What will respond to spam. What is spam and how to deal with spammers on the Internet. Notable postal services

About his experience of communicating with the person who sent him a spam letter.

Screenshot from video

The original message said a certain Solomon had an “interesting business proposal” for Veitch. To this, the comedian replied that "he is intrigued" to find out what will happen next.

After that Veich was told that he would be "delivered gold" and he could earn 10% of its sale.

When asked about the cost of gold, he was told that they would start with “small volumes - only 25 kg”. The cost of such a volume of gold will be about $ 2.5 million.

At this Veich replied that he would like to cooperate on a large scale and asked Solomon how much gold he had at his disposal. In response, he was told that what matters is not how much gold Solomon has, but how much Veitch can afford. At the same time, the spammer suggested starting with 50 kg of gold.

To this, the comedian replied that “it makes no sense to send only 50 kg, and it is worth starting with at least a ton.”

In response, Solomon asked what Veich did for a living. The comedian lied that he was a hedge fund manager.

Solomon noted that it will be difficult for him to convince his company to send a shipment of gold exceeding 50 kg.

After that Veich sent the spammer a “visualization” of their cooperation, with which he supposedly intended to go to the management of his foundation, the schedule looked rather primitive.

Screenshot from video

After that, he wrote to Solomon that one of his assistants “counted everything” and asked for “as much gold as possible”.

In response, Solomon stated that he would be happy if the deal was successful, since in this case he would receive a high commission.

When Veich asked where he would spend the money, Solomon replied that it was for real estate. The comedian stated that he would spend his income on hummus, of which there are many options, etc.

In response, Solomon announced that it was time for him to sleep.

According to the comedian, the correspondence lasted several weeks, and he wanted to bring it to the most ridiculous outcome. Therefore, he wrote to Solomon that he was worried about security and suggested using coding for correspondence. He agreed.

The next day, Veitch wrote that he had not slept all night and developed the code.

The code looked very ridiculous, moreover, the comedian asked Solomon to call him "KitKat" in the future.

Screenshot from video

There was no answer, so Veich decided to remind himself and asked if the deal was valid, but signed KitKatom. To this, Solomon replied that the deal was valid, but he needed money for a lawyer who was preparing the documents, and asked Veich to send him 1.5 thousand pounds.

The comedian replied that he could send money, but asked to follow the code "out of concern for the safety of the conversation."

In response, he received a very funny letter with the same request, but using a code.

Screenshot from video

The comedian admitted that he responded to spam for several years because “it's fun,” but as a result realized that it was just a waste of time.

According to him, even “Nelson Mandela’s wife” wrote to him, who sent the comedian a photo of her passport and asked for money for the treatment of her husband. It is worth noting that by that time Mandela had already been dead for three months.

Screenshot from video

stdClass Object (=> 7762 => spam => post_tag => spam)

stdClass Object (=> 13338 => Culture => category => kultura-afisha)

stdClass Object (=> 13743 => curiosity => post_tag => kurez)

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02-08-2012

After receiving spam, is it possible to do something in order not to receive it in the future? It turns out, yes - you have to ... complain.

Don't reply to spam!

Of course, we are not talking about a complaint about a letter to the spammers themselves. This is not only useless, but even harmful - the fact of sending a letter in response to spam only aggravates your situation. After all, having received a response to spam, a spammer (not personally, of course, but through an automated software) understands that:

• his letter was received, which is important, bypassed spam filters;
• was read. This is a great joy for a spammer, since on average no more than 2-3% of sent spam reaches user mailboxes. The rest is recognized and destroyed by filters on the way;
• the reader turned out to be a person, and not another program. Moreover, rather reckless to answer this letter and thereby confirm that the address exists and the mail coming to it is regularly read;

What conclusion will the spammer's program draw after receiving such a letter? Right! “The address has been confirmed. Discovered a person. Send more spam here. " Therefore, do not give such gifts to spammers - do not reply to their garbage.

How to identify the sender of spam?

Before deciding on further action, determine from which mail server spam was sent to your mailbox. Ignore the From: field - due to the technical features of the SMTP protocol, which was developed more than 30 years ago, the sender's address can be completely arbitrary. If spam is sent, it is generated randomly. The necessary information is carried by the data about the sending mail server, which can be seen by looking at the source code of the letter. In different mail clients and web interfaces do it in different ways, but the essence is the same - to see the source code, the original message headers. Pay attention to the very first, top heading, starting with the words

Received: from

They are followed by the name of the mail server through which the spam was sent. Remember this Domain name, we will need it soon.
By the way, in the popular postal Mozilla client ThunderBird can view the original text of a message with service headers by pressing Ctrl and U on the message.

