I have always hated spam but compared to what others have told me about how much they receive everyday, I figured we were pretty lucky. We use MailWasher Pro located at www.firetrust.com to filter, sort and preview our mail before downloading it. This has always worked well for us.
If an email is suspicious we can view is safely in MailWasher to determine its legitimacy, then download or delete it. We used to blacklist email addresses with it as well but spam email is mostly cloaked and there is no reason to penalize an innocent mail server.
As of October 19th we were receiving about 70 spam emails per day, that was normal for us. Then we listed a mare on Craigslist, we got several serious inquiries on her or at least they seemed serious.
Some of the inquiries were just: "Is the mare still available?". When we answered them back, "Yes, she is still available.", we never heard anything from them again.
The flood gates were opened. As of today, we are receiving about 300 spam emails per day and climbing. These inquiries are nothing more than a way to get you to respond and reveal your email address. It is then put on a spam list as a current and active email address.
We thought that if we used Craigslist again, we would just list a phone number and say that we will not respond to emails but my Son listed an item on there and actually got a spam phone call. It's a dangerous world out there...
Showing posts with label spammers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spammers. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Scams and Spams
Someone on a forum that I frequent posted the link below to the Washington Post website and noted that they were already seeing a difference in their e-mail inboxes and spam folders.
Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline - Security Fix
I read the article yesterday and noticed a big difference in my spam levels as well. This morning was the icing on the cake, only eight spam messages awaited me upon my awakening. There are normally around forty the first thing in the morning.
I haven't visited my gmail or yahoo email accounts yet but I am going there now to empty my spam folders then see how they look in a day or two. The sad part of this story is that we were led to believe that most of our spam and scams come from other counties, but now we see that it is mostly home grown.
Major Source of Online Scams and Spams Knocked Offline - Security Fix
I read the article yesterday and noticed a big difference in my spam levels as well. This morning was the icing on the cake, only eight spam messages awaited me upon my awakening. There are normally around forty the first thing in the morning.
I haven't visited my gmail or yahoo email accounts yet but I am going there now to empty my spam folders then see how they look in a day or two. The sad part of this story is that we were led to believe that most of our spam and scams come from other counties, but now we see that it is mostly home grown.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Work at Home
Sorry, that I didn't blog yesterday, but I had something more important to do, I went to Sunday School, watched my Grandson sled all afternoon, then went back to Church in the evening. Enough excuses, now back to my thoughts for today.
Why do so many people want to work at home? Because they want to stay home plus be able to earn some money. Simple concept, makes sense and something that most everyone desires, get rich at home. This makes the work at home scams very successful and very sad, especially for those Moms who want to stay at home with their precious babies or children. This is just a perfect situation to me, I love stay at home Moms.
The problem is that there just aren't that many Work at Home jobs that are legitimate, if someone has to advertise for people to do work for them at home, then you might as well figure that it is a scheme to take advantage of you. There are so many people out there that are looking for these jobs that no one should ever have to advertise unless they are just scammers. So please don't fall for this stuff. I have a free classified site that gets these type of ads listed everyday. I delete them as soon as possible but I am always amazed at the number of hits these ads get. Here is a sample of one that I deleted this morning.
Join one of the best Advertising Company of India. We pay you for your hard work. 100% Payment Assurance. Its a copy-paste work. Unlimited Monthly income. For more details E-mail or call us.
What the above ad consists of is spamming classified sites like mine or posting ads to sites that allow comments. So, in other words they turn you into a spammer which gets you kicked off of your ISP, so that you don't have internet service anymore and guess what? They can't pay you, since they can no longer reach you through e-mail but then, they never intended to pay you anyway.
They actually get suckers to fall for this stuff all of the time. It isn't important to keep you hooked, it is only important to get you hooked for a short time, they go for quantity of suckers, not quality.
There are other scams that sell you useless products to assemble for resale, you purchase this junk, then get stuck with items that won't sell, they have already made their profit when you paid them.
