ANyone had this particular problem? ANy ideas how I can solve it without changing my email address?

You know these 'undeliverable mail' messages you get when you try to send to a non existent email? I am being inundated with these, from addresses I have never heard of and about emails I have never sent, all addresssed to different garbage names like Anitaxxxfyyysnn@ .... my email address. They all have attachments, none of which I have opened. I'm getting 20 a day.

I can't set a rule to filter the stuff oput because they are all from different places and all to different names. Any ideas??

SF its cause you've visited too many porn sites - just admit it...!! :book: lol







(j o k e) :)

You don't need to visit porn sites - modern spammers have much simpler ways of getting you.

If you have a named address - like Johnsmith@bogstandardISP.com they'll bombard you with rubbish. How?

They have little programmes that combine every known Christian name with every known surname and e-mail out millions of spams per day.

You can get around it - to a certain extent - by combining a few digits with your name: johnsmith3312 or something like that.

Not so easy to remember, and not quite so cool, but it can sometimes put those irritating, spamming f*ckpigs off the scent for a while.

Of course those with strange names which are not on the spammers database may also get less spams...which may be why so many chavs call their kids Pixiemay Chelsea Romeo Pizza Hut Jones, or whatever. It's an elaborate ploy to avoid their children being spammed.

I knew there must be a reason...

It has become apparent to me that if you use your name in the e-mail address you seem to get more spam than if you have a silly name.....I don't know if anyone else has noticed this or not but I have filters basically blocking anything remotely dodgey on my hotmail account and I hardly get any spam....my mum has the same filter and uses the net less than I and because she has had to use her name in the address (work stuff...proffessionalism n all that) she gets loads!

My hotmail account is constantly bombarded with spam - from free student loans to the newest technology in penis enlargment.
Most of it goes straight into my Junk Mail folder but occasionally, the odd piece of spam slips through into my inbox, which can be VERY annoying.

The thing about this stuff I'm getting is it isn't advertising anything, they are undelivered mail notifications but each has a .dat file attached, which has me thinking it could be a virus attack, and i am wondering if anyone knows of such a thing going on at the moment.

Is it a hotmail account you have SF? Cos I used to get a lot of those undelivered mail things in my hotmail account. And now, my password keeps changing and I keep having to reset it to access my own mail!
I think there's something seriously wrong with hotmail at the moment.

SF there are several viruses that do this, the most notable being the Netsky virus. Is your anti viral software up to date? It's just that Netsky attaches itself to your e-mail and spreads itself by sending "spam" from your e-mail account all over the Internet.

Incidentally, my e-mail address is my name, and I never get any junk at all, because I have Norton Internet Security Suite installed on my PC. It does everything (including stopping my Java buttons from working it would seem but I have considered it's worth the sacrifice). :)

SF there are several viruses that do this, the most notable being the Netsky virus. Is your anti viral software up to date? It's just that Netsky attaches itself to your e-mail and spreads itself by sending "spam" from your e-mail account all over the Internet.
:)

Ok I'll check that, but the problem (I think) is not so much that my machine is infected and sending out spam, but that I am receiving spam by the bucketload ( with these .dat attachments whatever they might be)

The .dat attachments are part of the virus....basically you are sending spam out from your PC, it isn't getting delivered, and it's bouncing back to you. It sounds like some sort of virus, so you need to update your anti-viral software and then run a virus scan. I would recommend something like Norton Internet Security as it has Anti-Viral software, a firewall, an ad blocker, and an "Anti Spam" facility which is very good. It doesn't cost that much either for what it is. Get thee to PC World!!

The .dat attachments are part of the virus....basically you are sending spam out from your PC, it isn't getting delivered, and it's bouncing back to you. It sounds like some sort of virus, so you need to update your anti-viral software and then run a virus scan. I would recommend something like Norton Internet Security as it has Anti-Viral software, a firewall, an ad blocker, and an "Anti Spam" facility which is very good. It doesn't cost that much either for what it is. Get thee to PC World!!

OK then! THe puzzling thing though is these failure notifications, they are telling me about failed deliveries to names and addresses that are not in my address book. So if I have sent them out it's a mystery to me where the names and addresses came from.

OK then! THe puzzling thing though is these failure notifications, they are telling me about failed deliveries to names and addresses that are not in my address book. So if I have sent them out it's a mystery to me where the names and addresses came from.

We are getting this at work at the moment. Failed deliveries to people we have never heard of.

We arent allowed to use personal email at work, and only send about 10 emails a week to clients - but we get about 20 bounced back emails !!!

We have the latest firewall thingy though as it was updated a few weeks back.

Are you using Windows XP if so when did you last run the update



I don’t get any spam

I have an email that I use to correspond with

When I go to a site where they ask form my email address I use another one just for them and it gets loads of the sh*t

It sounds as though you have a virus contact you’re ISP and let them know if you are using there email service they may fix it for you

I use XP & Hotmail & was getting the same as you SF, about 20 - 30 a day. A friend showed me how to block all emails from the address causing each particular piece of spam without opening the email & it now goes directly to my junk folder. It did take a bit of time though but I hardly get any now. There should be a facility on your hotmail account.

Also like Andrea said, your anti virus could probably do with an update. I'm using AVG at the mo which is really working well. My friend uses Norton & she has never had a problem.

Me thinks PC World beckons!

I think SF that the virus makes up addresses itself, if Blink were here I am sure he would know!!

You don't need to visit porn sites - modern spammers have much simpler ways of getting you.

.


I was kidding! :unsure:

My hotmail account is constantly bombarded with spam - from free student loans to the newest technology in penis enlargment.

