Junk Email :(

[()]

Help!  ever since I began using Mas OS X, I keep getting junk email on a daily basis.  The ISP's don't do anything, except want to charge you a fee to get a bigger mailbox for more of it, and or a fee for a software to limit the junk emails.

Shouldn't the ISP's be responsable for stopping people from sending all the X-rated garbage and Ads,.

Today i learned that i was DEAD, married with 3 children and my Attorney from Nigera has 10M dollars of my assests.

How can I collect my money from him?  Now that i have risen from the dead and worked for Shell Inc., I think i am entitled to my funds.  Where the hell is my spouse and 3 kids? I would like to see what they look like and find out when I got married and did the rabbit in bed, or on the floor or on the table?  

I am sick of all this crap email that I get, the bounce button does nothing but resend that crap back to me.

Any helpful suggestion, not that i am breathing again and writing this to you guys and gals for help!

I am  as -e-l!

 

[Al]

I don't believe that changing OS's can be the cause for your getting spam.

You have either signed up for something/s that the place you signed up for sold off your info to spammers.  Or do you have web pages somewhere on the internet?  There are BOTs out there that scan for this information in HTML pages.

I'm sure there are other ways spammers can get ahold of information, those are just the two that come to my mind at the moment.

[Paddy]

Tonye, what email program are you using and how do you have your filters set? Mail is apparently quite good at filtering spam - Entourage works fine for me, but I don't get much junk. I have filters set so that anything that isn't addressed to me personally ends up in a "Junk" folder, which I check occasionally.

I am absolutely scrupulous about preventing it in the first place - my primary email address is NEVER used to sign up for anything (and I usually don't sign up for anything either) and I also don't use my primary addy online - on web sites or message boards. I also never register anything I don't have to - including software.

The best way I know of getting rid of spam and starting over - get a new email address. Your ISP should be willing to do this for you. Some of them even allow you to do it online. Then just send out an email to everyone in your address book or whoever you want to have your new address and voila - at least for a while. And if you're extremely careful with that new address, then you may find you don't start getting junk again. Some ISP's are much better than others too - ATTBI seems pretty good - I'd imagine having an AOL or Hotmail address would be a spam-magnet of the first order, simply because sending stuff to those domains is likely to be more profitable for the spammers (more customers).

Also, don't ever, ever, ever reply to those "remove me from your email list" options that so many spammers use. They won't remove you - they'll just know they have a "live one" and add you to every mailing list in creation. Those lists are sold and resold - replying once or twice could be all it takes to get you on lots of lists! Bouncing spam almost NEVER works because they aren't using real return email addresses. They're all spoofed.

You can also report spam through spamcop.net - at least then your complaints have a reasonable chance of landing on the actual sending ISP's desk, though of course, some of them couldn't care less, as they exist almost solely to serve spammers. However, if it is a real ISP, serving the general public rather than the spamming industry, like ATTBI or AOL etc., then they will care, and take action against the offender(s). Spamming is against the terms of service rules for most reputable ISP's.

Hope that helps a bit - there are other solutions - some here have bits of software that they find helpful, but I've never needed to go that route, since becoming zealously careful about my email addy and what I do with it.

[Bruce_F]

Tonye,

Just to let you know... you're not alone. We all get spam email to some extent. Like Al said, your email address is being harvested somehow.

If your ISP doesn't have any links that explain spam and how to deal with it, you can visit my ISP home site and check out their Anti-Spam links.

Go to: Harbornet Spam Page

I still get more spam than real email from friends and family. OS X Mail will sometimes let the spam through the filters and then puts my expected messages into the Junk Mail folder.

go figure...

[cmteng]

Tonye,

You are not alone. Check out this statistics from my Eudora

Received Email

    136 messages today
    235 messages yesterday
     84 average per day
 79,266 messages total

I got more than 150 spam email a day but I can't do anything because if I change my email address. Extension Overload users won't be able to  reach me.

