Crazy Spam!

[alexh]

Hi all,

Has anyone else been getting a ridiculous amount of spam from online pharmacie(s)?

I have been getting several a day for the last couple of months or so and recently I believe I have been getting 10 or so per day! They change the URL in the e-mail but the actual website always looks identical so it's all coming from the same outfit. The spam filter cannot identify it as spam for obvious reasons.

I wonder if they are trying to get customers or just pissing people off!

[jdc2000]

The spam levels have increased recently, possibly due to the approaching holiday season.

[Train]

And this up and down cycle business is why I learned to use my online spam filter a long time ago. Maybe I see one or two a month now.

[alexh]

As I said in my post, filters don't work on this particular offender because they change the sent from, title and URL everyday however the different URL's all load the same web page. They are not trying to hide, all of their contact info is plainly visible on the web page but they are in Belize.

They must have applied for hundreds of web addresses.

I have Yahoo and outlook filter enabled.

[jdc2000]

Chances are, the displayed urls are not the url that the link is actually going to.

[Welshjim]

alexh--I use Comcast as an email provider. They use a spam filter, but only if you ask for it. Maybe ask your email provider.
It seems very efficient. I rarely see spam unless I go to the website--which is really not necessary since I read email in Outlook Express .
I also use Gmail as an email provider. They do not sem to try to filter out spam , but they are very efficient and accurate about putting it into a separate mail box.

[alexh]

I must not be explaining this clearly -

I'm no expert on spam filters but obviously they must have something consistent to identify the e-mail as spam. That can be the sender address, subject, or content. All of these are changed every day in the offending e-mails so the spam filter updates will be useless. My spam filters are working at both the ISP level and in outlook since there is lots of spam in the junk folders both at the ISP and outlook.

Also, the URL's in the e-mails are the actual URL's displayed by the web page and this web page always has the same content. The business is simply putting the same content on all of the URL's.

I'm not trying to make a big deal of this or find a solution, it's just that I have never seen such aggressive efforts to circumvent spam filters for months and months and with multiple e-mails every day. And this appears to be a "legitimate" business since the goal is to get people to order product from them via credit card. They even have a "report spam" link on the website!

[Welshjim]

alexh--It is entirely up to you whether you take advantage of what your email supplier offers, use a third party program (such as Mailwasher) or nothing.
This reference will help explain how antispam programs work.
http://spam.anti-spam-software.com/filter.htm
Some work quite well--like Mailwasher http://www.mailwasher.net/

[jdc2000]

Many spammers have a "report spam" link. That verifies that they have a valid e-mail address that they can send more spam to and sell to other spammers. Most spam is sent out by botnets, so you can't filter it out by blocking IP addresses or domains. The most efective spam rating and filtering software uses several techniques to try to verify that the sender is who they say they are. This can be quite effective in blocking most spam. The Exclaimer software for Exchange Server is one such effective filter. However, for web mail you are stuck with whatever spam filter your provider chooses to use unless you can set up your own e-mail client and filtering software as as secondary filter. Outlook's filter, when set at the highest level, is quite effective. I have one ISP whose spam filter lets almost all spam through while blocking almost all legitimate e-mail. Of course, I don't use that filter.