Inbox stuffed with dick pill adds

[Tubetec]

Im just wondering , have I been very lucky all along not to be recieving adds for Viagra , in the last 24 hours I seem to have made it  onto a mailing list that has seen a fresh email in my inbox on average every two hours . Typically its a female sender trying to offer me a boost in the bedroom . The one thing I did notice was this mail was chained to others with similar usernames linked to my service and email provider.   

Is the only safe assumption now that this continues indefinately , with no way to stop it , ever ?
I dont go about entering my email on spurious sites , and really it looks like the fault here lays with the service/email provider.
Its a former state owned company that privatised about 20 years ago , floated on the stock exchange , many many people were hoodwinked into investing large chunks of their life savings and yep you guessed it , then chief executives(who also own a large chunk of radio and tv media here)  simply waited or even helped  the price to drop through the floor ,then bought back the shares in the  company  for 10 cent on the dollar .  They made billions by ripping off the public ,and the government of the time facilitated it because it recieved huge financial contributions from the heavy weight bussiness men involved  . Same dumb ass company issued the phone book here on cd at one point ,  wasnt long before someone managed to reverse engineer it and pinch the entire data base and sell it off , as a result  old and vulnerable people are getting taken in by confidence/banking  scams  over the phone . In recent years now the government itself is acting like it owns you and your data , is there anybody standing up for the public interest anymore ?

 

[Tubetec]

Im still searching for a solution to this ,  I searched 'remove viagra emails permanently' and almost anything I click just  leads me  back to another store trying to sell more of it .

I dont have a clue how to forensically track the source of these emails and Im not pointing the finger of blame anywhere .
If there is anyone here who knows how to start to deal with this more effectively I'd be very interested in hearing about it . Ive meticulasly removed all the nuisance adds to spam ,then thrashed them , but still at intervals of around two hours my inbox get hit with more or less the same add from a new email address and spam filter cant catch it . I did read about using keywords to activate the spam filter , but the adds shape shift enough to get around that it seems .  Hitting 'Unsubcribe' on any of these sites is also a major no no, as it just flags the email as active . 

 

[JohnRoberts]

never click on spam... thats how they know you are a valid email address, you have met the enemy and it is your mouse.

Just say nothing... to them.
======

I have long proposed a simple way to squash spam email... just charge some small nominal postage fee for emails. Even as little as 1/100 of a cent would make spam uneconomic to send.

JR

 

[iomegaman]

never click on spam... thats how they know you are a valid email address, you have met the enemy and it is your mouse.

Just say nothing... to them.
======

I have long proposed a simple way to squash spam email... just charge some small nominal postage fee for emails. Even as little as 1/100 of a cent would make spam uneconomic to send.

JR

Yea...great idea, wish there was also a "do not call list" charge that could eliminate fake robo callers...

Got one the other day...sometimes if you wait through the message you can push #2 to have your number removed...no such luck...

This call was "Social Security Adminstration"....saying my account was on hold for suspicious activity...so I waited for an "agent"...

He began the call saying "This is social security administration agent" and waited for my response (thick foreign accent)...

I said "You are NOT the Social Security Administration please remove my phone from this call list"...(verbatim)

His immediate reaction:

"I am the motherf**king social security administration you motherf**ker, f**k YOU" and then he hung up...

So I guess even scam callers have bad days...

 

[JohnRoberts]

I have an effective strategy to thwart most junk calls. When your phone rings, pick up the handset but do not say anything... the robo callers ASSume they reached an answering machine and hang up.

Actual humans calling you will say something again after the silent pause... it works for me.

Even human phone scammers often use auto dialers that wait until a human is confirmed on the line  to connect the scammer.....

JR 

 

[Tubetec]

I found how to set up an email filter , for starters I just have it check the  subject ,if it contains viagra its disgarded straight away .
might also be a possibility of redirecting it ,but Im unsure of where I could safely send it for disposal ,or if that would only end up spreading the mess further.  Looks like some of the messages dont mention the substance by name in the subject ,so my counter measures will only head off some items  temporarily at best .

 

[weiss]

I found how to set up an email filter , for starters I just have it check the  subject ,if it contains viagra its disgarded straight away .
might also be a possibility of redirecting it ,but Im unsure of where I could safely send it for disposal ,or if that would only end up spreading the mess further.  Looks like some of the messages dont mention the substance by name in the subject ,so my counter measures will only head off some items  temporarily at best .

either that or you can filter sender name or content that is mentioned inside the email itself. another way is to block the sender's ip but i was not successful trying this on my mac yet.
and never ever click on spam. just let it rest. i deleted most of my earlier spam filters because there was no spam mail anymore from that time.

 

[PRR]

Do NOT "forward it on". YOU (and your mailserver) get a bad reputation.

You are about 20 years behind the times in spam-filtering.

No, they rarely say the drug in the subject, or the body, and there are other drugs and products.

Filtering on sender is futile because no ISP can allow many spammers to send through their systems, so the sender path changes frequently.

Some ISPs are more lax. Somebody maintains black-lists of probably-spam mailservers. Again these often fail.

