Spam shyte

[Russell]

More and more i"m being bombarded with "spam" cr*p. can get 20 or more per day, from viagra to getting a bigger dick to absolute cr*p

[GraemeMonro]

Russ, Mate, you are suposed to read all email. Most importantly the one"s about increasing the size of your body parts. I subscribed to them all and what a difference it made to my life!I am now flat broke, my wife thinks I"m an idiot and as for my body parts, I have looked at them hard and they are still the same as before.Enjoy life.Graeme Monro.

[NiqueNaque]

Russ,I"ll help you...Telstra have a lovely little scheme going where you pay for "up" and "down" loads usually. This means that if you can download spam, they get the ham - $$$$$$$$$$.How can you fix this??Use an email programme other than one provided by Microsoft - they"re in on it too!Try Mozilla or Firefox for a start. You can also set your email filters at the server end, so the email is filtered out before it gets to your machine. Try "settings" or "tools" and look for "filters", then look for "pop" or "pop3" filters. You can employ such programmes as "spamassassin" or "bogofilter" which will get rid of most of the crap before it gets to your machine. The trick is to log in to your account at the bigpond server and set the pop3 filters there to stop the crap from getting through.To get rid of things associated with "viagra" use a filter which searches for the "iagr" portion of the word because it is not common to many other words, though it is difficult to get around all the variations of verbage they use, eg v-i-a-g-r-a will beat a filter looking for "viagra" due to the literal nature of computer search string operations. Another thing to attack with your filter is what the target of the spam is, eg, "d.ick" and "pen.is", you will note I have included a "." to defeat the filter on this site which looks for those words and puts in *****"s as a substitute.Another good thing to do is to search for the site that is spamming and exclude or ban it from your download list, you do this again through your spam filters, generally I reject all mail from yahoo.com; msn.com and all those other garbage sites which are frequented by spammers.To reduce traffic in spam you should also send a copy of the email to the ISP from which the spam originates, eg, forward it on to "abuse@isp.com.country" where "isp" could be "yahoo" or "msn" or similar, the "com" could be "org" or " biz" or "edu", etc.. and country could be "au" or "es"... etc, or not there at all. This helps the ISP to identify it before it gets to you, though I doubth telstra will be helpful because they get $$$$$$$ from all the spam downloaded.If you want to ring me while you go through the filters you know the number -

[Russell]

Will be calling you ina couple of weeks Nic ol mate [ a tad busy up ear ] ;D

[bones]

Russ, trust me buddy once the spam bot get hold of your email address there is nothing, i repeat nothing that will stop them, they are computer generated programs designed to get threw,around under any type of filter the only way is to change the email address, it can be as simple as ading a space, capital letter, ect, you get the idea, it would have started from one person just once opening an email they should not have or more importantly scaning the internet when being logged on under the email address, the bots get in then there is nothing to stop them.Change the email address then get about 5k worth of virus wear like me and then your right, and dont open anything you dont know about. it is possible, i been runnig my web site for near on a year and answering countless question emails from it and not a single spam bot has got me,,,,,BUT you need to know what the frig you are doing...... damn internet, im sick of it, where are the good ole days of ringing someone, going to the pub to have a business meeting.Chow

[welli]

One of the joys of having your email address on the www, eg treasurer@asra.org.au. Webbie can and will tighten up the spam filters if you ask him to.

[gbw]

"Russ, trust me buddy once the spam bot get hold of your email address there is nothing, i repeat nothing that will stop them"Yup, you are vulnerable with published email address.This Xmas do yourself a favour and get an iMac. Its free Mail program has a junk filter that you train. Each time spam gets through you hit the junk button, and all future mail goes into the junk Mail box. Have a look once a week to see if any valid mail has slipped in, and delete all. Works like a charm.You can also adjust a slider at your ISP to block spam. I have a low setting as I do not wish to block legit mail.Usually you get 5 mail boxes when you go broadband. Do not use your primary address. Set up the other mail boxes for differnt tasks. Russporn@bigpond.com sort of thing. When that address becomes too popular, change it to Morerussporn or the like, and the spam bots will lose you.If you send a message to someone and they forward it to some best buddies, chastise them. A forwarded message picks up all the addresses in the cc box and passes them on. And shortly after you start getting spam, if the content is amusing and is further passed on. Copy the message and paste it. If you wish to send it to several people use BCC (blind carbon copy) and you avoid sharing these email addresses.Use Paypal to pay for those downloads rather than a credit card. (I have a friend who has a credit card purely for internet use, with a very low credit limit, in case it is ever misused)Do look at Apple. The unix based OS is solid, so far we have avoided virus and many other computer nasties. If I spot a .exe file I know it is nasty. Trojans are the major risk for unwary, and these are not common.And if you do get an Apple, it is easy to run Windows software. You can even split the screen and drag between Apple and Windows.Grahamß

[asra]

G"day Graeme,I"m not as well versed as you blokes are with all this stuff. But my Nortons appears to filter spam much as you describe. If sumthin is spam, just hit the spam button, and all future mail from that address goes stright to the spam folder. Have been thinking of a Mac for some time. Do you have to learn a whole heap of new things with the OS? Never even seen one.Cheers

[admin]

I think all bases seem to have been covered here and there has been some very good advice.Two of the best related to using secondary email addresses and to stripping out or not forwarding a bunch of email addresses when you forward email.Yes there will always be a problem with spam for our standard published ASRA addresses.I have tightened up the spam filtering quite a bit in the last few months but we will start missing email if I go any harder. If you run MS Outlook (not Outlook Express) I recommend Spambayes, its also free.http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/There are a lot of other free spam solutions out there so google up a storm and then read the reviews before proceeding.If moving away from Windows suits you then that will mostly solve the virus problem but you will still get the same spam.Viral spam mainly targets Microsloth users.For those who get ASRA email forwarded and have no further filter at your end, drop me an email and we"ll look into a free solution. If you have a filter at your end and you still get a lot of spam then your filter is not working very well so read up about how to use it.webbie

[gbw]

Fred,Not sure if I should reply privately, but here goes.I have rarely used a Windows machine. Very complicated compared with the Mac. If you make the switch, you can go back to Windows or run it side by side on the same screen. So if you have special software it will still run. Bill Gates writes software for many machines, thus it is bloated and more likely to crash. Apple is now Unix based and very solid. I have had two crashes in about 4 years. Laziness for not doing an ocassional repair.First up you will wonder what goes where and need someone to take you for a drive. (but many manage) It is so simple. No "C" drives crap. eg, put a CD in it lands on desktop and then opens. You click onwhat you want and appropriate program opens and plays.I connected a new computer to internet today. Opened "Network" panel and clicked on ethernet. Plugged in ethernet. Switched modem off and on and away I went.The included software is brilliant. Takes photos and organises them. Fixes them. You can make movies, DVD"s presentations take goofy photos of self, write books run spreadsheets etc. Its all there. And Apple has $14 billion in the bank so it will be around for a while. ( I was going to buy some shares at US $13, divorce took eye of the ball. They are now US$180...)And Melbourne has the 2nd biggest user group in the world. There is always help on the bulletin boardEmail me at gwoolley1@optusnet.com.au if I can helpGraham

[asra]

Thanks for that, Graham. I lied when I said I"d never seen one. I saw one in 1985. A uni lecturer had one. But I was still nearly 10 years off even using a computer, so it didn"t mean much. My sister has just been given one (a Mac, that is), so when I go over to her place next (its only a thousand clicks, so I don"t go every week