I've seen some ridiculous suggestions but this must beat most, if not all, of them.
Do you really believe what you're writing? If this had any validity, why would you be the only one chosen for this Spam? Don't you think we would all be getting them?
If this is the level of trust that you place in Symantec, then perhaps you should be looking elsewhere for your security arrangements.
However, if you apply just an iota of common sense, you will realize how worthless your suggestion is. We depend on Symantec for our peace of mind and many of us could lose extremely valuable records and data, not to mention being involved in enormous financial problems, if Symantec was less than 100% trustworthy.
People on these Boards spend a considerable amount of their time trying to help others and inherent in that assistance is the total reliability of Symantec. Now do you really believe that any, or all of them, are mistaken?
I've seen some ridiculous suggestions but this must beat most, if not all, of them.
Do you really believe what you're writing? If this had any validity, why would you be the only one chosen for this Spam? Don't you think we would all be getting them?
If this is the level of trust that you place in Symantec, then perhaps you should be looking elsewhere for your security arrangements.
However, if you apply just an iota of common sense, you will realize how worthless your suggestion is. We depend on Symantec for our peace of mind and many of us could lose extremely valuable records and data, not to mention being involved in enormous financial problems, if Symantec was less than 100% trustworthy.
People on these Boards spend a considerable amount of their time trying to help others and inherent in that assistance is the total reliability of Symantec. Now do you really believe that any, or all of them, are mistaken?
drshlomo.
I think somewhere in all this, there is actually a point distinct from an attack on the poster's intellect.
Let me see if I can find it.
Ah, here we go. In my own words:
Hi, Toolbar. None of the other posters here have experienced an upsurge in spam related to our signing up with Norton. It is extremely unlikely that you would have been an isolated case. Spammers don't work that way. Hope you stay with us.
Get Mailwasher Pro from Firetrust and delete the SPAM messages right off the server without them ever getting to your email inbox. Opening the emails or even having them downloaded off the server is sometimes all the spammers need to know that the address is a good one. I have been using it for years and have cut my SPAM ot almost NIL.
A program installed locally on my machine can delete spam on my ISP's server? Sounds cool but I think it's a bit early for that as I have not received more spam.
How can the spammer know if I have downloaded the email from the server or not?
I have disabled HTML so I doubt they will know if I open the email. But I did not open them, I had a look at the content via the properties route. I don't think that counts as opening the email.
Your ip shows up in headers of emails. It's easy to look up an ip and see what block of ip's that came from and then see the isp who provides that block. I don't know the sites to do that, but I do know it can be done. If you are on a router, I think it makes it harder, but I think it could be done. Unfortunately, there are ways people can send out spam and find addresses. I think a lot of the spammers just pick random numbers and end up with some legit ones too. There are times I feel like even when I send out an email to a friend and I mention some things in the email, I seem to get spam about that topic. I sometimes feel like that my emails are read along the way to the recipient.
I know the IP shows up in headers, but I'm not sending email to spammers. However they could get that information by breaking into another PC that has received email from me.
And even if I have a static IP and someone knows my IP, how can they guess my email address?
I have dynamic IP which isn't making it easier for them.
And yes I'm using a router, but I don't see what it has to do with this?
When you mention sending email about a certain topic, and receiving spam on that same topic, I think you are using Gmail. Are you?
A program installed locally on my machine can delete spam on my ISP's server? Sounds cool but I think it's a bit early for that as I have not received more spam.
How can the spammer know if I have downloaded the email from the server or not?
I have disabled HTML so I doubt they will know if I open the email. But I did not open them, I had a look at the content via the properties route. I don't think that counts as opening the email.
They can use read receipts, as well as delivery receipts, to see if the mail has been accepted as legitimate. Downloading the email into your email program is all it takes to show the email address is good.
I've seen some ridiculous suggestions but this must beat most, if not all, of them.
Do you really believe what you're writing? If this had any validity, why would you be the only one chosen for this Spam? Don't you think we would all be getting them?
If this is the level of trust that you place in Symantec, then perhaps you should be looking elsewhere for your security arrangements.
However, if you apply just an iota of common sense, you will realize how worthless your suggestion is. We depend on Symantec for our peace of mind and many of us could lose extremely valuable records and data, not to mention being involved in enormous financial problems, if Symantec was less than 100% trustworthy.
