How Can I Stop Getting Spammed by the Same Company?

[Fabian Lord]

Hi everyone...i really need help (so my Wife keeps telling me)

For some reason, over the last 3 weeks i receive about 2 or 3 emails everyday from the same company offering software for knocked down prices.
I have no interest in their offers.

I have blocked their email address several times in my POPmail account but what the company seems to do is set up a couple of new domain names each day & email from those. I'm sure the reason is because they keep getting blocked by angry email recipients.

Normally, what i'd do is:
1) Wait to see if it's a one-off Spam email
2) If not, i reply to unsubscribe
3) Then i do a Whois on their URL and email the domain name holder to ask them to stop,
4) Then contact the nameserver company they're using, report it as spam abuse & ask them to prevent any further emails to me from their servers.

When i open the full email header it shows the following but i can't make head or tale of it....any ideas how i can stop receiving their emails.....really pulling my hair out...these guys are annoying me now :


Return-Path: <no-reply@computercodelock.com>
Received: from imp-6.mail.abcde.sys (12.39.115.247) by mail-8.uk.abcde.com (8.0.023)
id 49DB1A4E170EFC13 for tommy.zoom@abcde.co.uk; Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:26:19 +0200
Message-ID: <49DB1A4E170EFC13@mail-8-uk.mail.abcde.sys> (added by postmaster@mail-8.uk.abcde.com)
Received: from localhost ([98.126.2.90])
by imp-6.mail.abcde.sys with
id AASG1c01L1wXFnm01ASGHx; Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:26:19 +0200
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:26:57 +0000
From: Dirt Cheap Software <no-reply@computercodelock.com>
To: tommy.zoom <tommy.zoom@abcde.co.uk>
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Dirt Cheap Software presents you, tommy.zoom, your da?=
=?UTF-8?Q?ily DIRT, 50 =25 savings today on new titles?=
X-Mailer: sxmailerd/0.5
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="---=_NextPart_JHW9_5485_SWF"
X-Uid: 3aQfQgqadhIdgfB9ozNFFQSIV1TdxYKWg2IQU7Npuj5mcyJVqh MZZ

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by Tommy Zoom

Normally, what i'd do is:
1) Wait to see if it's a one-off Spam email
2) If not, i reply to unsubscribe
3) Then i do a Whois on their URL and email the domain name holder to ask them to stop,
4) Then contact the nameserver company they're using, report it as spam abuse & ask them to prevent any further emails to me from their servers.

Tommy, I can't help you decipher the header (although Google probably knows someone who could...), but I can tell you this:

You, my fine feathered friend, are a spammer's dream!

Step 1 - Good move. Just delete the junk and wait to see if it comes back.

Step 2 - Bad move. You've just verified that the message reached a live and active email address, which makes it much more valuable. Spammers make a lot of money selling lists to other spammers, and a list of active addresses can be worth 10 times what a standard scraped list goes for. In other words, you guarantee yourself more spam.

Step 3 - A waste of time. Asking the spammer not to spam you? If they gave a rat's ass, they wouldn't be spamming in the first place.

Step 4 - Another waste of time, along with being annoying to the nameserver. Their business has nothing to do with monitoring and controlling who sends email to whom. Even if they boot the domain, the spammer will be back with a new one (as you've already noticed).

A better course of action, IMO, would be...

Step 1 - Same. Delete and monitor.

Step 2 - Report the spam to your ISP, either via the 'spam' button or by forwarding the email complete with headers to the abuse address if there is one.

DO NOT CLICK THE UNSUBSCRIBE LINK.

Step 3 - Look for a unique name or phrase common to the spam email, and set up a filter in your email program to delete or trash the mail as it arrives. Done properly, you'll never see the spam unless you check a junk folder.

Optional - If the company is a persistent annoyance, contact support for your ISP or domain host and ask for help.

HTH

[Fabian Lord]

Thanks John for your lengthy & detailed answer.
I realise i shot myself in the foot by replying to the blighters.
I'll get on to my ISP & see what they can do.

[Jeff Henshaw]

John has got it covered 100% in his reply.

Spam can both frighten and intimidate people who are not used to receiving it.

I have many domain names, which leaves me open to (email) harvesting.

Sometimes I get hundreds of emails sent to one or more of my email accounts due to these bad guys and scum bags.

The secret is not to panic, but to ban them by using your email provider's conventional methods and create filters as explained in the John's earlier post. There are however, other methods available too. Do a search and try and test various potential solutions. Some of them may though result in your clients having to take an additional step involving email confirmation, before they can contact you - a bit like signing up to an autoresponder.

You will normally clear your email of SPAM within 48 to 60 hours using conveventional techniques.

