No thanks I dont need viagra!!!! (1 Viewer)

Gwynne · Jun 21, 2003

Can anyone help?
I am sick and fed up of going through my e-mails and finding that the vast majority of it is advertising,life insurance,home loans and do I want a bigger penis!!!!
I am a novice when it comes to this internet thing and am nervous about setting my aol to block certain e-mail as I may block friends writing e-mails or messages from the bird forum.
The problem is I am not conversent with all the computer jargon. Everytime I empty my 'in box' I respond to the 'remove me' but this doesn't seem to improve things much.
Is there an easy to use, free download that I can use to block such e-mail?
Your help would be very much appreciated
regards
Gwynne

normjackson · Jun 21, 2003

I sympathise Gwynne. I had a "hotmail" account a while back which I was happy to let go for that reason. It may be too late now, but one trick to reduce the spam is to lie about your age when you set up the account. I have a young nephew who opened his own hotmail account and got no spam at all.

I see there's a trial email filter at :

www.tucows.com/preview/307770.html

but you might want to hang on. I expect someone here will come up with something better.

Norm

digi-birder · Jun 21, 2003

One thing you should never do is respond to junk emails - it merely lets them know that your address is valid and encourages even more junk to appear.

As Kevin says, you can block specific senders and messages containing certain subjects or headers. At least you can in Outlook Express - not sure about the AOL system, never having used it, but there must be some sort of filtering option without stopping legitimate emails from arriving.

There is a spam reporting service - spamcop - which is very easy to set up. You need to be able to read the headers of the email, which is easy to do once you know how, and then you send these details to Spamcop and they inform the ISP being used as the forwarder of the junk emails.

A lot of the time ISPs do not know that they are being used to send emails. The spammers know how to cover their tracks very well, so it is not always possible to trace where the spam is coming from. It could be routed over several ISPs before reaching your inbox.

See http://spamcop.net/ for more info.

Surreybirder · Jun 21, 2003

You could try forwarding some of them to [email protected] asking them to do something... though they may not. (Or you could email abuse@ISP, where ISP is all the stuff that follows the @ sign on the address of the sender.)
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER reply to spam or click on 'remove me'--all that happens is that you get put into the 'a' category of addresses that are valid and sold to more and more people.
Whatever email client (i.e. software) you use, there should be some sort of filter. On Netscape for example you can set it so that 'if subject contains the word xxxx' move message to 'trash'.
It might be worth looking at AOL's own help pages.
Good luck... spam is the curse of email, along with viruses (I assume you have got some sort of virus protection--never leave home without it!)
Hope this helps
Ken

KC Foggin · Jun 21, 2003

AOL has what is called Parental Controls. You can get to it through your mail settings and then preferences. Set it as though you have a youngster in the house. That should help. Digibirder is correct. Never even open the spam. Just delete it. I have not upgraded to aol 8 yet and not sure I am going to but that new version is supposed to be better in that dept. Good luck!

Steve · Jun 21, 2003

THE WORST THING THAT YOU CAN EVER DO, IS SIGN A GUESTBOOK
ON ANY SITE.

Paul Rule · Jun 21, 2003

I will back-up what digi-birder says, as I did exactly that. In trying to unsubsribe myself from one list I made the problem 400 times worse. Most of my spam is now filtered by my ISP (BT Internet) but a few still gets through. Most of this is delt with by the message rules I've set-up in Outlook Express, but I have to tweak it occasionally. Had 2 this morning, that sneeked in by having all the give away text presented in image format (B******s)
This dosn't help Gwynne as she is an AOL user, which is totally foreign to me. I could not find anythink usefull on aol's web site in this department. I dont think parental controls will help as they do not effect e-mail.

It is worth seeing if your ISP offers spam filtering (if they dont ask why not) this should be a free service for domestic customers.

Paul

walwyn · Jun 21, 2003

Whatever you do never click on an opt-out link, that will just encourage them. Recent reports are that MS are taking 15 spammers to court. There are indications that 90% of all spam originates from less than 100 individuals.

Hotmail accounts seem to garner a large amount of spam. I set up an hotmail email address simply to register on eBay. I haven't used it for any other purpose and it gets 10 pr0n emails a day. However, if the return address for the spam is a hotmail account - forwarding the spam with full headers to [email protected] will normally result in that account being shut down within 24 hours.