Some client-side tricks like ThunderBird's Baysean Filtering can be better than nothng, but you have to "train" it, and it can be awful dumb.

Server-side filtering can be very good. The admins maintain the filters based on the LOTS of mail which passes through their systems.

This varies. My university mailbox tried to flag spam, but just one tech against armies of spammers, he was often days late in updating the rule-set.

I am 99.44% thrilled with my gMail boxes. I get a ham/spam mix-up about once a month, maybe less. Last one was a shipping tracking email from a bookseller, and I almost missed it-- this false-spam has been very rare even for spam-like emails like mass mailings. gMail has mass access to millions of accounts, and they love their algorithms. If a million copies of the same thing come to millions of people who do not know each other, gMail gets a clue. There's dozens of other hints a smart algorithm can suss-out.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I found how to set up an email filter , for starters I just have it check the  subject ,if it contains viagra its disgarded straight away .
might also be a possibility of redirecting it ,but Im unsure of where I could safely send it for disposal ,or if that would only end up spreading the mess further.  Looks like some of the messages dont mention the substance by name in the subject ,so my counter measures will only head off some items  temporarily at best .

spammers evolve so the filter rules needed to evolve too.

safest is to white list friends and acceptable email sources but this doesn't work for business email, and can be a PIA if not already on a friend's white list.

I routinely see new phishing attempts at least once a week. When in doubt do not click... you can usually search the link domain and find out it is already identified as a scam.

If your email allows you to see the full source data it can be pretty obvious when scammers are pretending to be someone they are not.

Years ago my company emails were temporarily black listed, because my internet provider was sharing mail servers between multiple customers and some other customer using the shared mail server was being bad.  That only happened once and not since.

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Thanks for the update Paul 
I never actually had unsolicited mail like this before , Id get the odd unwanted email from some company Id been in touch with over something , but as soon as I unsubscribed that was the end of it . This is all brand new to me .

I got what your saying about providers abillity to block varying to some degree.
It does look like things have slipped at my providers end  and maybe it takes time for them to patch things up ,

I guess lots of people have been left trying to hold water in a sieve when it comes to spam , a not inconsidderable part or their work morning is sorting out the inbox .

That old Jack Lemmon/Al  Pacino /Ed Harris movie Glengarry/Glenross comes to mind , it was all about the 'leads'  , hasnt changed all that much except the 'leads' are there for the taking online nowadays and the cold callers could be in Timbuktu for all you know .

My home number has been ex-directory from day one, that must have saved me a million and one calls , the odd one still gets through ,  typically I'll first ask where they got my number , then tell them I dont wish to recieve any further calls ,and then ask for my number to be removed from their system .  The operator may need to adjust their headset volume to my SPL  , but I never resort to making personal remarks of anykind . I think the extra distortion you get from speaking loudly down a phone adds urgency and impact to the words ,normally I get a mumbled apology and  thats the end of the call .
Just playing  'Dumb Waiter' is probably a better strategy alright John ,especially if calls are  a more regular occurence and you dont want the  spikes in blood pressure .
My theory is if you let them know your not giving one single millimeter , although they probably wont  wipe you off the database  , they might just add  a footnote for their next work colleague who dials you up  saying 'dont waist your time with him'  ;D

 

[JohnRoberts]

Thanks for the update Paul 
I never actually had unsolicited mail like this before , Id get the odd unwanted email from some company Id been in touch with over something , but as soon as I unsubscribed that was the end of it . This is all brand new to me .

I got what your saying about providers abillity to block varying to some degree.
It does look like things have slipped at my providers end  and maybe it takes time for them to patch things up ,

I guess lots of people have been left trying to hold water in a sieve when it comes to spam , a not inconsidderable part or their work morning is sorting out the inbox .

That old Jack Lemmon/Al  Pacino /Ed Harris movie Glengarry/Glenross comes to mind , it was all about the 'leads'  , hasnt changed all that much except the 'leads' are there for the taking online nowadays and the cold callers could be in Timbuktu for all you know .

My home number has been ex-directory from day one, that must have saved me a million and one calls , the odd one still gets through ,  typically I'll first ask where they got my number , then tell them I dont wish to recieve any further calls ,and then ask for my number to be removed from their system . 

just like I wouldn't respond to spam, I don't talk to robo callers. You just confirm they have a live number.

The operator may need to adjust their headset volume to my SPL  , but I never resort to making personal remarks of anykind . I think the extra distortion you get from speaking loudly down a phone adds urgency and impact to the words ,normally I get a mumbled apology and  thats the end of the call .
Just playing  'Dumb Waiter' is probably a better strategy alright John ,especially if calls are  a more regular occurence and you dont want the  spikes in blood pressure .

