Guide | How To How to Report Spam

[Chiron]

I've created a guide about How to Report Spam.

Please check it out and leave any feedback in the comments section of the site.

Thanks.

 

[LaserWraith]

I get an 403 error. Oops...

 

[Chiron]

I get an 403 error. Oops...

Strange, it works for me.

 

[Watasha]

Works for me too.

 

[LaserWraith]

All right, it is ok now. I guess it was just temporary.

 

[bogdan]

This is a useful guide. I usually let google's spam filter do it's job or create a filter myself to avoid spam. I never report spam. Maybe this should change.

 

[Chiron]

This is a useful guide. I usually let google's spam filter do it's job or create a filter myself to avoid spam. I never report spam. Maybe this should change.

That's the kind of attitude I'm trying to promote.

The more people that report spam the better it will be for everyone. Letting spam filters do the work is really ignoring the problem, in my opinion. (Especially when you can set up your email client to forward the spam automatically.)
:ange:

 

[bogdan]

Especially when you can set up your email client to forward them automatically

That is what I had in mind, but this excludes US-CERT since it seems (from your article) that hey only want spam "that is attempting to acquire passwords, credit card information, or other sensitive information" and i don't what to I won't manually filter my spam or spam US-CERT

 

[Chiron]

Especially when you can set up your email client to forward them automatically

That is what I had in mind, but this excludes US-CERT since it seems (from your article) that hey only want spam "that is attempting to acquire passwords, credit card information, or other sensitive information" and i don't what to I won't manually filter my spam or spam US-CERT

Yes, that's correct.

I forward mine to knujon and spam@uce.gov. Sometimes I also use SpamCop, but I've had some problems using it, as I mentioned in the article. (The problem arises when ISPs forward the complaints to the spammer)

 

[HeffeD]

Nice article Chiron!

I used to be pretty proactive about spam a few years ago.

There was a pretty amazing spam filter called G-Lock Spam Combat that was the most powerful application I could find, and I think I tried all of them. It had bayesian, regex, and white/blacklist filtering, as well as IP blocking by Country, and something they called a Complex Filter which was a bit of a scripting language. All together it was pretty astonishing what this thing could do.

I did a lot of beta testing for G-Lock and a lot of my Regex spam filters ended up making their way into the shipped product. I even had a few honeypot accounts that I used to train my bayesian filter. (a feature they added at my suggestion) :blush:

At that time, the only type of spam reporting were applications that would send a canned "Hey, cut it out!" type email response to the spammers email address. Which of course, you know how successful that will be! I think SpamCop was just starting out.

I think you can still download and use SpamCombat, but I don't think it is in development any longer.

These days, like Bogdan, I tend to let Google's spam filters take care of it, which it does very well I have to admit...

I'll have to re-read your article and start reporting my spam. :angel:

 

[Chiron]

I just updated the article.

Let me know what you think.

 

[HeffeD]

I like the changes, but there is possibly one thing you could add. (Whether to this article or your how to avoid spam article)

It's best to have your email reader set to not display images. (If you open a spam email by accident, let's say...) If a spammer places an image in the spam email, it will get downloaded from the spammers server, and all they need to do is check their server logs to know which email addresses are active. Pretty much guaranteeing your address will be spammed relentlessly.

 

[Chiron]

I like the changes, but there is possibly one thing you could add. (Whether to this article or your how to avoid spam article)

It's best to have your email reader set to not display images. (If you open a spam email by accident, let's say...) If a spammer places an image in the spam email, it will get downloaded from the spammers server, and all they need to do is check their server logs to know which email addresses are active. Pretty much guaranteeing your address will be spammed relentlessly.

This is already mentioned in the article about how to avoid spam.

If you don't think it comes off that way then please let me know and I'll change it.

Thanks.

 

[HeffeD]

This is already mentioned in the article about how to avoid spam.

If you don't think it comes off that way then please let me know and I'll change it.

Thanks.

It does come off that way quite well, sorry about that... My brain must have been on autopilot when I read that article.