Spam emails

[MikeT]

I am getting fed up with receiving spam emails from mainly Eastern Europe supposedly from Ebay, Paypal, BT, Barclays, HSBC, Amazon all saying my payment cannot be processed. Why can't the ISPs stop these? At least I am not receiving the ones saying I have inherited £000s from Nigeria and other African countries any more.

 

[Bob D.]

The problem with the ISP filtering is that one persons spam is another persons bread an butter. It's not a one size fits all problem. Whilst I'd happily drop any email with the word viagra in it, some doctors and patients would need to see them.

It's easy enough to install an email filter on your own PC. I'm a linux user and use a bayesian filter called bogofilter, after a little bit of training to my likes and dislikes 98% of the spam goes straight in the bin. I'm sure Windows has similar packages available.

 

[alanf]

Several basic strategies.

Most hosted email accounts have filters in place. These are reasonably well trained over a few years and adjusted as new trends and styles of spam appear. Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft (to name only the largest players) and others put identified spam in a folder that you can check from time to time. Not every filter suite is perfect and a combination of characteristics can make some circulars from clubs and commercial organisations look like spam. For most that's a reasonable compromise.

At the other end of the scale you could be hosting your own email server. It does need some time to set that up and install all the spam filters you might want. Realistically, you have to either be a large organisation or into the tech side for that to be worth while. Most companies outsource email serving to a specialist company who maintain the filters much like the largest online hosts. One way the largest hosts make money is paid hosting for business.

You might have an ISP who doesn't have the time to update filters as much as they could. That may be because email is just an add on to their main business or they have been merged with other ISPs over the years. That's actually harder to deal with because you can't install filters yourself. There are technical solutions such as filtering at the client end, but if you want to read emails on phones or tablets too, you're into arranging your own mail serving again. These, often older accounts or add ons to other packages, should probably be migrated away from.

One basic strategy that reduces the volume is to get more than one email account. That heads off much of the problem in that your personal email address is not as widely spread. Set up one for personal and other trusted senders you actually want to receive from. Another for commercial registrations who send too many circulars, you can check this weekly or when needed to confirm accounts. And for many one off registrations where you don't want to be on their lists use a service like mailinator.com

 

[oliver90owner]

all saying my payment cannot be processed.

Spam or scam?

These are not 'spams' - these are scams! Clicking on any 'click here now' or other response on, or to, the emails can easily result in a costly exercise for you. They are bogus and most likely trying to con you out of money, or infect your computer to enable them to search, at their leisure, for your account passwords, etc.

Spam is not bogus, just a d*mned nuisance. Unwanted advertising.

I suspect yours is mainly the latter, but you really need to be able to tell the difference.

 

[Little John]

I've noticed an increase in scam invoices, as well as email threats to take legal action if these are not paid - some even from the alleged courts themselves.
I can't understand why 'stings' are not being set up by the police to catch these crooks, as they are very clearly evidence of criminal intent.

But at least I can filter these out. Btw, I use Mailwasher to do this - the earlier freeware version allowed the filtering of multiple email accounts. Recommended.


Now - multiple unsolicited phone calls each day - that's a more serious matter. Parasites.

LJ

 

[Erichalfbee]

Now - multiple unsolicited phone calls each day - that's a more serious matter. Parasites.

LJ

Parasites and time wasters.
If I'm in the mood I'll happily play along for a while but usually I just tell them that the person they need to speak to is in the garage and I leave the phone off the hook while I go to get them

 

[Bryang]

I use Sky as my ISP, there is a facility with their email service to create your own filters for scam or spam. So far I have found it to be very good, Only probs was with ebay, for some reason the scam mail kept appearing in my "inbox". My cure was to filter anything with "ebay" in the address or header.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Parasites and time wasters.
If I'm in the mood I'll happily play along for a while but usually I just tell them that the person they need to speak to is in the garage and I leave the phone off the hook while I go to get them

I just put the phone on speaker and let them prattle away - utering the odd yerrrs and umm now and then and just carry on doing my work (it's something I've learn to do during the endless telephone conferences we have, just have to remember to pipe in when my subject comes up!), then after a while just say sorry, not interested and hang up

 

[Dishmop]

A lot of it is do do with the web sites you have visited and given your email address and telephone number to for some reason or other.

