. The ones that get through both filters seem to have a
random 'From' a random 'Subject' and a gif for the message. I'd like
to trap those too...

People moan about the state of the world today, terrorist security
measures ... but I have never felt threatened until this spam deluge
arrived

Drowning ...
Anna
~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

In article ,
Huge writes:
On 2006-08-22, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

just a warning put out by my ISP (not Demon, contrary to
what you might think).

Does that cucumber address actually work?

No, in that I don't bother opening the mailbox for andrew@cucumber
as it gets well over 1000 spams/day, and very rarely any non-spam.

I did see your mail to me a few days back as you gave me a heads-up,
thanks. Did you hear back from David?

--
Andrew Gabriel

In article , Anna Kettle
wrote:

Does anyone know an authorative source where I can keep an eye on the
'world state of spamming'

news.admin.net-abuse.email

Lurk before posting!


--
AJL Electronics (G6FGO) Ltd : Satellite and TV aerial systems
http://www.classicmicrocars.co.uk : http://www.ajlelectronics.co.uk

Anna Kettle wrote:
On 22 Aug 2006 19:15:55 GMT, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:


Apparently there's a very large spamming going on at the
moment, which is delaying much email (and regular spams
no doubt). If you are not subject to this large spamming,
then you will probably see a drop off in email until
systems clear the backlog. Sorry, don't know any details,
just a warning put out by my ISP (not Demon, contrary to
what you might think).


I seem to be a recipient. In the last three days my spam rate has gone
from about 20 a day to over 1000 a day, mostly the sort where my email
address has been used to randomly email all over and so what I get is
the 'not known at this address' bouncebacks. At least they are easy to
filter out

Does anyone know an authorative source where I can keep an eye on the
'world state of spamming' It would be good to know I am not alone and
more importantly if anyone is likely to get caught and stopped.

I have a 'third party list' ISP spamtrap in place and also one on my
email program. The ones that get through both filters seem to have a
random 'From' a random 'Subject' and a gif for the message. I'd like
to trap those too...

People moan about the state of the world today, terrorist security
measures ... but I have never felt threatened until this spam deluge
arrived

Drowning ...
Anna
~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642



You have my hearfelt sympathies.
I've had over 20 e-mail accounts, going back over more than 15 years and
every one has eventually drowned in spam.

There is something very unsettling when you feel that your e-mail
address has been used in the spam headers of some dodgy company. Let me
assure you that because the headers are generally completely forged it's
very obvious that it's not you.
When I was running a business I felt particularly vulnerable because the
thought that you can end up on a spammers list is pretty troubling. I
ended up at the sharp end of tens of thousands of bounced e-mails. It
did, however, go away.

My complaint is that it's difficult to find an ISP that filters at
source (i.e. at their end) and prevents the spam being delivered to your
end. Once spam is considered a crime worldwide (it *is* a crime in the
UK) it will be easier to deal with. The fact that the whole approach is
fraudulent seems to have gone unnoticed - it can't and doesn't work.
No-one would buy drugs from a company after reading their spam-email but
a spamming company has obviously sold the service to someone.

If anyone can prove to me that they have purchased something off the
back off one of these spams, get in contact because I have a lovely
bridge I'd like to sell you.

BTW: The random messages are a long-term attempt to dilute the rules of
your (Bayesian) spam filter. If it ends up with rules that are totally
convoluted it will become useless and need to be retrained. The way to
deal with this is to delete these messages rather than label them as
'junk'. Yes, practically impossible - that's why they are doing it.

Egg sucking lessons
http://www.hidemyemail.net/how-to-stop-spam.php
Not my website, but seems reasonable.
To each there own, of course.
/Egg sucking lesson

Z.

Zoinks wrote:


My complaint is that it's difficult to find an ISP that filters at
source (i.e. at their end) and prevents the spam being delivered to your
end.

www.clara.net

Setting up their filters is not easy, but about 80% of it can be stopped
by adding a rule that BOUNCES mail from sites marked as blacklisted open
relays.

ISP's maintain an active policy of blacklisting..there are nerds who
forward mail that is spam to these sites and if an open relay is
detected they automatically add it to the blacklists.

Next step is to block anyone who hasn't got a valid reply address. That
ditches about half the rest. These get silently deleted as there is
nowhere to bounce to.

Then blocking ALL the AOL, yahoo and usual domains gets rid of most of
the rest - though in this case I have to punch holes for the one or two
people I know that actually use those domains.

Then a final filter on my desktop allows me to trash most of the rest
that slips through. Which is frankly because I have currently about 10
email identities on three domains..and haven't set up decent filters on
all of them.

Once spam is considered a crime worldwide (it *is* a crime in the
UK) it will be easier to deal with. The fact that the whole approach is
fraudulent seems to have gone unnoticed - it can't and doesn't work.
No-one would buy drugs from a company after reading their spam-email but
a spamming company has obviously sold the service to someone.

I don't think spam is a crime, unless done for malicious purposes.

Its just junk mail, that's all.



If anyone can prove to me that they have purchased something off the
back off one of these spams, get in contact because I have a lovely
bridge I'd like to sell you.

BTW: The random messages are a long-term attempt to dilute the rules of
your (Bayesian) spam filter. If it ends up with rules that are totally
convoluted it will become useless and need to be retrained. The way to
deal with this is to delete these messages rather than label them as
'junk'. Yes, practically impossible - that's why they are doing it.

Egg sucking lessons
http://www.hidemyemail.net/how-to-stop-spam.php
Not my website, but seems reasonable.
To each there own, of course.
/Egg sucking lesson

Z.

