Dealing With Spammers

[mneylon]

Following on redcardinal's post ....

If you can decipher the mail headers then you can report the spammer to either their ISP or their hosting company or both (depending on how the mails were sent)

By default most ISPs / hosts maintain abuse@ for spam reports.

If you are going to report spam please do so in a timely fashion and include samples with headers.

If the spammer is Irish you could contact the data privacy commissioner, but the reporting options are quite painful ie. you cannot simply email them and hope they will take action. You are expected to report via letter etc., which is a large burden - too much IMHO

Report spammers to DNS blacklists.
If a spammer or spammed domain gets reported and listed it can help both you and other users of DNS blacklists to block future emails from them.

You can get accounts to report spam on site such as SpamCop.net - Beware of cheap imitations and URIBL.COM - Realtime URI Blacklist

 

[Redfly]

Thanks for the info and the blacklist URLs. Every day spam gets on my nerves more and more.

 

[mneylon]

Thanks for the info and the blacklist URLs. Every day spam gets on my nerves more and more.

If you outsourced your mail filtering it wouldn't

 

[Redfly]

I actually have to have a chat with you about that. In Germany at the moment, but will be back on Thursday, so I'll give you a ring next week at some stage.

So what happens if I sign up using my OWN affilliate link?

 

[mneylon]

So what happens if I sign up using my OWN affilliate link?

You can't, as we don't sell it via the website

 

[Redfly]

Well, don't you just have an answer for everything ;P
Is the phone the best contact method for you?

 

[mneylon]

Well, don't you just have an answer for everything ;P

I try my best

Is the phone the best contact method for you?

If you can get past the guardians .... Email works as well though

 

[RedCardinal]

On the subject of spam, I wonder if anyone cares to offer an opinion on the following:

Were I to put a prominant note next to my email saying that the address is not to be used for the prupose of unsolicited direct marketing and that I reserve the right to publish any email sent to this address for the purpose of direct marketing, would I be on very shaky legal ground?

I really want to look for a way to scare people (legitimate companies, Irish) off sending me spam.

Any thoughts?

 

[mneylon]

Hmmm

The law in this area is very weak...

If the email address was purely personal ie. not work related then you might be able to get away with a lot of things, but if it is anyway work related the law will protect the spammer's "right" to send you one email.

The law, however, is not a reflection of the real world in all cases and ISPs can take actions against spammers that will have a much more tangible effect on them than a mere fine

 

[georgiecasey]

Bayes filtering gets rid of 98% of all my spam after you train it for a 2 months. The program I use is popfile, popfile, POPFile - Automatic Email Classification

 

[mneylon]

Bayes can be useful, though I don't even bother using that on my own mail server

I'm currently using:
Greylisting - postgrey as I'm using postfix
Geoip ACLs. - If the sending IP is from Asia it gets dropped
SpamHaus - If the sending ip is listed in XBL it gets dropped

End result .. I only get about one spam a day

 

[Cormac]

This was written on the infactah blog on Monday...
Spamming in Ireland carries no penalties says Data Protection Commissioner - In Fact, Ah

 

[RedCardinal]

Well I have to commend the webhosts of my recent spam sender - after speaking to them it is very apparent that they take the issue very seriously.

It also becomes more apparent that Michele is infamous when it comes to spam in Ireland (and in particular his dislike of same ). (I didn't mention you Michele - they did)

From this experience I know that my first port of call in any future instance of an Irish spammer is going to be their webhost.

Thanks for the help Michele

 

[mneylon]

It also becomes more apparent that Michele is infamous when it comes to spam in Ireland (and in particular his dislike of same ). (I didn't mention you Michele - they did)

Em.. How did I come into it???

 

[RedCardinal]

Responded off-board to you.

 

[mneylon]

This was written on the infactah blog on Monday...
Spamming in Ireland carries no penalties says Data Protection Commissioner - In Fact, Ah

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Data Protection Commissioner apologises for “having to” investigate complaint? » at Tom Raftery’s I.T. views