A lot of the mail is sent out by 'bots' generating email addresses. So if you have a personal name in your email address ([email protected]) it will get a lot spam. Try somethinfg like [email protected] and it won't get spammed at all.

My main home email account is with demon which lets me have unlimited email addresses in the form of

[email protected]

So I registered on this site as [email protected] this allows me to track any spam back to the original usage of the email account. So far I only receive spam on the email address I used for my partners website.

My partners email address was with supanet and that was attracting 40 spam messages a day.

I also have various hotmail accounts which are used for diverse purposes. These also attract a fair amount of spam as well as legit messages.

I use Mailwasher Pro for mail filtering on all the accounts. This allows you delete the mail directly off the ISP server so you don't even have to download the crap. It will also bounce the message back as "user unknown at this address" and attaches to spamcop so it will automatically mark for deletion mail originating from spamming sites.

Email at work is filtered using various phrases etc. However, I still get the odd message with subject lines "Dirty cum soaked whores" get past it. Perhaps our systems dept have a different ideas on what constitutes spam.

Tannin · Jun 21, 2003

There is no easy answer, Gwynne. I have to have my primary email address visible or business reasons and I get about 150 mails a day - about 130 of them spam. I use a program called Junk Spy - http://www.junkspy.com - it's free to try but you have to pay if you keep on using it. It ain't perfect and some stuff still gets through but it cuts it down by about 90 to 95%.

walwyn · Jun 21, 2003

OK I've just realized that Gwynne is using AOL. This doesn't use POP3 which is what modt of the filter program link into, but its own system for mail it stores for clients.

Currently you need to use whatever controls AOL gives you, I supose you can setup filters as others have mentioned. Netscape allows you to create a filter from an individual message, so I suppose AOL allows the same thing.

Mailwasher are working on a solution for AOL based mail.

qwark · Jun 21, 2003

You can try - with the offending email highlighted ( blue), go to Message (on the top toolbar) - a drop down list will appear, abouth three quarters of the way down is Block sender. you may have to do this several times for all your offending emails, but it has reduced my offensive spam. Of course you may have to repeat from time to time.
Best of luck
Qwark

normjackson · Jun 21, 2003

Gwynne, if you've still got that email address about how to get a bigger penis, erm, wonder if you might care to pass it on. It's just that I'm researching a new book you see...

walwyn · Jun 21, 2003

normjackson said:
Gwynne, if you've still got that email address about how to get a bigger penis, erm, wonder if you might care to pass it on. It's just that I'm researching a new book you see...

If any of it worked there would be 90% of the male population having to walking around pushing a wheel barrow by now.

normjackson · Jun 21, 2003

Ah. Thanks for the "tip" Walwyn

Surreybirder · Jun 21, 2003

The other thing to avoid is publishing an email address on a web site. Bots trawl the Internet collecting them. But you are safe if you do it in the form:
surreybirder AT myISP.co.de

normjackson · Jun 22, 2003

Walwyn re. your earlier longer post and that weird subject line. I think I've seen those at the end of the menu at our local takeaway. Never tried 'em though.

Gwynne · Jun 22, 2003

Thanks Guys
I'll put some of the suggestions into action.
By the way I'm thinking of stopping taking the pills because I can't afford to upgrade to a bigger sized wheelbarrow!!!

Geoff Brown · Jun 22, 2003

Spam killer

Gwynne,

Have a look a mailwasher mentioned earlier on in this thread. I use it and find it is very good, you just right click and mark all the penis enlargement sites etc., to be deleted and that site never pops up again. Unfortunately there seems to be a never ending number of suppliers able to provide an "extra couple of inches of gristle" to you!! I recently upgraded my basic programme to Mailwasher Pro but of course then you have to make a fairly small one off payment to the developer who I think lives in New Zealand if memory serves me correctly.

Rufus · Jun 23, 2003

I agree: MailWasher is extremely helpful. I use MailWasher Pro, and do not resent a penny of what I paid for it, and it was not expensive.

normjackson · Jun 23, 2003

I've been using MaleWasher Deluxe. It works a bit like a car-wash but doesn't leave those annoying streaks along the side.

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