Will the SPAM come back - probably - it's par for the course. Another time spam will infest a different email account. It's part of Internet life. Know how to deal with it and shrug it off - If you are intending to market using the Internet - SPAM will probably be the least of your on-line worries.

Unless, of course, one is personally accused of sending SPAM - and that's another story.

Just my thoughts,
Jeff Henshaw.

[edhan]

The most common method spammers are using is phishing with your other's email as sender.

I keep receiving emails that come with my own email addresses as sender. Imagine that I am using them to spam myself.

Fortunately for me, my spam filter is able to detect and directly move them in spam folder and get deleted.

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by Tommy Zoom

For some reason, over the last 3 weeks i receive about 2 or 3 emails everyday from the same company offering software for knocked down prices.
I have no interest in their offers.

Is that all? There are a couple websites from which I receive 25-50 messages per day! The body is the same, but the subject and sender may vary (not always though!).

I set up a filter to mark them as junk as they come in.

I can't help but wonder if things such as this are being done by their competitors to try to damage their reputation or get their sites taken down or something.

[rivulguy]

One thing that helps me is to set up in a filter (in Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) that sends all mail to trash or junk unless the sender is in my address book. This means most of my mail goes to trash automatically. I still have to look at the trash, but at least I don't have to move all those messages it.

[MemberWing]

Signup for gmail and press "spam" button every time you receive email from them.
Although i doubt you'll ever will.
Gmail has the world's best by far spam filtering.

Gleb

[edhan]

Originally Posted by Dan C. Rinnert

Is that all? There are a couple websites from which I receive 25-50 messages per day! The body is the same, but the subject and sender may vary (not always though!).

I set up a filter to mark them as junk as they come in.

I can't help but wonder if things such as this are being done by their competitors to try to damage their reputation or get their sites taken down or something.

In a way it does damage the reputation in terms of spam blocking blacklist organisation as your domain might be blocked and those companies using blacklist organisation, your emails will not be reached.

[Rob Whisonant]

Use a whitelist and a keyed subject line for first time emailers.

Whitelist everyone you want to receive email from.

On your websites tell people to include something you can key on in the subject line the first time they email you. Explain about the spam problem.

For example. [Diet Info Request] rest of subject line.

Tell them to don't forget the brackets.

So far it has worked like a charm.

Re's
Rob Whisonant

[Paul Myers]

Tommy,

Reporting it is, in this case, almost certain to be pointless. That IP address (unless you messed with the numbers in the headers the way you messed with the domains) is an ATT IP in the US midwest. Somewhere in the Ft Smith, Arkansas area. Probably a compromised machine that's part of a botnet.

Ask your ISP to use the Spamhaus SBL/XBL combination list. Get a trainable spam filter for your email client. (The keywords to search for are Bayesian and the name of your emailer.) Train the thing.

Get used to some spam getting past it anyway.


Paul

[kindsvater]

You web host might have SpamAssassin where you can set some filters that might take care of this.

[Ilse]

I am getting hundreds/day. Really frustrating.. Is there any good spam blocker you can attach to Microsoft outlook?

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by edhan

In a way it does damage the reputation in terms of spam blocking blacklist organisation as your domain might be blocked and those companies using blacklist organisation, your emails will not be reached.

The other thing I've noticed (and I received another batch of about 25 spams this morning, all promoting the same website) is that, when I check the WHOIS on the domains being promoted, they are registered through GoDaddy or a GoDaddy reseller. Being that GoDaddy has a reputation for shutting down websites for "spamming", it makes me wonder if there are people targeting websites that they don't like or belong to competitors and sending out spams (50-100 over the course of a single day is certainly excessive!) in an effort to get those sites shut down by GoDaddy.

I can't help but think a "real" spammer would be trying to get their messages out to as many people as possible and not waste server time sending dozens of messages to the same recipients on a single day.

I could be wrong, of course, but it seems fishy to me.

[actionplanbiz]

y not just email him back and just ask him to take you off his list?

[InternetMarketingIQ]

Kill the email address then move on.

On any given site I have a half dozen email addresses going... and I only use certain addresses for certain tasks. And when the spam builds up I just kill it and move on.

I get tons of spam and stopped trying to fight it a long time ago.

[MichaelHiles]

Ever since I bought one of these Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall - Comprehensive Spam and Virus Protection I have radically reduced the amount of spam that gets through. I realize that this solution is out of the price range for most people, but if you can ever possibly afford it or convince your email provider to get one, it's awesome.

[Fabian Lord]

Originally Posted by MemberWing

Signup for gmail and press "spam" button every time you receive email from them.
Although i doubt you'll ever will.
Gmail has the world's best by far spam filtering.

Gleb

Didn't know that...will try that one definitely.