Viagra and associated topic scams

[marloo2]

A couple of weeks ago my internet provider offered a service to reduce scam emails so I clicked the button.
From that day onwards I have been receiving upwards of 40 emails daily about Viagra and disgusting offers from what one presumes to be, young females. As a retired (F) nurse, these topics are of, not surprisingly, absolutely no interest to me.

My internet provider has been very slow responding to my requests for assistance but finally today they told me (at 1017hrs) that they have adjusted their settings. Since then I have only received ten such emails with over 30 since I logged off at 0100hrs.
Surely there is some sort of law which prohibits very sexually explicit emails being sent via public carriers whether they are scams or not. Is there anything one can do to stop these sad immature creeps invading one’s inbox?
I use AVG to supposedly protect my computer but it was hacked a couple of years ago, so I see it works well!.

[PhilT]

One easy solution is to get a gmail (googlemail) account. Their spam filter is good, sometimes to a fault. As was posted in other threads most ISP email systems can be set to forward 100% of your mail to your gmail account. Some prefer outlook.com or others for their own reasons, and there are some paid email services that are robust and friendly.

Beware if your internet provider charges you for what you have already learnt appears to be a substandard filter. Many do.

Also see How to stop Junk emails

[marloo2]

Hi TheBBG
Thank you for that info. I had missed the previous other threads re this topic. I have read the posts and other material you have indicated and will follow your advice. My provider’s efforts must be working (!) as there were only 30 spams today… Most were marked, “Spam!” and were in the junk folder as usual but they were still there even though I have blocked the senders and the emails themselves. Fortunately, (for them), my provider has not charged me for this service! .

[postulative]

I would recommend considering whether you need that email account. It sounds as though it has made its way onto a few spam lists, and so it is unlikely to ever be free of spam. As @PhilT suggests, you can get a non-ISP email account very easily and these are often far more secure than what your ISP can/will provide.

Do not get a Yahoo email account.

Bear in mind as well that if it’s free then you are the product. Gmail has computers filtering your emails and delivers ads based upon what it thinks are your interests; Microsoft (Outlook.com) and others probably do the same - they want to know about you. That said, while they have computers reading it all I would consider your messages safer and more private with Gmail than with your ISP - especially given this government’s attitude to online privacy.

[marloo2]

Hi Postulative. Thank you. Yes, I did know about the ‘interests’ emails…great when I was studying recently. Had advice re alcohol abuse clinics, gambling problems and other delightful topics long after my research was completed. They must have a brilliant opinion of me!
I do think that I am on those spam lists as I am also receiving numerous phone calls daily , despite the ‘no call’ registration but all they get is an answering machine 24/7…
After receiving such good advice from you kind folks, I have adjusted settings in my Outlook mail account (duh!). Ignorance can be a problem with we self taught computer users! If this does not work I will change things as you advise. Slightly less scam today but it is still there.
Computers can be such a help but they are also such an intrusion into our lives. Thank you again.

[postulative]

Technology is fantastic… except when it isn’t.

[marloo2]

Oooh yes! I think some laptops would make excellent Frisbees… I have spoken to mine on a number of occasions!

[Phloesmum]

We travelled in the US recently and bought a SIM card from a T-Mobile store for navigation along the west coast. They offered a visitor special which was current for three weeks - it worked really well and was just the right amount of time for us. However, I now get lots of spam from American companies like Target, CVS Pharmacies and other local businesses. I must have written my email address on the form in the T-Mobile store. Be warned - don’t give them your email address if you can possibly avoid it.

[grahroll]

or use a disposable email address as you can just dump the address if wanted or warranted.

[marloo2]

I do try not to give out any info but sometimes it is given out for us rather than by us!
It will all continue until our government stops squabbling like a lot of school children (no offence to school children) and begins to understand the dangers of being so slack with foreign intervention in this country. Examples of B.O.M. hacking and the fiasco of the last censes are the few (of the many) of the interventions that the general public know about thus far…
Not good.

[marloo2]

My I am popular! 42 today and as you have poi8nted out, all seem to be from USA judging from their addresses.
One would think that they would have enough problems of their own to deal with over there without emailing crap around the world. See below for first reply.

[karen_seager]

When you block a sender it only blocks that specific e-mail address. The problem with these spam mails is that they use hundreds of different e-mail addresses.

