PHISHING

[frank_f15]

i really get tired of the emails i get from phishing expeditions, do u think it might be a good idea to clik on the links and fill in the lines gibberish, DARN IT i just want to hit back at these rectal orffices. i just got another one, if i don't reply my EBAY account will be discontinued for the 237th time. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif just venting

 

[Dargo]

I've reported dozens to eBay. They don't seem to do anything other than say that they are bogus. I replied to the last couple and filled it in with totally bogus information. In the last one, I put in their "comment" box "do you think I'm stupid?" I haven't had one in a couple of weeks now. Maybe once they figure that you're on to them, they move on? So far they haven't sent me any more.

 

[frank_f15]

yes , i have reported many to ebay, but don't even bother anymore, seems to do no good, i don't really think ebay or any other s do anything about it. Guess it is just a matter of Beware and if u are dumb enough to fill in the info, tough luck. but sure would like to be ale to hit back /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif MUST JUST BE ME IN MY OLD AGE /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Bob_Skurka]

I bounce them back to their server as unread. It makes it appear as if the email address they sent it to is not valid, after a while they tend to clean up their list and take me off. I also did that to an aunt of mine who kept sending me about a dozen jokes every day, now she wonders why she can get emails from me but every time she sends me a joke, the email comes back to her as being sent to an invalid email address /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[JimR]

I love the ones that read like this. My uncle's brother's first cousin Prince Faquar of eastern Ethiopa died and left me $40,000,000.00 to move as I please. I need you to move this to an american bank. I will pay you 1/10th of that amount when the fund is established. Please send me your bank account information so I can transfer the funds to you immediately. Please keep this between you and I as I do not want the local officials to know what I am doing. My reply to these emails is a plain and simple 3 words. F-ck Off A-shole. That seems to have stopped the emails from Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Ethiopia and a lot of other countries. I don't get the Ebay and Paypal emails as of yet.

 

[DKinWA]

How do you go about bouncing the emails back as unread? I wouldn't mind doing that to a few that come my way. I'd like to send something else back to some of these losers, but I'd probably be the one to get into trouble.

 

[OkeeDon]

One way is with a program called MailWasher: mailwasher.net . One of it's abilities is to bounce an email back to any address you place on a blacklist. However, I read somewhere that bouncing does not always work, nor is it always desirable, but it was a couple of years ago, I'm having a senior moment, and I can't remember the details. I'm pretty sure I read the discussion about bouncing on the MailWasher documentation. I used a shareware version of MailWasher for a while until I got my own web site with Spam Assassin built it free; now I simply re-direct all my email through a Spam Assassin setup. It works pretty good, about as well as any Bayesian Filter setup (which is how most of the newer ones work), but not as well as a Spam Arrest type subscription program, which I'm currently to much of a miser to pay for.

 

[California]

For spam don't send a bounce message.

Spammers use software that plugs bogus data into the From, Reply-to, and routing fields. Your bounce just bothers some innocent whose name was harvested and fraudulently used in the From field. The bounce will never reach the spammer.

I used myrealname @ myisp as my ebay id for six years. Later that email account received thousands of bounces for spam that had myrealname @ myisp in the From field next to random first and last names, none mine and with no duplication across thousands of messages that I purportedly sent. Every message had different routing in the headers, again none of it was my ISP or my static IP. Obviously my ebay id got harvested.

I wrote about this in this post I made last April.

(For crazy aunt a bounce probably is the best answer, and Mailwasher configured selectively should do the job.)

 

[Bob_Skurka]

<font color="red">
Spammers use software that plugs bogus data into the From, Reply-to, and routing fields. Your bounce just bothers some innocent whose name was harvested and fraudulently used in the From field. The bounce will never reach the spammer. </font>


This is true in SOME cases but not in ALL cases. Much of the spam I get is from companies that consider themselves to be legitimate businesses trying to offer me a valuable service (like a new mortgage) and for those types of spam, the "bounce" does work. Also for the Nigerian financial scam type letters, bounce also works. However, there are many cases where bounce does send the email back to a void address or to a "harvested" email address.

As to the question posted previously asking how to "bounce" my email program has "bounce" as a built in feature but many shareware programs are also available.

 

[gws]

NEVER click on a link. Most of the links will have a "serial" number tied directly to you email address.