Be smart, don't fall for scams, remember if it sounds to good to be true, then it is! You aren't going to win any lotteries through emails and you aren't going to be able to help any oppressed people get large amounts of money out of their country.
We once received a $20,000 cashier's check for a $1000 horse that we had for sale. We knew that it was a fake check but we wanted to make them pay the postage to send it anyway. With this scam, some US banks would cash these checks, then you were asked to send some of the money to a shipper who wasn't really a shipper but was the actual scammer. Then after you had sent the money you would hear back from the bank that the check was not real and you would have to repay the bank. This scam doesn't work well anymore because the US banks are wise to it now.
Why do so many people want to work at home? Because they want to stay home plus be able to earn some money. Simple concept, makes sense and something that most everyone desires, get rich at home. This makes the work at home scams very successful and very sad, especially for those Moms who want to stay at home with their precious babies or children. This is just a perfect situation to me, I love stay at home Moms.
The problem is that there just aren't that many Work at Home jobs that are legitimate, if someone has to advertise for people to do work for them at home, then you might as well figure that it is a scheme to take advantage of you. There are so many people out there that are looking for these jobs that no one should ever have to advertise unless they are just scammers. So please don't fall for this stuff. I have a free classified site that gets these type of ads listed everyday. I delete them as soon as possible but I am always amazed at the number of hits these ads get. Here is a sample of one that I deleted this morning.
Join one of the best Advertising Company of India. We pay you for your hard work. 100% Payment Assurance. Its a copy-paste work. Unlimited Monthly income. For more details E-mail or call us.
What the above ad consists of is spamming classified sites like mine or posting ads to sites that allow comments. So, in other words they turn you into a spammer which gets you kicked off of your ISP, so that you don't have internet service anymore and guess what? They can't pay you, since they can no longer reach you through e-mail but then, they never intended to pay you anyway.
They actually get suckers to fall for this stuff all of the time. It isn't important to keep you hooked, it is only important to get you hooked for a short time, they go for quantity of suckers, not quality.
There are other scams that sell you useless products to assemble for resale, you purchase this junk, then get stuck with items that won't sell, they have already made their profit when you paid them.
Be smart, don't fall for scams, remember if it sounds to good to be true, then it is! You aren't going to win any lotteries through emails and you aren't going to be able to help any oppressed people get large amounts of money out of their country.
We once received a $20,000 cashier's check for a $1000 horse that we had for sale. We knew that it was a fake check but we wanted to make them pay the postage to send it anyway. With this scam, some US banks would cash these checks, then you were asked to send some of the money to a shipper who wasn't really a shipper but was the actual scammer. Then after you had sent the money you would hear back from the bank that the check was not real and you would have to repay the bank. This scam doesn't work well anymore because the US banks are wise to it now.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Forwarded Emails
Don't you love forwarded emails? I do enjoy them if they are funny or informative in someway, but I hate the ones that are just harvesting email addresses. These usually include something about having good luck if you forward it on to 10 people in your address book, but if you don't then you will have bad luck for 3 years and all of your hair and teeth will fall out.
Other email harvesting forwards are usually very spiritual, telling you some heart wrenching story about the love of God and that if you don't send this email about Jesus on to 20 people in your address book then you are ashamed of Him. I get a lot of these from a certain lady that refuses to pay me $80 that she owes me. I'm sorry but don't try to convince me about how much of a Christian you are, when your walk talks louder than your talk talks, but that is another subject.
The next time you get one of these email harvesting messages, look at it closely, go to the properties of that email and look at the header. If that email has been traveling for awhile, you can get hundreds and hundreds of legitimate email addresses from it. Then the innocent recipients cannot understand why they get so much spam, they never give their email addresses out to anyone, but the problem is that their friends, family and acquaintances give their addresses out every time they forward one of these messages to them.
One of my good friends only sends me the really good stuff and I liked this one. So, if you haven't received it yet, here it is:
Just in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should make things a little bit clearer.
