strange e-mail

[ripper1]

Does anybody get weird e-mail from places like Nigeria or Ghana saying they have fortunes for you. I don't open these but it is a little disconcerting to me. I am wondering why I get these and how to stop them. I am thinking I get these because I look at financial sites. Does anybody else get these and if so is there a way to stop them?

[Nodak]

There is an entire web site devoted to that scam:
419 Eater - The largest scambaiting community on the planet!

[ripper1]

Thanks, Nodak, I believe this 419 Eater is the culprit. Now, how do I get them to stop. I am getting something about once a week. I just delete them right away. I am just afraid if they accidently get opened I could get a virus.

[palomalou]

Hmmm....I got them for years before I started looking at financial websites, and actually think I get fewer now.

[Lsbcal]

On Yahoo mail I regularly check the SPAM folder and clean it out. Once in awhile I'll find an email I do not consider spam in the folder. Probably get around 5 per day in there. Most for sex stuff -- and no, I don't visit sex sites. Have gotten plenty of "UPS missed delivery" and email from banks I don't deal with that supposedly want me to fix something in my account.

[easysurfer]

I don't think they are related to any sites that you visit but more so at random by the spammers. When I see one instead of just deleting them, I mark is as SPAM with my spam filter. That way when the next time I get one, that email should automatically get placed in the spam folder.

[Nodak]

419 eater is not where the scam originates. it is dedicated to baiting the people that employ the scam. lots of info on how the scam works.

[james7]

I get at least two a day, but most days it is more like five or ten. The letters come from everywhere, but give phone numbers in the UK, Nigeria, or the country of Benin, which is situated right next to Nigeria. They are obviously written by con-artists who are gramatically challenged and always want your vital info. They don't bother me and shouldn't bother you, as long as you don't click on any links in the letters.

While we are on the subject of con-artists that bother people, the ones that bothered me were the ones that would call and tell me that I didn't show up for jury duty when I was called and that they were just trying to keep me from getting arrested. When they called, the caller ID would show the name as "Washington DC" and the number as "1234567890". These scared the hell out of me until I caught onto the scam. There was even an episode on the news a while back about how these con-artists set up call centers in Costa Rica and arrange their telephone connections in such a way so that it would look like they were calling from Washington, DC. Their scam is that you were not called for "federal" jury duty, not local jury duty. After many local phone calls, I found out that there is no such thing as federal jury duty.

[scrabbler1]

My ladyfriend gets them all the time. But I very rarely get them. We have the same email provider so any spam filter the provider has would help us out equally, wouldn't it?

She is not on line much but the one website she visits a lot is Facebook (I have no use for that), so I wonder if the spammers can harvest email addresses from there to target recipients.

We get some good laughs from those emails. But the scam emails from the "banks" asking for your login info because your account has been "suspended" are not funny.

I rememver Chris Hansen doing a Dateline NBC piece a few years ago about those con men, trying to catch some in England on camera and make them sweat (which one did, profusely).

[MichaelB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ripper1 Thanks, Nodak, I believe this 419 Eater is the culprit. Now, how do I get them to stop. I am getting something about once a week. I just delete them right away. I am just afraid if they accidently get opened I could get a virus.

Your spam filter should deal with these. It may need to be trained a bit. Can you identify this as spam in the inbox so the mail program learns and filters more effectively?

[PaddyMac]

At some point you should set set up multiple email addresses. I have one I use for business, one to join lists from various organizations that send regular "alerts" or updates to members, and another for Facebook, another for Yahoo and a few other lists. The first one I'd like to keep as clean as possible, so I use it just for important communication and purchases. At some point one or more of these emails may get too much spam and I'll create a replacement, but by segmenting them I only have to update a section of my email list.

[devans0]

DW was looking for some recipes for something sweet, brown sugar, honey and spice. Google helped her out with some interesting 'dishes' and some spammers attention because she was so 'interesting'.

[jebmke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ripper1 Does anybody get weird e-mail from places like Nigeria or Ghana saying they have fortunes for you. I don't open these but it is a little disconcerting to me. I am wondering why I get these and how to stop them. I am thinking I get these because I look at financial sites. Does anybody else get these and if so is there a way to stop them?

My email reader (T-Bird) is set to delete any email from an address that is not in my address book.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer I don't think they are related to any sites that you visit but more so at random by the spammers. When I see one instead of just deleting them, I mark is as SPAM with my spam filter. That way when the next time I get one, that email should automatically get placed in the spam folder.

I have found that trying to block the email address does no good because the spammers create unique email addresses for each new spam email. Often the domain name is one from a real business entity which has been hacked.

With my ladyfriend, many of these emails get sent to her "Junk" folder so she can more easily identify them but several get through to her regular email anyway.

[jebmke]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 I have found that trying to block the email address does no good because the spammers create unique email addresses for each new spam email. Often the domain name is one from a real business entity which has been hacked.

Right, that's why I don't try to block them, just have the reader delete them.

[eridanus]

Posting on craigslist also gives you plenty of spam from people who are moving to the area and want to pay for 3 months of rent (plus a little extra to hold it RIGHT NOW). Luckily, craigslist has an anonymous emails.

[easysurfer]

I think a good spam filtering software uses bayesian filtering which "learns" which emails are spam and which are not according to marking them by the person receiving the emails. The software I use is SpamBully (purchased it a few years back), when the spam identifiying wasn't as common. Now it seems the ability to mark email as spam or not if pretty common with email readers. SpamBully uses bayesian filtering which doesn't identify an email as spam by the email address but more by content learning the probability whether the email is spam or not. As time goes by and the program learns, the more accurate it becomes.


The approach is pretty interesting...
http://email.about.com/cs/bayesianfi...ian_filter.htm

[Alan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by easysurfer I don't think they are related to any sites that you visit but more so at random by the spammers. When I see one instead of just deleting them, I mark is as SPAM with my spam filter. That way when the next time I get one, that email should automatically get placed in the spam folder.

This is what I do. I've used gmail for years and it seems to cope very well with spam. I rarely get a spam e-mail in my inbox.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaddyMac At some point you should set set up multiple email addresses. I have one I use for business, one to join lists from various organizations that send regular "alerts" or updates to members, and another for Facebook, another for Yahoo and a few other lists. The first one I'd like to keep as clean as possible, so I use it just for important communication and purchases. At some point one or more of these emails may get too much spam and I'll create a replacement, but by segmenting them I only have to update a section of my email list.

I also have an e-mail address (on Excite) that I use on many non-financial sites where an e-mail address is required to register. I occaisionally go in and mass-delete everything. It always contains mostly spam, both in the inbox and in the spam folder. It is this e-mail address that attracts all the phishing and other scams from places like Nigeria.

[grasshopper]

I use Postini provided by my DSL provider, it really cleans the spam out.

[mh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 My ladyfriend gets them all the time. But I very rarely get them. We have the same email provider so any spam filter the provider has would help us out equally, wouldn't it? She is not on line much but the one website she visits a lot is Facebook (I have no use for that), so I wonder if the spammers can harvest email addresses from there to target recipients. We get some good laughs from those emails. But the scam emails from the "banks" asking for your login info because your account has been "suspended" are not funny. I rememver Chris Hansen doing a Dateline NBC piece a few years ago about those con men, trying to catch some in England on camera and make them sweat (which one did, profusely).

Not all spam filters are equal. I suggest you switch to google's gmail if you are amenable to switching your email It's quite good at handling spam as well as being a very good general email service provider