People on these Boards spend a considerable amount of their time trying to help others and inherent in that assistance is the total reliability of Symantec. Now do you really believe that any, or all of them, are mistaken?
drshlomo.
I was not joking. And I did not know what to believe. And I couldn't possibly know if I was the only one to receive that particular spam. So I posted this thread and hoped for some sensible answers, and I've got some.
I have had this email for 8 years and never received spam. And then one day I signed up on a website and shortly after that I did receive spam. I had to be suspicious towards that website.
I do only partially trust Symantec.
I am supposed to trust my internet and telecom provider. But they sold my phone number to telemarketing companies which began to "spam" my telephone. So I only partly trust them.
A program installed locally on my machine can delete spam on my ISP's server? Sounds cool but I think it's a bit early for that as I have not received more spam.
How can the spammer know if I have downloaded the email from the server or not?
I have disabled HTML so I doubt they will know if I open the email. But I did not open them, I had a look at the content via the properties route. I don't think that counts as opening the email.
They can use read receipts, as well as delivery receipts, to see if the mail has been accepted as legitimate. Downloading the email into your email program is all it takes to show the email address is good.
Message Edited by Boofo on 10-21-2009 05:51 PM
I never send 'read receipts'. It can be disabled in Outlook Express and I did that. Delivery receipts I don't know about. But a mailwasher that is installed on my local PC can't act upon spam before it is received on the mail server? Maybe it can... I just don't see how it can work.
Mailwasher looks at the email while it is still on the mail server and allows you to delete it from there, without ever downloading it into your email program… Once it gets download to your email program, that is how the spammers know the email address is a good one.
Boofo wrote: Mailwasher looks at the email while it is still on the mail server and allows you to delete it from there, without ever downloading it into your email program.. Once it gets download to your email program, that is how the spammers know the email address is a good one.
Not quite true. Any email that does not get bounced back by Mailer-Daemon (or its equivalent) qualifies as having been successfully delivered and therefore a good address.
Toolbar's comment about his address and personal information being stolen from someone else's computer is dead on. That is the most common and dangerous way malware proliferates. My wife experienced this only a couple of weeks ago when she received a contaminated email from a good friend. The address was perfect and inside it referred to her by name. Only because she has learned a lot from me did she know not to visit the link provided in the email. We called up her friend and I walked her through what she needed to do to protect her accounts and check for violations. It was just in time.
Boofo wrote: Mailwasher looks at the email while it is still on the mail server and allows you to delete it from there, without ever downloading it into your email program.. Once it gets download to your email program, that is how the spammers know the email address is a good one.
Not quite true. Any email that does not get bounced back by Mailer-Daemon (or its equivalent) qualifies as having been successfully delivered and therefore a good address.
Toolbar's comment about his address and personal information being stolen from someone else's computer is dead on. That is the most common and dangerous way malware proliferates. My wife experienced this only a couple of weeks ago when she received a contaminated email from a good friend. The address was perfect and inside it referred to her by name. Only because she has learned a lot from me did she know not to visit the link provided in the email. We called up her friend and I walked her through what she needed to do to protect her accounts and check for violations. It was just in time.
It's becoming more and more common that spam is deleted by the email servers without notice to sender. So a spammer can not be sure his spam hits a valid account or not, but they are probably going to assume that spam not bounced hit a valid account.
My name was not mentioned inside the spam email. But of course the email address was correct.
But the email contained incredible little data, it was only 1 kB. How can anyone send an email only 1 kB in size? When I send a completely empty email to myself, it contains twice as much data. (I posted the complete content of the spam in post #8.)
How can anyone figure out my email address just because they happen to know my IP? (See post #24.)
Message Edited by No_Toolbar on 22-10-2009 12:08 PM
I don't know how accurate this response will be. It's just a possibility. If they know your IP address, then they can find out who your ISP is. Once they know who the ISP is, they can find out the blocks of IP's that belong to that ISP. Then they may have programs that start spitting out random email addresses. If spam was so easy to stop, then it would have been done long ago. It seems that with all the new methods that ISP's are starting to use, the volume of spam seems to increase. This is just all my idea of things. I don't know how accurate it is or if it's even possible. It probably isn't even possible.