Manual Spam Control

You were warned about letting your e-mail address get out, and you held it tightly, maybe even due to bitter experience. Unfortunately, you posted to a mailing list, a USENET newsgroup, or one of your friends let it out on a forward. So now, "You have SPAM" sounds more realistic than "You've got mail." This is one thing you could do besides getting a new e-mail address or tuning up your filter.

The statistics that SPurious and Annoying Mail (a more jeneral definition than Unsolicited Commercial E-mail, which dominates it) can jenerate are visible in the traffic for (you might need to see groups.google.com for this), depending on availability of your ISP's news-server--mine haz none). It's up there in the fifty thousand per day range, and that should not count what goes directly and only to ISPs that are letting it through. Want to contribute? This is what you must know. You cannot make and deliver personal replies without getting SPAM. Either that, or you cannot post without dedicating an account to mechanical call-backs. This is because it is beyond USENET or mailing lists to control harvesting that they cannot see. You do not need to post, either, if you would rather just watch fools like me put an e-mail address out into the public domain and in clear text. There may be moderators willing to let you post with a munged or mangled address, as long as you post a method of descrambling it (and even that may be negotiable). Ending an address with .invalid is compliant with an RFC (Request For Comments, pedantically not a standard, not that I am sure that standards for munging should be).

Who is spam control? In outlook, that is several steps:

Right-click on the message
Select properties.
Click on details.
Press CTRL-A, then CTRL-C.
Create Mail.
Click on the message body.
Press CTRL-V, SHIFT-INSERT or Edit/Paste.

That will deliver something like what you will see in that newsgroup above. That format is the standard, because some spam is more vicious, and that format, free of attachments, is deactivated for most users other than virus trackers. For fraud, the subject should begin with [phish]. For newsgroup postings, [usenet], and for e-mail, [email]. So, where does it go? That can be hard to identify. The most important abuse contact you can reach is at the source. Drop-boxes (for receiving replies) are imporant. Some spammers are promoting websites, too. That is relevant, and not always protected. Last time I checked, e-bay has a safe harbour policy, except for fraud, because that did not do their reputation any good. In most cases, it goes to an abuse contact at the lowest two levels of domain (one period in the address), and in the least recent header (they should be in reverse order of chronology). The one to follow this monograph would go to abuse@yahoo.com (the source) and abuse@hotmail.fr (the intended destination for replies).

Internet Service Providers, especially big ones or new ones, do not like being associated with SPAM, so I reserve postings to the group for ISPs that do not seem to be controlling it. For me, yahoo, hotmail, and gmail fall into a difficult category, because they are also popular with people who are avoiding spam (or just didn't Read The Fine Manual [RTFM]). They do not always seem to hav the personnel or out-bound filters required to avoid sending it.

Full subject of my example should go: [phish] Please get in touch with me.

I estimate that I only see one percent of the spam that is actually sent to me. It is extremely likely that the following is dealt-with and fabricated, and to what degree is anyone's guess. All I usually hav to look for is more than a hundred thousand dollars. If it is less than that, then maybe it is a virus or just an attempt to get my phone channel without a clue about what I am interested in.

DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
  s=ymail_nen1; d=yahoo.com;
  h=Received:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Message-ID;
  b=gQD3/bE0XkMsjDYElaPSivnISJzD6xwLtPNhXSVwJyqhu2ImNoZZuuaw14ugrSukmyyOFEyZdoHWpB5Mxc4OdTn8cGFZqKZCJY3Ul/e8uZdGCISE00uL5eCiuI9ezU31lKX/roXbKJB1G+9PsK4ZRFiY+IYqxIFJ7du41YcCsi8=;
Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:34:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Hope Paul <mr.hopepaul9@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: hopepual@hotmail.fr
Subject: Please get in touch with me.
To: Brewhaha@edmc.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-2016973087-1232807675=:70418"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-ID: <106742.70418.qm@web111202.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
 
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
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I have a new email address!You can now email me at: mr.hopepaul9@yahoo.com
 
 
 
- I am the manager at the bill and exchange department at BANK INTERNATIONAL DU BURKINA (B.I.B) here in Ouagadougou,Burkina Faso.In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$10.2m dollars ( USdollars)in an account that belonging to one of our foreign customer.Who died along with his entire family in monday, 31 july, 2000 in a plane crash in paris.Please visit this site that is one of the evidence the directors brought in other to swallow the money at the end of the day,http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless some body applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidlings and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery !
 that I now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.Please get in touch with me by email to enable us discuss further. you can reach me on my alternative emailaddress:E-mail(hopepual@hotmail.fr)Regards.Dear p/s reply this email thanksMR.HOPE PUAL(B.I.B)
 

--0-2016973087-1232807675=:70418
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
 
<div style="border: solid 1px #cccccc; width:448px; background-color:white; margin:10px 0px;";><table border=0 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width="448"><tr><td class=tablot background="http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/pim/gr/gr_announce_1.gif" valign=center height=57><big style="padding:10px;">I have a new email address!</big></td></tr></table><div style="padding:10px;">You can now email me at: <b>mr.hopepaul9@yahoo.com</b><br><br><span style="color:green;"></span><br><br>- <span style="color:green;">I am the manager at the bill and exchange department at BANK INTERNATIONAL DU BURKINA (B.I.B) here in Ouagadougou,Burkina Faso.In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$10.2m dollars ( USdollars)in an account that belonging to one of our foreign customer.Who died along with his entire family in monday, 31 july, 2000 in a plane crash in paris.Please visit this site that is one of the evidence the directors brought in other to swallow the money at the end of the day,http://news!
 .bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless some body applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidlings and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.Please get in touch with me by email to enable us discuss further. you can reach me on my alternative emailaddress:E-mail(hopepual@hotmail.fr)Regards.Dear p/s reply this email thanksMR.HOPE PUAL(B.I.B)</span></div><!
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