Spam emails
 

I am suddenly getting tons of Spam. When I email back, of course, it bounces in some cases. I can set Outlook Express to "Block Sender" and it dumps it into the trash. But...

Anything else I can do? Never got this much Spam before. :mad:

Jim

email the fbi? ;)

Well I also have the same issue, but I prepared ahead of time for this.

I have 4 emails going through an email forwarding service ( pobox.com) those are the emails I give when ever I sign up to anything.

Lately one of my "spam" email addys that I knew would be abused, has been lit up... so I just disabled that faux addy and changed to a new one. there by eliminate'n all the spam :)

What I want to do is setup a auto reply on that email addy sending some very crude and vulgar email to them ;)

Joe-

I follow you on this, I have 3 email addresses myself, but often you don't know which email it is sent to. There is a blank in he message where it normally would be shown.

How do they do that anyway?
Jim

Look at the full header of the email, you normally can figure out who it was coming to.

i would suggest not replying to any spam, INCLUDING the "remove me" replies... ANY reply means that the account is ACTIVE... that is something spammers love and probably have a way to add you to a special list... so in the end any reply will just get you alot more spam..

they are starting to crack down on spam though, so be ready to get some form of punishment if you are a spammer =)

A little while back i saw a program that would generate a reply mail that looked identical to a undeliverable mail : user doesnt exist situation.

A lot of the spam systems will remove that email address from the database if they recieve a returned mail saying that it doesnt exist.

Seemed like a decent bit of software......but i never grabbed it....nor can i remember the name anymore :(

Ahh well....back to the blocked sender and turned off preview pane method again :)

Bollocks-
What is this "preview pane method"?

Thanks to all the replys guys, I appreciate it.
Jim

The preview pane is the box on the bottom right of express that displays the message body of an email. Dissableing it stops express from opening the email when you select it in the top right pane. Many times a spam message is in html, and may just look like it's getting pictures but often it's sending confirmation that that email address exists and to keep spamming it.
This way you can delete it without sending the confirmation.

Edward

Not to mention the blatant virus and malicious code threat from using the preview pane.

I virus scan my emails on arrival, but there is still the possibility of one or two virii slipping past, and the preview pane will make the threat of infection a little less :)

A little :D

I am having trouble turning off the Preview Box. I know it is under "tools" then "options" then "read" but not sure. Is it "automatically download message when in preview pane" I should uncheck? I unchecked the box, but the message is still coming up in the box when highlighted above.

Jim

Nope, that's about downlaoding the message body of a newsgroup message that you have only gotten the header for.

You want to go View - Layout and then uncheck Show preview pane.

Edward

Thanks Edwards-
Got it done.
Jim

if you are really paranoid, don't check your email