@ PRISON
you spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK
you spend the majority of your time in an 6X6 cubicle /office
@ PRISON
you get three meals a day, fully paid for
@ WORK
you get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it
@ PRISON
you get time off for good behavior
@WORK
you get more work for good behavior
@ PRISON
the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you
@ WORK
you must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself
@ PRISON
you can watch TV and play games
@ WORK
you could get fired for watching TV and playing games
@ PRISON
you get your own toilet
@ WORK
you have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat
@ PRISON
they allow your family and friends to visit
@ WORK
you aren't even supposed to speak to your family on the phone
@ PRISON
all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required
@ WORK
you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners
@ PRISON
you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out
@ WORK
you spend most of your time at work wanting to get out and go inside bars
@ PRISON
you must deal with sadistic guards
@ WORK
they are called managers
Now get back to work. You're not getting paid to read Blogs!
Other email harvesting forwards are usually very spiritual, telling you some heart wrenching story about the love of God and that if you don't send this email about Jesus on to 20 people in your address book then you are ashamed of Him. I get a lot of these from a certain lady that refuses to pay me $80 that she owes me. I'm sorry but don't try to convince me about how much of a Christian you are, when your walk talks louder than your talk talks, but that is another subject.
The next time you get one of these email harvesting messages, look at it closely, go to the properties of that email and look at the header. If that email has been traveling for awhile, you can get hundreds and hundreds of legitimate email addresses from it. Then the innocent recipients cannot understand why they get so much spam, they never give their email addresses out to anyone, but the problem is that their friends, family and acquaintances give their addresses out every time they forward one of these messages to them.
One of my good friends only sends me the really good stuff and I liked this one. So, if you haven't received it yet, here it is:
Just in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should make things a little bit clearer.
@ PRISON
you spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK
you spend the majority of your time in an 6X6 cubicle /office
@ PRISON
you get three meals a day, fully paid for
@ WORK
you get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it
@ PRISON
you get time off for good behavior
@WORK
you get more work for good behavior
@ PRISON
the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you
@ WORK
you must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself
@ PRISON
you can watch TV and play games
@ WORK
you could get fired for watching TV and playing games
@ PRISON
you get your own toilet
@ WORK
you have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat
@ PRISON
they allow your family and friends to visit
@ WORK
you aren't even supposed to speak to your family on the phone
@ PRISON
all expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required
@ WORK
you get to pay all your expenses to go to work, then they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners
@ PRISON
you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out
@ WORK
you spend most of your time at work wanting to get out and go inside bars
@ PRISON
you must deal with sadistic guards
@ WORK
they are called managers
Now get back to work. You're not getting paid to read Blogs!
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Spammers
The lowest earthly life form is a species called a Spammer, this may also be the lowest life form in the whole universe. I don't know anyone who's life has not been infested with these terrible parasites at one time or another.
While most of these infestations come into your system through the use of a home computer. Even those who have no home computers can also be affected by these pests, through a medium called the United States Postal Service. The parasites are brought into your home by a human host or carrier, these hosts were at one time called Mailmen but with the advent of spam their name was changed to Mail Carriers.
There is no cure for this disease, but research continues. The only answer to this growing problem is that all those who are infested to just quit buying from or falling for these schemes. If the Spam would quit being profitable then all of the Spammers would disappear back into the cesspool from which they came or find another way to rip people off.
These lowly spammers can use your email address to send out spam emails, then your email address gets reported for spam and you can no longer send legitimate emails to your friends without their email providers blocking your email address or sending your emails to their junk folders.
I have also received very nasty emails from people accusing me of sending porn emails to them, after a spammer used my email address. Before accusing people of being spammers or reporting their email addresses, you should look at the complete header by going into the properties of the offending email to find out exactly where that email came from and not just by looking at the address in the "From" area.
