Spam - New Anti-Filter Tricks And My Countermeasures
I've recently reviewed my spam folders looking for patterns upon which to base my filters. My long term email address with my ISP has been pummelled with spam for years. My choice of username was very, very bad! It's only three letters. Yes, I know, you must be laughing quite hard at me right now ;)
Username-Guessing Spam is where a spammer selects a domain, in this case MCS, and proceeds to spam every possible permutation of 1,2,3,4 or 5 lettered username email addresses.
I noticed that while the list of recipients email addresses in the TO: field varied in each email, three email addresses from within my domain were common to nearly every one. Bingo! The other two addresses I didn't recognise which is great news as there's not much chance anyone is sending legit email to me and two strangers from the same domain in the same email. There's the criteria for my new filter to flag this cretin's spam for Mailwasher to terminate with extreme prejudice. lol
My new rule searches for any email that has all three email addresses in it's TO: field, then flags that as spam for blacklisting, bouncing and deletion. When I created the rule I gave it a meaningful Status Name, "SPAM - UN Guesser" and coloured it blue to contrast with the green, yellow and red defaults. Now I'm slightly better informed when my mail finishes downloading and the time I waste every day on spam housekeeping has been reduced a little.
If you're not using Mailwasher or some other email proxy type program between your email client and your mail server you are probably being pummelled with spam and the viruses, worms and trojans that sometimes accompany them. You will massively reduce your exposure to viruses by deleting spam before it ever reaches your computer. Seriously, I'm not on commission....it's that good. Check out my free programs page for links to a free download of Mailwasher
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lifespan) wrote,
pleased