Contact support

Notable postal services

We are talking about a complaint to the support service of the mail server / hosting, through which the spam was sent. Spammers often use hacked or misconfigured mail servers to send their garbage through them. It is much more difficult for spam filtering systems to recognize such emails than those sent by botnets from zombie computers - by technical specifications connections and outward appearance such letters have signs of legitimate ones. Therefore, in the process of determining "spam / not spam", the filters can only rely on the analysis of the internal content of the message, and this data may not always be enough for a correct and unambiguous verdict. As a result, such spam can enter users' mailboxes.

To let the administration of the mail server know that spam is being sent through them, and so to counteract the spread of spam, you need to contact the address of the sending server extracted from the message headers. For example, if the first Received: from header contains a server name something like forward.yandex.net, then you need to complain to Yandex, and if hotmail.com, then, accordingly, to Hotmail. By the way, a lot of spam is sent through Hotmail, now owned by Microsoft.

Different postal services have options feedback from users to contact support, spam complaints.
For example,
Rambler - help by mail, feedback http://help.rambler.ru/1/feedback/mail/
Yandex - a form for contacting support http://feedback.yandex.ru/?from=mail
Mail.Ru - spam complaint form http://help.mail.ru/mail-support/spam

The most sane response to a message about spam sent through their mail service is Rambler support. Replies come quickly and in essence, inform about the closure of the spammers mailbox. But it makes no sense to write in support of Gmail - these do not answer, it seems, in principle ...

Unfortunately, if the administration closes one mailbox on a free mail server, the spammer immediately opens another and starts sending spam all over again. We already wrote about the systemic drawbacks of free mail hosting in the article "Corporate email: why you shouldn't use free mail hosting" free cheese you cannot completely overcome it, and therefore this type of spam seems to be ineradicable ... But in any case, timely informing the administrator gives him the opportunity to take prompt measures to counter the spammer, which greatly complicates the destructive activity of the latter.

Separate mail servers

If the source of spam is an unknown service free mail and there is no feedback form on the site of the spam-sending server, there is still a way to contact its personnel. A letter with a message about sending spam can be sent to standard, reserved and, according to the RFC 2142 standard, must be present in any mail system, administration addresses:

[email protected]
[email protected]

In theory and, as a rule, in practice, mail to these addresses is received by system administrators and IT specialists responsible for the work information system... By informing them about the fact of the spread of spam through their mail server/ network you will definitely do an important and useful thing. The specialists, in turn, are grateful to such messages and consider them in essence, making the necessary corrections to the work of their servers. Do not forget only about the rules of politeness (it is not the administrators themselves who send spam, it is pointless to swear with them, but they can quite help) and the maximum information content that your request should answer. Briefly explain in the subject line the essence of the appeal - "Spam is being sent through your mail server" and attach a sample as proof. The sample will help you identify the direct culprit of the mailing list or close the hole. A sample spam email must be attached as an attachment so that extremely important service headers are not lost. There is no point in sending a spam complaint email without them.

Of course, this method of fighting spam cannot be the only one in the arsenal of a fighter for purity. Email... Of course, automated methods of fighting spam should play a major role in creating an insurmountable barrier for spammers on their way to our mail. But once spam gets in the box, there is still a way to make the world of email cleaner and better.

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Hello dear readers of the blog site. Surely you have already encountered spam, even if you did not know exactly what this mess is called. And for this it is not even necessary. Spam with enviable regularity is poured into regular mailbox- these are the same countless advertising brochures that they slip at you in the hope that you will order or buy something.

So, spam is just is the annoying one, climbing from all sides advertising(but not only advertising - sometimes worse). You didn’t order it, you don’t need it, but it rushes and rushes from all cracks. In this heap, the information you need can easily get lost and you have to spend a lot of time filtering it out.

In our computer age, the main source of spam. And besides advertising spam mailings can be dangerous both for your wallet (phishing, social engineering, wiring) and for your computer (viruses, worms, Trojans).

What does the word Spam mean, what it is and how you can fight it, you will learn by looking at this small note. Hope it will be interesting (well, definitely useful - I promise you that).

Spam - what is it

WHAT DOES SPAM MEAN IN GERMAN?

Itself word Spam comes from the name of canned meat, which was fiercely advertised after the end of the Second World War (obviously, it was necessary to urgently sell the soldiers' meat rations).

The advertising was so aggressive, all-embracing and ubiquitous that this word (and the associated “sediment”) came to my mind, but this time about the intrusive advertising that appeared along with it in conferences (then still in the feed, if anyone remembers).