It is kind of like a wolf in sheep's clothing. I get Viagra ads, enlargement advise and phishing schemes from legitimate Church addresses, Bank addresses and so on.
On another subject, I got a scary email today that makes me leary of making any large purchases from eBay. I wouldn't sell my eBay account for $5000 but some people might. It gives you something to think about.
Here is the email:
Hello,
I want to propose you a deal, if you let me use your ebay account i will give you 5000$ a month. You will only have to let me post some auctions on it and you will get this money. eBay will believe that someone broke into your account, they don't have to know that you gave it to me. They will think i stoled it. Please reply if you are interested. I repeat, nobody will ever know you gave it to me.
Thank you.
While most of these infestations come into your system through the use of a home computer. Even those who have no home computers can also be affected by these pests, through a medium called the United States Postal Service. The parasites are brought into your home by a human host or carrier, these hosts were at one time called Mailmen but with the advent of spam their name was changed to Mail Carriers.
There is no cure for this disease, but research continues. The only answer to this growing problem is that all those who are infested to just quit buying from or falling for these schemes. If the Spam would quit being profitable then all of the Spammers would disappear back into the cesspool from which they came or find another way to rip people off.
These lowly spammers can use your email address to send out spam emails, then your email address gets reported for spam and you can no longer send legitimate emails to your friends without their email providers blocking your email address or sending your emails to their junk folders.
I have also received very nasty emails from people accusing me of sending porn emails to them, after a spammer used my email address. Before accusing people of being spammers or reporting their email addresses, you should look at the complete header by going into the properties of the offending email to find out exactly where that email came from and not just by looking at the address in the "From" area.
It is kind of like a wolf in sheep's clothing. I get Viagra ads, enlargement advise and phishing schemes from legitimate Church addresses, Bank addresses and so on.
On another subject, I got a scary email today that makes me leary of making any large purchases from eBay. I wouldn't sell my eBay account for $5000 but some people might. It gives you something to think about.
Here is the email:
Hello,
I want to propose you a deal, if you let me use your ebay account i will give you 5000$ a month. You will only have to let me post some auctions on it and you will get this money. eBay will believe that someone broke into your account, they don't have to know that you gave it to me. They will think i stoled it. Please reply if you are interested. I repeat, nobody will ever know you gave it to me.
Thank you.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
My Year End Rants
After taking care of renewing a domain name, I thought that I might vent some steam here. I have around 28 domain names registered with GoDaddy.com and every time I have to go to that website I get so angry and I always threaten to transfer my names somewhere else!
I know that they make pretty good money and brag about what a quality company that they are and how many customers that they have, so why can't they afford to build a better website?
We live in an area that has no high speed internet connection options, so unless we want to shell out the money for satellite dish service, we are pretty much stuck with dial-up. We get by, sometimes painfully, but there are a few websites that are without excuse.
I can go to many big websites without getting upset, sites like Amazon and eBay are not a problem at all, but GoDaddy, PayPal and the United States Postal Service websites are just impossible.
GoDaddy.com is without question the worst, they take the first place ribbon for being the all time slowest website out there. I hate going there and avoid it at all costs. I guess I need to do some shopping and find another registrar, to save myself from a total melt down.
Why is that site so slow? It takes forever to pull any information from their databases and having to wade through all of the stupid advertising is just ridiculous. Don't they make enough money selling their services? Putting so much advertising on the site makes the whole shopping experience confusing. I really don't understand how they do any business at all with all of the confusion on each page.
If their site is any indication of the speed of their servers, I don't think that I would want to host a website there.
Enough of that, now let's talk about AT & T, the phone company. Since we do only have access to the internet by dial-up and pay each month for phone service, wouldn't you think that we should have a right to a working phone line? My continuing fear is that we would have some kind of emergency and have to depend on our home phone to dial 911.
