A New Type Of Spam

[davidP]

Someone out there has now come up with a new way to try and beat the US law on spam - fake 'returned e-mail' messages. Today I've been innundated with messages (ie 12 of 24 received mails) pretending to be responses from mail servers saying that they couldn't deliver an e-mail that I sent. It wouldn't be so bad if they were een vaguely of interest, but they're all American debt consolidation adverts. What amazes me about all this spam is that anybody *ever* responds to them. I mean, would you go to a company that spams you to death and attempts to bend the US law to get a loan??

[norm]

i get e-mails(spam)from companys with my wrong e-male address on them so i can not so called unsubscribe as when i do my real e-mail address would show so i can never stop them :mad:

[Newt]

Norm (all) - best to NOT respond to these things with an un-subscribe request.

 

That will only server to let them know they have reached a live, working email address.

 

The spammer folks will buy lists of email accounts - but usually half or more are not working. So, they send out something irritating and give you a link to "unsubscribe" to something you never remember subscribing to in the first place.

 

They then keep track of responses and know they have reached a good email address when you reply. Then they give you even more unwanted email - and sell their "validated lists" for lots more than they paid for the original list.

[Scott]

David if you got that many replys saying they couldnt deliver a message you sent it might be posible you have a virus, same thing happened to me . First I knew about it was hen I got a load of replys saying a message I sent couldnt be delivered.

Run your virus checker, just to check

 

Scott.

www.thefishingdirectory.co.uk

[Chris Goddard]

Coming in on Newts message about dead addresses. I run a little utility called POP3 scan Mailbox. It is free and I can delete any messages off of the server which are as I understand returned to the sender as If no-one existed!! I got It from

www.freedownloadscenter.com where I have found several useful utilities!!

 

Chris

[davidP]

Scott:

David if you got that many replys saying they couldnt deliver a message you sent it might be posible you have a virus, same thing happened to me . First I knew about it was hen I got a load of replys saying a message I sent couldnt be delivered.

Run your virus checker, just to check

 

Scott.

That was one of my first thoughts, but on checking they definitely weren't sent from me because my address isn't in them anywhere, and they were all subtly different. I also run using Netscape mail so the normal viruses don't affect me. And just to make sure I have Norton Anti-virus monitoring everything that comes over my line.

[Nutter]

DavidP,

If you are troubled by them just block the sender. Like you, I used to get loads of the same sort of stuff from different companies in the U.S. I blocked one of them and have not received any more since, worth a try.

Nutter.