PJ are you sure your ex hasn't been passing your details on to some professionals?


lol :wink_kiss

PJ are you sure your ex hasn't been passing your details on to some professionals?


lol :wink_kiss
Maybe. But I wonder why she thinks I need free student loans ;)

Maybe. But I wonder why she thinks I need free student loans ;)

............................. http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/36/36_11_6.gif (http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb001_ZNxuk151AYGB)

I'm pretty sure that the failed to deliver notices aren't always indicative of a virus on your PC sending out spam emails. It's happens at work all the time and we don't have a virus. I believe that most of the time the 'failed to deliver' emails are given that subject header by spammers to make you open them in the mistaken belief you sent them in the first place.

There are spam filters available if you look around. Do the emails have your name in the 'to' line SF? If they don't then you can set a rule to delete them from the server or send straight to the junk folder which is what I do. It gets rid of 99% of all my spam.

I wonder why she thinks I need free student loans ;)

For Sex Ed classes perhaps? :angel_not





Am I killing this? :wacko:

Am I killing this? :wacko: [/FONT] [/COLOR]
Just a bit!!! :laugh:

Do the emails have your name in the 'to' line SF? If they don't then you can set a rule to delete them from the server

No they don't. my email account or domain or whatever it is called is something like sfsuniqueaccount.fsnet.co.uk and our email address is email@sfsuniqueaccount.fsnet.co.uk although you can replace the email@ with anything you like@ and it still gets into our inbox. The spammy stuff I am getting is addressed to something like ginaroxxsf@sfsuniqueaccount.fsnet.co.uk or tinasalbumddcxffs@sfsuniqueaccount.fsnet.co.uk etc.


Tell me Nox, how do I set a rule in outlook express that says 'if the to address isnt email@ .... then delete it'? I only seem to be able to set a rule that says if the to line contains ' ....' delete it which is no good as the to line changes all the time.


PS Claire please stop putting irrelevant posts in this thread.

PS Claire please stop putting irrelevant posts in this thread.

I'm sorry SF :cry: - was in a silly mood ..

You're all wrong. :)

One trick used by spammers is to make it look as though the message came from someone else's email address. Lets say spammer Jim is sending a message to Patsy Dupe. He composes the email like this:

To: PatsyDupe@crockmail.com
From: SurreyFrog@pondmail.com
Subject: G3ner!c V!agra 4 cheep

etc...

Now if Patsy Dupe has abandoned her email address, or if she or the ISP are blocking emails containing the subject "G3ner!c V!agra 4 cheep", the mail will be rejected. When an email is rejected, a message is sent to the sender. Unfortunately this email has a bogus sender (SurreyFrog@pondmail.com). If the bogus sender actually exists he/she will receiving a message saying that the email has been rejected. This will cause puzzlement, since SurreyFrog didn't send the message in the first place. The reason the spammer uses a legitimate address for the sender, is that certain email servers/spam filters will check whether the sender address is legitimate.

The .dat attachment is usually added by one of the programs that handles the mail. Usually the .dat file just contains some scraps of text, routing information or something like that. If you want to check out the contents, save the file, change the ".dat" to ".txt" and open it in Notepad. The contents are unlikely to be very interesting though.

In short, these emails probably have nothing to do with viruses.

Nox, if you reject out of hand emails that don't have your name in the recipient list, you will doubtless inadvertently reject some legitimate email. For example, any email sent using the "BCC" facility - the recipient email addresses are automatically removed from the email prior to delivery. For exmaple, imagine that I was sending an email to five of my friends, but didn't want them to get each other's email addresses, I might do this:

To: Blink@splatthecat.com
From: Blink@splatthecat.com
Subject: Some lovely piccies of my corns
BCC: friend1@poo.com; friend2@goo.com; friend3@gob.com; friend4@gab.com; friend5@nab.com

etc...

Friend1 would then receive an email like this:

To: Blink@splatthecat.com
From: Blink@splatthecat.com
Subject: Some lovely piccies of my corns

Using your assumption Nox, this email would never get past Friend1's spam filter. The same applies to pretty much any mailing list (including the Survivor Online mailing list), since they all use BCC headers.

Blink, that helps explain why they are coming to me, thank you. But how can I stop them? Any ideas?

Sorry - I just realised that I hadn't answered your original question. Unfortunately, as you have already observed, this kind of email is difficult to filter out using rule-based filters. It isn't spam - they are legitimate error messages from a mail server. If you have a sensible ISP, you could speak to them and see if you can get them to remove the error messages; they can do much more sophisticated things with the mail messages than your mail filter program can. If you don't have a sensible ISP then you're stuck with them, I'm afraid. The messages will probably (eventually) diminish, until the next spammer randomly latches on to your email address.

Incidentally, you tend to get this kind of problem a lot more with the free web mail accounts like Hotmail and Yahoo, then with your ISP-provided email.

Here's a random bit of trivia for you: I was speaking to my ISP recently about the filtering technologies they use. Some of it is very clever. They told me that in one month they received 210,000 email messages, of which 180,000 were spam, and which they removed before their customers could be bothered by them. 85%+ spam. It's astonishing.

All you need is a spam filter.

Then you can train it to recognise which emails are spam and which aren't by draggin the spam into the spam folder. After a while you won't have to worry anymore, it'll automatically stop spam coming to your inbox.

All you need is a spam filter.You didn't really read my posts, did you? No spam filter is foolproof. One of the biggest implications of spam filters is false positives, whereby mail is incorrectly labelled as spam.

Don't rely on automated spam filtering too much, unless you don't mind losing legitimate mail.