My blood pressure is fine, and even better when I hear the click of them disconnecting without me saying a word. Some persistent robo dialers will try multiple times to reach me... We have a local election tomorrow so robo callers are busy.  Hint when they have a political survey (cough) they are just trying influence you with leading questions  (at least they did the last time I listened to one years ago. )

My theory is if you let them know your not giving one single millimeter , although they probably wont  wipe you off the database  , they might just add  a footnote for their next work colleague who dials you up  saying 'dont waist your time with him'  ;D

A friend of mine (in the US) has had some success in getting money from robo callers (violating do not call lists). IIRC he only gets a couple hundred dollars at a pop but the satisfaction is more significant. I think he may use small claims court or something like that. I do not have the time and effort to do that... I find the clicks when they hang up on me satisfying.

JR

PS: Surveys and political polls are exempt from do not call laws, so once again the swamp dwellers have their own rules. 

 

[Tubetec]

Seems everything is back to normal now again , there wasnt any pillmail in the last few hours , I dont know if its the filters I put in or if the providers sorted things out , fingers crossed thats the end of it .

I did get contacted  by RedC  poll recently(the main one here in Ireland) ,I didnt even wait to hear what it was about just ,no thanks ,good bye !

 

[cyrano]

Interesting related read:

https://www.attejuvonen.fi/dont-send-email-from-your-own-server/

 

[pucho812]

is there something you're trying to tell us? ;D

 

[boji]

I am 99.44% thrilled with my gMail boxes

+1

Glengarry/Glenross : Know your ABC's...    ;D

Ran into issue with gmail as my account was full (They said that would never happen).  "Send-to" feature works and detection is great.

As for the MS Outlook whack-a-mole, if receive notifications are on then the fun's just getting started.
You doin the domain block disco?  Your mail admin awol?

 

[PRR]

gMail used to be "practically unlimited" The quota went up faster than _my_ usage.

In the last 5 years the quota has been stagnant. Meanwhile better cellphones with higher-MP cameras fuel a flood of cute cat pictures emailed to everybody. Oddly, mailboxes filled up. Oddly, Google is happy to rent you a bigger mailbox. We can't complain TOO much. It was a good free ride while it lasted.

However the limits seem inconsistent. A recent link says "15GB". My old-old (from when you needed an invitation) account seems to be 120GB (count my digits). OTOH an academic-contract account is about 420GB (I think my ex-school pays for this but not list price).
__________________________________________________
news-bytes:

Google... claimed to block 99.9 percent of spam, phishing, and malware ... the share of legitimate mail that inadvertently ends up in spam folders stays below 0.05 percent.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/06/gmail-is-now-blocking-100-million-more-spam-emails-a-day-thanks-to-tensorflow/

About 14.5 billion spam emails are sent every single day.
Spammers receive 1 reply for every 12,500,000 emails sent.
Spam earns senders around $7,000 per day.
https://www.propellercrm.com/blog/email-spam-statistics

 

[Brian Roth]

There are perhaps a few folks here "of a certain age" who might understand this.

Sign up in the USA for various Medicare options is now in effect.  Once again, I have to leave my phone "off" and go "on" for a short time several times a day to check messages  In my voicemail are multiple robo recordings......most captured at "...dial 2 to talk to a licensed insurance agent...."

Delete....Delete.....delete....oh... a real call from Mom....delete....delete...oh a business call.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Bri

 

[Brian Roth]

And this one sticks in my craw....it's been discussed here before.

Variety of emails saying they hacked my computer when I was (as if!!) watching porno and have video in a split screen of me spanking my monkey along with the video I allegedly watched in the other window.  Sorry assholes...  no vid cam looking at me.

Latest ones have been attaching PDF files for me to open...I don't!

It's now up to $1500 USD in Bitcoin "or else".  I wonder if the FBI would even care about attempted extortion.....

Bri

And so much for Bitcoin in a real world usage....it's just mafia bullshit.

 

[cyrano]

is there something you're trying to tell us? ;D

Not really.

Some might adopt the idea of running your own mailserver to renedy the spam problem and it isn't a real fix either,

I've ran mailservers for a living for a long time, so I understand the spam thing. I don't get much spam. I avoid hotmail. I don't have many people I mail with that use the Windows address book. Both help.

The only spam I get these days, is for investment funds, bitcoin and health care insurance. Maybe four or five a day, max. All aimed at US citizens. Oh, one local one, from an art gallery. But that's once a month or so...

But I use throwaway addresses from YOPmail for any registration that might be dodgy. Helps a lot, as a lot of companies seem to sell their lists. Stupid buggers...

 

[Tubetec]

My policy on filling out forms government ,or otherwise  has always been to leave email and phone number blank , if they want to contact me they have to send it in writing  by post the old fashioned way , the 80cent cost of postage serves as its own junk mail filter.
In the light of what our government has allowed the big social media companies to do to our data , and indeed how government departments themselves are now processing our data without proper legal underpinning or proper public consultation ,Im very very glad I didnt voulenteer  one single extra bit of data that I wasnt required to  . I've steadfastly avoided or refused to  consent to biometric  processing by government departments only to find my basic constitutional  and human rights are being undermined .

The vast majority of the 'Woke' generation  walked into the arms of  social  media without the slightest concern for their data .
Whats so 'woke' about that Barrack ?