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Just a warning re spam email...

by sylviad
11 replies
Now this could just be coincidence, but I seriously doubt it.

Have you been receiving emails faking the "payment notification" subject line? These are the ones that make it look like it's from selling one of your own products, ie: Item #82 Notification of Payment".

I've been receiving these for weeks and always just trashed them after I saw that they were fake. Didn't bother reading, clicking, or anything else. (As I usually do with spam.)

Today, I finally went for the unsubscribe option... Stupid I know. But since I get these on a regular basis, I started to think maybe it was just some idiot who actually thought they could gain your trust and buy their product by faking you into opening the message.

Anyway... When I clicked "unsubscribe" link at the bottom, nothing happened, but I did notice it's entered as a Gmail account. I clicked a second time, thinking maybe I didn't get it right first time, and still nothing happened. So I decided to go to Google and complain about this spam using Gmail.

When I tried to access Google, IE said there was a connection problem. I tried several times and couldn't get into Google - not even Gmail.

So I thought, I wonder if anyone at the Forum has received this email - but I also wanted to see if another site would work in my browser. It didn't. I still got the connection error.

I switched to Firefox and got the same error with Yahoo - and Google - and the Forum.

I gave up, shut everything down and restarted by computer. Fortunately, everything worked fine - at least to the visible eye. Haven't seen anything nasty yet, but I'm holding my breath.

So take this as a warning - as I said it could be coincidence - but it's not worth the risk. Don't click on anything inside one of those fake payment emails. (in case you're dumb enough to try to unsubscribe, like me)

There's been a lot of talk lately by Warriors who don't see anything wrong with using this type of fake subject line. So for those of you who believe this is a good strategy for getting people to open your mail... guess what? It's not.

Pass it on.



Sylvia
#email #spam #warning
  • Profile picture of the author oortcloud
    Sylvia it seems like you get alot of spam and spend alot of time just manually deleting them. I get hardly and spam at all because I do several things to combat it. Have you considered doing something to deal with it ? There are alot of things you can do, it just depends on the situation and I am sure there are alot of tips out there.
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      You are right. 90% of my mail is spam. They are even grabbing my opt-in form email addresses by signing up.

      I had seriously thought of getting SpamArrest but it's not that big of a deal right now to just delete 50 of 60 emails.

      Since it looks better if you can supply an email address on your site, I don't see much option to prevent people from taking them. It would be quite a chore to go through all my pages to remove my email. I'd rather just change my email address. LOL!

      I've noticed that many other marketers use contact forms instead of supplying their email address, so that's the most likely direction I would go... if I can just figure out how to do that.

      Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeff Henshaw
        Yes spam is a pain in the ass!

        I've noticed that many other marketers use contact forms instead of supplying their email address, so that's the most likely direction I would go... if I can just figure out how to do that.
        I now tend to replace a clickable email address with, for example:

        jeff [AT] whateverdomain DOT com and suggest that readers replace [AT] with @ and DOT with . You need to explain the spaces too.

        This helps stop the harvesters, but the individual bad guys who find the page will be able to spam you regardless.

        I have installed a free helpdesk script which I am testing. It looks reasonable and seems to provide most of the basic functions, so I may use something like that in the future.

        Regards,
        Jeff.
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  • Profile picture of the author Carl Hughes
    for what I believe to be some of the best all around protection for you computer check out comodo dot com it is open source (I love open source) and it is i believe some of the best
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    www.cellphonetechtalk.com
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  • Profile picture of the author The Villa
    That was plain scary Sylvia. I hope your having clicked a link didn't unleash something evil into your computer system. Yep, maybe it's time for you to upgrade your protection.
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    Basic Blog Guide
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  • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
    Originally Posted by sylviad View Post

    Now this could just be coincidence, but I seriously doubt it.

    Have you been receiving emails faking the "payment notification" subject line? These are the ones that make it look like it's from selling one of your own products, ie: Item #82 Notification of Payment".

    I've been receiving these for weeks and always just trashed them after I saw that they were fake. Didn't bother reading, clicking, or anything else. (As I usually do with spam.)

    Today, I finally went for the unsubscribe option... Stupid I know. But since I get these on a regular basis, I started to think maybe it was just some idiot who actually thought they could gain your trust and buy their product by faking you into opening the message.

    Anyway... When I clicked "unsubscribe" link at the bottom, nothing happened, but I did notice it's entered as a Gmail account. I clicked a second time, thinking maybe I didn't get it right first time, and still nothing happened. So I decided to go to Google and complain about this spam using Gmail.

    When I tried to access Google, IE said there was a connection problem. I tried several times and couldn't get into Google - not even Gmail.

    So I thought, I wonder if anyone at the Forum has received this email - but I also wanted to see if another site would work in my browser. It didn't. I still got the connection error.

    I switched to Firefox and got the same error with Yahoo - and Google - and the Forum.

    I gave up, shut everything down and restarted by computer. Fortunately, everything worked fine - at least to the visible eye. Haven't seen anything nasty yet, but I'm holding my breath.

    So take this as a warning - as I said it could be coincidence - but it's not worth the risk. Don't click on anything inside one of those fake payment emails. (in case you're dumb enough to try to unsubscribe, like me)

    There's been a lot of talk lately by Warriors who don't see anything wrong with using this type of fake subject line. So for those of you who believe this is a good strategy for getting people to open your mail... guess what? It's not.

    Pass it on.



    Sylvia
    Sylvia:

    More than likely what happened is your internet connection went down the same time as you clicked the link. Were you able to access other sites just fine during this time?

    If you're worried about spyware, just goto Symantec and use their online scanner and see if you got any baddies in there.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    This is why I normally just blacklist the email and then trash it and go on... I do not even bother reading them. I do not get much junk mail at my main address but a few spam emails do come through from time to time.

    For some of my email accounts I use Mac's email app and it just sorts the junk for me and auto blacklist the junk. Thus I do not worry much with spam..

    Fake paypal emails I forward on to paypal for them to look into ...

    James
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  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    I just filter my emails. I don't like the email forms - too easy for these redirect hackers to get into your site from. I'd rather have spam in my box than hackers on my site.
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    Sal
    When the Roads and Paths end, learn to guide yourself through the wilderness
    Beyond the Path

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