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:34:48 GMT The Medway Handyman wrote :
So how am I supposed to know what he message is? Which words in
the above are which? I'm confused!

I use Virtual Access which only understands text emails, with or without
attachments. I had always assumed that these are multipart messages so
that all those who have had the sense to 'upgrade' to Outlook Express
see the HTML version, no doubt complete with 'Click here' buttons and
the rest.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 09:49:13 +0100 Zoinks wrote :
No-one would buy drugs from a company after reading their spam-email
but a spamming company has obviously sold the service to someone.

But they do. The Register had a story a while back about a Viagra
spammer whose database was hacked into. They were making more money that
you or I do IIRC.

--
Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:02:17 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

www.clara.net

Setting up their filters is not easy, but about 80% of it can be stopped
by adding a rule that BOUNCES mail from sites marked as blacklisted open
relays.

ISP's maintain an active policy of blacklisting..there are nerds who
forward mail that is spam to these sites and if an open relay is
detected they automatically add it to the blacklists.

Next step is to block anyone who hasn't got a valid reply address. That
ditches about half the rest. These get silently deleted as there is
nowhere to bounce to.

Then blocking ALL the AOL, yahoo and usual domains gets rid of most of
the rest - though in this case I have to punch holes for the one or two
people I know that actually use those domains.

Then a final filter on my desktop allows me to trash most of the rest
that slips through. Which is frankly because I have currently about 10
email identities on three domains..and haven't set up decent filters on
all of them.

I used to use clara but stopped cos they changed their dialup number
to one I couldnt access at a reasonable rate. That was some time ago
and I expect the situation has changed by now so I'll look at them
again.

I can see that the bank holiday weekend will be delightfully full of
me investigating spamtrapping Thanks for the tips of how to trap it

I cant just dump my email address cos I use it for business but
thankfully it is on an indirection so I can change service providers
relatively painlessly if I need to

Anna



~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:21:34 +0100, "Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)"
wrote:

In article , Anna Kettle
wrote:

Does anyone know an authorative source where I can keep an eye on the
'world state of spamming'

news.admin.net-abuse.email

Lurk before posting!

Thanks, will do

Anna
~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

In article , Anna Kettle
wrote:

I cant just dump my email address cos I use it for business but
thankfully it is on an indirection so I can change service providers
relatively painlessly if I need to

I direct mine through http://www.spamblocked.com for cleaning. It is
amazingly effective and I get few complaints about bounced mail from genuine
customers. I do use an unfiltered address too, for when people insist on
using spammer friendly ISPs that are normally block on sight.


--
AJL Electronics (G6FGO) Ltd : Satellite and TV aerial systems
http://www.classicmicrocars.co.uk : http://www.ajlelectronics.co.uk

Anna Kettle wrote:
On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:02:17 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

www.clara.net

Setting up their filters is not easy, but about 80% of it can be stopped
by adding a rule that BOUNCES mail from sites marked as blacklisted open
relays.

ISP's maintain an active policy of blacklisting..there are nerds who
forward mail that is spam to these sites and if an open relay is
detected they automatically add it to the blacklists.

Next step is to block anyone who hasn't got a valid reply address. That
ditches about half the rest. These get silently deleted as there is
nowhere to bounce to.

Then blocking ALL the AOL, yahoo and usual domains gets rid of most of
the rest - though in this case I have to punch holes for the one or two
people I know that actually use those domains.

Then a final filter on my desktop allows me to trash most of the rest
that slips through. Which is frankly because I have currently about 10
email identities on three domains..and haven't set up decent filters on
all of them.

I used to use clara but stopped cos they changed their dialup number
to one I couldnt access at a reasonable rate. That was some time ago
and I expect the situation has changed by now so I'll look at them
again.

I use ADSL. Not cheap from them - 30 quid for half a meg - but the
servers are bloody good and I get a bit of web space as well. Surely you
are on ADSL by now?

And anyway, you don;t need to use Clara for broadband etc to use them
for mail.

When I was on ISDN, I used them for mail reception on my domains and
used DEMON to get to them. Outgoing mail had to go via demon of course,
but I can access my claranet mailboxes from anywhere in the world via
any ISP.



I can see that the bank holiday weekend will be delightfully full of
me investigating spamtrapping Thanks for the tips of how to trap it

I cant just dump my email address cos I use it for business but
thankfully it is on an indirection so I can change service providers
relatively painlessly if I need to


Thats excellent. I transfered mine the same way to Clara anyway..and for
simplicity changed the hosting rather than the indirection to hem. Its a
simple matter of getting the ISPTAG changed and then the new provider
can edit the master files themselves.


Moving your domain and mail first and keeping the same ISP for the
actual transport stuff is the easy way to go.


Anna



~~ Anna Kettle, Suffolk, England
|""""| ~ Lime plaster repair and conservation
/ ^^ \ // Freehand modelling in lime: overmantels, pargeting etc
|____| www.kettlenet.co.uk 01359 230642

In message , Dave Fawthrop
writes
On 22 Aug 2006 02:39:27 -0700, "Miguel" wrote:

|Forgive the cross-posting but had to ask somewhere and this seemed as
|good a place as any to start seeing as I have been on this group a bit
|lately.
|
|Up until bout a week ago, I was getting round about 15-20 spam email's
|a day. Pain in the backside. However, as of a few days ago they have
|ALL STOPPED. Not cut down, stopped ENTIRELY.
|
|Anyone else experienced this phenomena? Perhaps anyone with BT as
|their ISP?

My spam has also reduced considerably, I am also with BT connect, who have
antispam and antivirus systems. This happened last night/yesterday.

Having been away for the past week

I'm still fighting my way through the backlog

--
geoff