For me, everyday is      

[Gregg]

Write your congressman/woman. Although, even with laws against unsolicited faxes, we still get them at our office.

In the meantime, try Spamfire (if there is an OSX version).

I get very little spam at home, and Spamfire catches the "legitmate spam" from organizations/companies I have authorized to e-mail me stuff (including Apple). I usually don't "rescue" them (the messages), though I could.

[Spartacus]

The same here.

I get between 50 and 100 junk (spam) mails a day.

But ever since I am using Jaguar it doesn't bother me much since Mail's Junk filter works exellent. Only once in a while it doesn't recognize a junk mail, but that's no problem (it constantly learns).

Tonye,
am I right assuming that you're still using OS X 10.1.x? If so, your version of Mail unfortunately does not have that junk filter, yet. That send back button never worked for me either (always receiver a mailer demon message).

[tacit]

Your ISP does nothing because the spam you are receiving is not your ISP's fault. Your ISP has no way to stop it.

You can complain to the ISP of the computer where the spam came from, or the ISP of the Web sitebeing advertised. *THEY* can shut down the spammer. Your ISP can't.

[lvixen]

I have to agree with other posters. I have been using (Apple's) Mail since I upgraded. By utilizing the learn feature, after a couple of weeks of it learning, it does an excellent job of weeding out the trash. When it seems that most if not all of your junk is being rerouted, turn off the learning part and it will just move them to a file. Then you can occasionally check to make sure it didn't grab anything it shouldn't have, and delete the whole bunch. I love it, between that and Safari's pop-up blocker, life is pretty good!

[Xairbusdriver]

Don't give up! Paddy gave you some great info about getting (at least) an additional addy. Save your primary one for friends who don't use a PC (their address books are sitting ducks for junk address harvestors and virus).

I'm not on X but have heard a lot of good reports about Mails 'learning' skills. Give it a try if you aren't using it.

Report all you want, just don't expect any visible response.

Take control of your own mail box, don't expect anyone else to be as concerned about it. Try Spamfire, whatever that is. I (and especially my wife) very much like POPMonitor. I don't use Eudora for filtering much anymore because POPMonitor does it better and I can also read most any message before it is ever downloaded by Eudora. Matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I actually got anything in Eudora that I didn't find in the Trash already. Only way I know is that the Trash icon has the notice on it that there is something UNread in there. And that doesn't happen more than once a week since I started using POPMonitor.

Another overlook user-control is a Host file. I'll bet there is one somewhere in that Unix labrynth. All you need is a program to edit it. Probably can be done in the Terminal, but look for some program with a Mac interface, after all, even Jag is running on a Mac!

Monitor which of your secondary addresses is generating the most SPAM. Dump it when it gets out of control (whatever your limit is). If your ISP doesn't allow aliases (for secondary addresses) get another ISP. And then tell them why you left! Might even help if you tell them you are planning on leaving, they just might be a little friendlier, but don't hold your breath.

Jim C.

[Creek]

Eudora's version 6 (beta) has a spam (called "junk" in Eudora) filter that, for me, has removed virtually all spam coming my way.

[WDL]

Like Greg, I get almost no spam. My ISP uses Spamfire and each customer can choose the level of filtering they want.

In a year, I can't recall it "quarantining" more than four or five suspect messages that were spam. It did quarantine messages from Apple, Iomega etc which I chose to accept.

Very careful about where I use my email address - and I never give suppliers permission to - "would you like to receive updates or info from related suppliers?"

WDL  

[Thomas S. England]

I have to put in a good word for Earthlink, my ISP.

They have a free service called Spaminator which blocks about 50 - 80 pieces of spam directed at me every day. I can check out what they have blocked online and I have never found anything there which I wanted to receive.

Of course, in addition to that, I use Entourage, with its' filtering and I have a Rule set up to delete a few stubborn repeat offenders.

I read the other day that 80% of mail addressed to AOL users these days is spam. The problem is serious, threatening the system itself, I would say.