The word stuck, especially since the obtrusive advertising did not become less, but rather the opposite. When e-mail gained popularity, unauthorized mass advertising and malicious mailing of letters became commonplace. For spammers, such mailings were beneficial, because without special costs necessary information communicated to a large number of people.

But e-mail is not limited to... Spam in PM on social networks, on forums, in instant messengers instant messaging, on message boards, in comments to blogs, is open for editing and adding text by everyone. They also send spam to your phone, for example, by advertising calls or by sending advertising SMS messages.

Where can you find him on the Internet?

1. Email Is just a klondike for spammers. Bulk mailings can sell anything, you can cheat and rob, you can infect computers and send out worms. Databases for mass mailings are collected independently (with the help of programs), or purchased from those who do it professionally.
2. Forums, comments blogs, wikis and message boards - in fact, everyone is allowed to leave messages and it is difficult for spammers to resist not to sleep. This is not always an advertisement - often in this way publishers try to get a free link to their site so that it stands higher in search results Yandex or Google for various requests. This brings them traffic and money.
3. Social networks and dating sites - spam is very common among incoming personal messages. It is also available in the comments to the messages.
4. Messengers (like) are also subject to this scourge.
5. SMS- messages from people unknown to you of an advertising nature. Probably everyone is familiar.
6. Search spam- a rather specific thing, but familiar to everyone. You had such a thing that you enter a request into Yandex (Google), and in the responses there are entirely sites with some kind of bilibery that have nothing to do with the matter. These are the so-called doorways (sites with automatically generated useless texts). They spam the results of search engines, but they make money on visits to them by visitors (in different ways).

Those. all letters in your mailbox (or messages on the forum, blog comments, messages in a personal message) of an advertising or other nature from a sender unknown to you - this is spam... True, the mailings to which you subscribed can also be annoying, but you can still unsubscribe from them (refuse to receive them further).

Spam by itself is annoying and annoying, because it litters where it appears. Most often, this is your inbox, and it can be very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when there are too many unwanted messages. But spam can also pose a real threat to both you and your computer. Let's figure it out with this.

Understanding the types of spam (harmless and dangerous)

Now and further, I will mainly talk about spam messages received by e-mail, for it is this channel that is considered especially susceptible to this phenomenon. Everything else is not so launched and is not so actively used by spammers, and this does not apply to all network users. But the problem of their protection from unwanted messages is acute.

Types of harmless spam

1. Advertising of legal goods and services- in this case, the business owner simply chose spam mailings as one of the channels to attract customers and buyers, because it is not expensive, quickly and brings results. Naturally, he does not really think about the moral (or rather immoral) side of this matter.
2. Prohibited advertising- there are goods and services that are prohibited by law to advertise, and for them spam mailings can be the main channel for attracting customers. By the way, spammers also advertise their services using mass mailings, because this activity is prohibited by law. This also includes advertising defaming competitors, because it is also prohibited by law to do this (praise yourself, but do not scold others).
3. Impact on public opinion- very often spam becomes a good choice for those who are trying to manipulate public opinion in the right direction. It can be politics, as well as. Letters in general can be sent out supposedly from some person in order to compromise him, change his opinion about him or use his authority for profit. But personally, this does not pose any danger to you.
4. Letters that ask for forwarding to others- it can be a variety of so-called "letters of happiness" (send it to 10 friends and you will be happy), or asking to send information to friends for some other reason. Often such letters are used by spammers to collect or replenish the existing base of emails for subsequent mass mailings.

High-risk spam - what it can be

If regular (harmless) spam can only slightly affect your peace of mind and mental health, then the examples below can be very dangerous for your wallet or computer. And this is not a joke.

I myself (the one who teaches and teaches everyone) a couple of years ago "bought" this type of letter (phishing) and parted with several thousand rubles (read ""). I just wrapped myself up and did everything “on the machine” just to fall behind, but when I realized it, it was too late.

1. - very effective method deceiving not only gullible, but also simply busy or inattentive people (there is a hook for anyone). You are sent a letter supposedly from your bank, service electronic money or somewhere else. In this letter, you are sure to be dumbfounded with something (unsettled) and asked to log in to the site to solve the problem. You log in, but the site will be fake (although it looks like a real one) and the data you provided is immediately used to steal all your money.
2. Nigerian letters- you will find out that you can get a large amount of money (different pretexts - from unexpected inheritance to helping a prince in exile). You do not believe for a long time, but they convince you. When you believe it, you will be asked to transfer some money for "related expenses." You translate and no one will bother you anymore.
3. Viruses, worms, trojans- the letter may contain an attached file with a malicious program (or a link leading to a website with a virus). She can immediately cause problems with the operation of the computer, or she will sit quietly in a corner and carefully write down all the passwords, logins and other useful things in the household you enter. Among other things, worms are also able to send themselves to your friends at the addresses found in the email contacts (as they will then you ...).

