Spammers are getting smarter!

My Manager is experiencing this issue. She is getting a ton of junk/spam mail that has future dates on them. We're in August now and she receives e-mails dated September, and even up to Next year January. Ah mean, WTH...there seems to be a Job field for spamming. Like u can actually get hired to do this @$#!. It's ridiculous....

Some links I found on this topic. Link | Link

Now, has anybody else experienced this? And is there really any combative way to deal w/ this nonsense?

 

Unfortunately, spammers will always find a way to bypass the spam filter. You can always turn the spam filter up to the max, but the downside of this is that some non-spam emails will be filtered as well. Another method is set up a "safe list", so only emails from the people on your "safe list" will reach your inbox.

 

i have three emails.....one for all the online junk which I have to do

one for all my friends+family

and one for business

only the first one is released to people/websites I don't know......

I don't get that much spam on the other two....(manageable enough amounts)

 

hmm...the safe-list option is something to really look at. But in this type of work, client companies are being created like every day..so it would be a tedious job to enter all the clients in a safe list. But again, it is something to think about. Thanks for that response. And it's amazing that I get virtually NO spam in my inbox. It's just her and the receptionist really...and our spam filter catches alot of spam...like if I leave work this evening and come in tomorrow there will be like 3000 e-mail caught in the spam filter....so it's working but just not good enough I guess.

Edit: Yea I guess she must have used the company e-mail on the wrong website; and they just sold it to spammers or suthin'. But it's really annoying, I would go crazy if it was me......

 

I guess what you can do is use both safe list and spam filter at the same time, I mean not set it up in a way that only people on the safe list can get through. Set up a safe list and adjust the spam filter to be a little more aggressive than before. This way other legit emails still have a good chance to go through even if their email address is not on the list yet.

 

I do the exact same thing as rezendevous. I get a couple spams a day on the general online use account, but almost none on the other two. If you are very careful about who you give your email to, you shouldn't really get any spam. (in my experience)

 

Well my Supervisor and I took a look at the spam filter earlier and he did make a few changes to the filter to make it somewhat more aggressive. And we do have a safe list also......

 

I use gmail, and It catches ~50 or so spams a day, never lets any through, and never puts non spam into the spam folder.
Haven't gotten a spam message in my inbox in years, and I give my email out to just about anyone.
Gotta love gmail.

 

yep... same here
gmail FTW!!!!!

 

Yea yea yea...gmail this, gmail that! Trust me, if the right people get a hold of ur gmail e-mail address u would be in for a rude awakening!

 

If that happened, i'd make a new account...
really not that big a deal

 

Something u wouldn't want to do for a Manager in a business setting. And we're using Outlook '03/'07 w/ a registered domain name.

 

Gmail Spam Filter. It's the best.

 

My biggest question, is why does spam even exist any more? Do people actually take advantage of the "offers" that come through? How stupid are people. I could understand 15 years ago as the internet started to become commonplace, and few people were educated enough. But today... Come ON people. Wake UP!

 

people are more naive then you'd think

 

You need to fix your problem at the source which is the exchange server. Well, I assume that you use MS Exchange for your mail system. It is pointless by trying to fix the problem on client side.

 

Yes we use Exchange along w/ Outlook!

Sorry if it's a stupid question, but how exactly can it be fixed on the exchange server?

I understand trying to fix it using our Spam Filter...and even that method isn't good enough to fight off all spam.

As the title suggest, spammers are **** persistent and smart...they use different methods to get into ur Inbox. And they don't just use the same domain name either...it's random!

 

I was watching the news and some lady is down $17,000 because of some email spam. I don't even know how you can do that, but to answer your question, yes there are people out there dumb enough to click that stuff. My friend's dad bought XP Anti Virus 2007.. BOUGHT IT for $30... and it was a virus! I lold at my friend.

 

It's not even a matter of being stupid or naive..because I know better than to click those foolish Ads. I look at it as just being a victim; When I first created a gmail account years ago, within couple days I was recieving a ton of spam. True story; and I had never used the account to sign up on any websites or clicked ads etc. Gmail don't even have ads, but yet I recieved a bunch of spam...un-called for!

 

Well, I am not your network admin in your company, but I can give your some pointers. First, you have to make sure that your exchanger server isn't being relay by the spammer. I think Exchange 2003 doesn't allow to be relay by default. Second, you have to purchase something like GFI MailEssentials or hardware applicant like Ironport. Well, I would rather go with the first option.

Now, do you want my resume?

 

Spammers are probably contributing to global warming too. I mean, they are using power to create the spam, transmit it and stuff. I think people that create viruses/spyware would fit into this category too because people use extra power to run a virus scan. Just a thought.

-J.B.

 

Yeah and if pigs could fly. I agree with other two.

 

You stayed at a Holiday Inn last night didn't you!?!?!

I'll check out the relay setting tomorrow...and we do use a software spam filter!

 

That is very funny. I don't know about you, but my users used to get like 200-300 spam emails per day. I am so tired of complain, so I really lock down my exchange server. Amazingly, the problem is going away like 80-90%.

I am in the hotel but not the Holiday Inn.

 

No, I understand that, but I mean, what benefit do spammers get? Do people actually RESPOND to these ads? Do they actually pay for stuff from these ads?

 

People respond. Most don't, but some do, and when you push trillions of spam messages a day, you only require a minuscule percentage of recipients to buy into it in order to profit (remember, each message costs the sender nothing at all).

It may be unfortunate, but one way to fight spam is to make it economically unfeasible for one individual to send many messages a day. If the act of sending a message incurred some sort of cost to the sender, then spammers will take the greatest hit, and people will become more vigilant about protecting their computers in order to prevent them from being botted.

 

Well, today I had the spam filter set up in a way that it would discard any e-mail coming in that isn't actually an e-mail account for our company. For ex. we use to get e-mails to e-mail accounts that doesn't actually exist in our domain; but because they have our '@domainname' in the recipient's e-mail address it would still come through and get caught up in the spam filter. So by just allowing e-mails to come through for actual e-mail accounts in the company, that cut down alot of extra spam. So I no longer have such large amounts of spam as I used to...tomorrow i'll have a good idea on how much it actually cut down from the avg. 3000 daily I used to get. (in ref. to my post#4)

As for the Manager, we basically adjusted the spam filter to be a bit more aggressive w/ its filtering and that seem to cut down on those 'ahead of time' emails.