If you are logged onto ebay and then open a new page/tab and do a google search for something at Wicks or somewhere..........pretty damned quick you will see a banner at top of ebay page for what you were looking at on Wick's site.
You may not realise but when connected to ebay, information is constantly going backwards and forwards between ebay and your computer.

I use a very old version of Outlook Express and can read and reply to an email without opening it.
So when a "Paypal" email tells me that a payment to Skype has been made I just reply.."Go away"

 

[Dishmop]

I just put the phone on speaker and let them prattle away

If I even bother to wait for somebody to speak and find they are selling something, I tell them that I havent any money as I spend it all on drink and drugs.

 

[midnight sun]

If I even bother to wait for somebody to speak and find they are selling something, I tell them that I havent any money as I spend it all on drink and drugs.

 

[bontbee]

Parasites and time wasters.
If I'm in the mood I'll happily play along for a while but usually I just tell them that the person they need to speak to is in the garage and I leave the phone off the hook while I go to get them

Am I the odd one out? I try to think of the caller as a person just doing a job, and politely say no thank you. Only when they get persistent do I put the phone down - at the same time as saying a polite (!) goodbye....

 

[Hachi]

My method is to have more than one email account, a hotmail one that is used for ordering or any other commercial org/site/individual that might sell my address or otherwise use it for anything other than which I thought it would be used.

Another for friends and family. Given very limited release.

Another for forums I frequent, one each

Simples.....

And it works spam/scams/crap all get sent to one account easily managed.

 

[Dishmop]

Am I the odd one out? I try to think of the caller as a person just doing a job, and politely say no thank you.

If they call me, and I answer the phone I expect somebody to be there..They get three seconds to speak.

 

[bontbee]

If they call me, and I answer the phone I expect somebody to be there..They get three seconds to speak.

Ah, I agree with that , but it's not inconsiderate to put the phone down on an auto dial machine. I was thinking of the calls made by a human being...

 

[Little John]

Am I the odd one out? I try to think of the caller as a person just doing a job, and politely say no thank you. Only when they get persistent do I put the phone down - at the same time as saying a polite (!) goodbye....

I am registered with the Telephone Preference Service to receive no unsolicited calls whatsoever. In the past when I have pointed this out, callers have told me that they just ignore the TPS. Some have even laughed.

These days I tell them that I am recording the call and ask them to identify their company - most quickly put the phone down. Only one so far has argued the toss - and even he wouldn't identify himself. (Hardly the makings of a successful sales call).

If they were "just people doing a job", then they would a) not call in the first place, rather than flouting Ofgem rules, and b) identify their company when asked to do so in order that a complaint be made.

But - they do neither of these things. They are scammers, and such are parasites - and annoying parasites at that.

LJ

 

[REDWOOD]

I just ask them where they got my number from and I'm about to report them, click

 

[wessexmario]

When I'm in the mood I'll troll the obvious phone scammers, especially and always anyone claiming to be calling from Microsoft about a problem with my computer.

Why do I do that? because I don't use Microsoft systems, so anyone pretending they're "helping me" deserves having the tables turned on them.

It's a good game to see how long you can waste their time, because the longer you do, the less they're scamming someone who isn't quite so IT savvy. My favourite line is to put them on squawk so they can hear me typing, and just carry on working, they assume the typing is me following their instructions.
I always ask questions that aren't in their script, like "How much do you charge for computer support?", or pretend I've accidentally hit the reset button to reboot the PC, or there's someone at the door, (I go and make a myself a coffee) and they nearly always wait... and I then play along until they ask me to click some link or enter a URL, at which point I tell them I can't do that because I'm a computer engineer, know what their scam is and love wasting their time...

The reactions I get have varied from them slamming the handset down so hard they probably broke it (many times), angry questioning (a couple of times), one guy exploded into his native Asian tongue for a four or five minute long tirade of abuse that would have made even me blush if only I had understood what he was saying, and one had his supervisor phone me back and threatened that he'd call the police for wasting his employee's time!
I told that last one that I'd look forward to hearing from the police as what they were doing was far more illegal than what I was doing.

ps. yes, I am on TPS, but it has no effect for the international scammers.

 

[MikeT]

I have done very much the same, which has not been approved of by my wife.
After about 15 or so mins, I am told to enter URL, then I say I am on either Apple or Linex, well abuse that comes down the line is amusing. I these from "so called" Microsoft and BT help desks

 

[Dusty Rhodes]

I just ask them if they've found Jesus yet.

Dusty.