Spam protection

Where do spammers get databases with email addresses from?

1. Spammers (those who produce mass mailings) collect email addresses from all available sources. These can be forums, guest books, chats, social networks and other sites where postal addresses may be in the public domain.
2. Hackers manage to get to some databases of addresses stored on sites.
3. E-mails are collected in most cases. programmatically(with the help of search bots - harvesters) and this does not require much effort (only time is not very much). Moreover, similar spam email databases you can not collect, but buy them from those who specialize in this matter ().
4. Billions of postal addresses are registered all over the world, and therefore you can simply try to generate emails using special programs using the appropriate dictionaries. Most likely, many of them will actually exist. Read about how spammers check the validity of addresses below.
5. There are special worms (viruses) that can send themselves to the database of addresses found on the victim's computer. The database collected in this way will already be cleared of non-working mailboxes.

How do spammers clean databases from inactive email addresses?

Those who collect the base of addresses, in fact, do not care who owns this or that address - they send letters to everyone in a row, because there will still be someone who will react to them (as they say, they beat the squares).

But nevertheless, in order to optimize costs and increase the return on mailings, it is profitable for them to clear the databases of non-existent addresses. How do they do it? Let's see.

1. The simplest thing is to place a picture in the letter (it may not even be visible - one pixel in size), which will be downloaded from the site belonging to the spammer when the user opens the letter. If the picture is loaded, it means that the letter has been opened and the Email is valid.
2. Many e-mail clients (programs for working with e-mail) automatically send a message about reading the letter, which again plays into the hands of spammers.
3. The letter may contain a link calling to go somewhere, promising mountains of gold. Have passed - consider that your Email will now be marked as valid. The most unpleasant thing is that such a link can be disguised as an unsubscribe button from the mailing list, which in fact will lead to the opposite effect.

How to reduce the likelihood of your email getting into the spam database?

In general, as soon as your mailbox is "confirmed", spammers won't just get off of you. It is important to understand that no one is immune from spam. But you can significantly reduce the likelihood of getting into such a spam database if you take specific precautions:

1. You can, of course, not publish your Email anywhere and not tell anyone about it. But in most cases this is difficult to do, so I advise except for the main box have one or two secondary ones that you will use to register on forums, etc. Often they can come in handy and that can be obtained without registration at all.
2. Do not follow links in spam emails (even if there is an "Unsubscribe" button there is a trap) and, if possible, disable automatic download images in your email client program. There is a chance that your email will be counted as inactive and bulk mailings will not be received by a hundred per day.
3. If you have not registered a mailbox yet or are planning to create a new one (for example, due to the complete clogging of the old with spam), then proceed not from the convenience and ease of memorization, but, on the contrary, make it more authentic and more complicated. Friends, you will still send it to in electronic format, but brute-force spam programs are unlikely to guess it.

What to do if spam doesn't let you breathe anymore?

These were all preventive measures to combat spam (or rather, to reduce its amount). But there is a possibility of effective struggle even in an already completely neglected situation. In this case, it becomes extremely important,.

The fact is that in such large services as or, there are powerful anti-spam filters.

They place all suspicious emails in separate folder"Spam", thereby freeing your Inbox from garbage. Yes, there is no perfect spam cutter, and as far as possible, the contents of the "Spam" folder before cleaning it would be better to look diagonally for legitimate correspondence. But it's still much easier than digging through all this garbage all the time.

If you have a mailbox on another service, where the spam cutter is useless (for example, as in), then you should not despair. Get yourself an Email on Gmail or Yandex, and then set up the forwarding of mail to it from your old mailbox. Moreover, these settings can be done as in the old box (i.e., set up forwarding - shown in the screenshot):

In the same way, in the new mailbox, you can set up the collection of mail from the Emails you already have (the screenshot shows the settings for collecting mail in Gmail):

The same can be said for mail client programs... Most of them also have a built-in spam cutter.

But in this case, do not forget that the mail service will have its own spam folder, which will also need to periodically look through (or look for messages there that should come, but did not reach - for example, confirmation of registration anywhere is often cut by a spam filter), because mail from it will not be sent by default to your computer (although this can be corrected in the settings of the service or client program).

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

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