The static in our line is so bad that you can't keep a internet connection and the disconnects while you are talking on the phone are very annoying. We have just had to adapt by starting each phone conversation with "Now we might get disconnected because we live in a third world country and the phone service isn't very good here." We understood about "dropped calls" before cell phones were even invented.
I will have to admit though, that things are getting much better than they used to be. We used to have to spend weekends and Holidays with no phone service at all, that hasn't happened in a long time.
We have had to call in for repairs so many times that we get a little irritable with the stupid things that we are told each time. Our neighbors are having the same problems and the phone company has even blamed the electric company. Then finally, the last time that a repairman was out, he sat in my house and told me that they just don't know what is causing it, and I do appreciate that kind of honesty. I just wish they would give us a break on our phone bill.
We called repair last Friday the 28th and were told that, "Yes, they could hear the static", then they said that they would have it repaired by January 5th, the next day they called back to find out for sure that we still needed repair and to assure me that they would have it repaired by January 5th, I said something to the affect that that was a long time to go without an internet connection and with a phone that you can barely use, she quickly snapped back that she had said BY January 5th and not ON January 5th, that made me feel much better. In the mean time she wanted to know how I felt about the service that they had provided today.
All in all I will have to say that, AT & T employees are much more intelligent than those people who work in Hospital Billing but that really isn't saying much because the only people that rank lower than Hospital billing employees are Spammers.
I know that they make pretty good money and brag about what a quality company that they are and how many customers that they have, so why can't they afford to build a better website?
We live in an area that has no high speed internet connection options, so unless we want to shell out the money for satellite dish service, we are pretty much stuck with dial-up. We get by, sometimes painfully, but there are a few websites that are without excuse.
I can go to many big websites without getting upset, sites like Amazon and eBay are not a problem at all, but GoDaddy, PayPal and the United States Postal Service websites are just impossible.
GoDaddy.com is without question the worst, they take the first place ribbon for being the all time slowest website out there. I hate going there and avoid it at all costs. I guess I need to do some shopping and find another registrar, to save myself from a total melt down.
Why is that site so slow? It takes forever to pull any information from their databases and having to wade through all of the stupid advertising is just ridiculous. Don't they make enough money selling their services? Putting so much advertising on the site makes the whole shopping experience confusing. I really don't understand how they do any business at all with all of the confusion on each page.
If their site is any indication of the speed of their servers, I don't think that I would want to host a website there.
Enough of that, now let's talk about AT & T, the phone company. Since we do only have access to the internet by dial-up and pay each month for phone service, wouldn't you think that we should have a right to a working phone line? My continuing fear is that we would have some kind of emergency and have to depend on our home phone to dial 911.
The static in our line is so bad that you can't keep a internet connection and the disconnects while you are talking on the phone are very annoying. We have just had to adapt by starting each phone conversation with "Now we might get disconnected because we live in a third world country and the phone service isn't very good here." We understood about "dropped calls" before cell phones were even invented.
I will have to admit though, that things are getting much better than they used to be. We used to have to spend weekends and Holidays with no phone service at all, that hasn't happened in a long time.
We have had to call in for repairs so many times that we get a little irritable with the stupid things that we are told each time. Our neighbors are having the same problems and the phone company has even blamed the electric company. Then finally, the last time that a repairman was out, he sat in my house and told me that they just don't know what is causing it, and I do appreciate that kind of honesty. I just wish they would give us a break on our phone bill.
We called repair last Friday the 28th and were told that, "Yes, they could hear the static", then they said that they would have it repaired by January 5th, the next day they called back to find out for sure that we still needed repair and to assure me that they would have it repaired by January 5th, I said something to the affect that that was a long time to go without an internet connection and with a phone that you can barely use, she quickly snapped back that she had said BY January 5th and not ON January 5th, that made me feel much better. In the mean time she wanted to know how I felt about the service that they had provided today.
All in all I will have to say that, AT & T employees are much more intelligent than those people who work in Hospital Billing but that really isn't saying much because the only people that rank lower than Hospital billing employees are Spammers.
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