I also get offers promising to enlarge body parts I don’t have, sexual favours from young women of various nationalities (why don’t I get offers from young foreign men? lol) and the best of all, winnings in lotteries I have never heard of! haha

If I were to use a spam filter I would miss all these ‘opportunities’. What on earth would I do then? lol

[phb]

I use a keyword filter and use some of the standard phrases or product names used by scammers/spammers. This avoids the multiple email problem, but takes more thought in setting up.

[marloo2]

Yes, I agree with you on all counts. I have ‘won’ enough money to buy back the parts of our electricity network that was sold off… to guess who…, by the SA Libs decades ago, and then some.
What tiny little minds these morons have and manage to survive with, n’est pas! See below for an answer about blocking suggested there.

[marloo2]

Yes, I have just found this blocking suggestion on Outlook and have chosen some favourite words to see if that helps the situation. I have included Viagra so I hope that this does not delete Choice comments from all of you very helpful people. What a pity that one could not sue these unfortunates for RSI which one could eventually develop from continued deleting of now 40 or so messages each day!
Perhaps I should revisit the page and think of other frequently used words rather than Viagra. Thank you.

[grahroll]

With the filtering you can direct the emails to the junk folder instead of deletion. Every day or two a quick run through the junk folder will ensure you don’t delete any worthwhile emails. The added benefit is that the junk filters are improved by Microsoft from the telemetry they get from Outlook.

[postulative]

The reason we get spam is economics.

If I remember correctly, early on in the Internet’s life there was a limit to the number of emails the ISP allowed me to send. Today, emails are a tiny decimal place in the end of a very large number that shows all Internet traffic - they’re a blip, almost unnoticeable. They are also, for almost all involved in their sending and distribution, almost free for most intents and porpoises . (Yes, I know that’s a dolphin - but the emoji appear to be entirely porpoiseless unless you wish to consider .)

So Hektor Spamovski has his list of email addresses, gathered from a few friends of friends who run a botnet on the side. He puts all the emails, and associated owner names, into his mail merge and presses a button. A few hours later - or even sooner if he got that copy of SpamOffice Pro 2017 - Hektor has sent emails to a million strangers telling them he knows some young European male models who would like to get to know the recipient better. And finally cleared that Free Cell deck that was giving him so much trouble.

Hektor’s ISP got these emails, but Hektor paid for their ‘business’ account so - no problem. It just goes through their systems, and on into the ether. The million emails go in a bunch of different directions, pointed to the general area they seek via the Internet’s naming system that runs in the background. Once they’ve left Hektor’s ISP, nobody can see that Hektor is sending these million emails because they are going all over the place (virtually).

What has Hektor spent to do this? Well, he paid $50 for the million addresses. He stole the software. He pays his ISP on time, as do all good Netizens. The marginal cost for an extra million addressees is tiny. And all he needs is for that one-in-a-million chance to pay off, and one @karen_seager to say "This is what I have always wanted, and his costs are paid with a tidy profit. (How tidy depends on how well his strings his catch along.)

There have been many suggestions to put a microprice on email - something like 1/10 or 1/100 of a cent per recipient. Would you be prepared to pay that in order to stop spam? I would - while Hektor’s spam would have cost from $100 to $1,000 dollars - far less profitable! Unfortunately, it is a hard problem to solve, and in the meantime new technology has come to Hektor’s assistance.

Now he can use voice over IP (VOIP) to make a phone call to anywhere in the world for practically nothing. He can even pretend to be calling from the same suburb, in case his recipient has caller ID - and in some cases spammers have used the recipient’s own number! “He’s inside your house!” (Cue screechy violin music.)

Until we can make this stuff uneconomical, we will continue to get scam spam .

[marloo2]

Thank you for this helpful information.
This is all beginning to make my head spin…but I have now found another solution… When finally looking further than the delete button, I have discovered that many/most of these messages have in fact, been sent to the wrong address.

I thought that iinet, who have been less than helpful with all of this… and we all know who now owns iinet… would like to have the emails they have been incorrectly sending to me, sent back to them.
One should always return goods that belong to others and have been acquired in error.

A few choice ones selected at random have started the ball rolling and if that does not work, there will be a call to the police. Scamming is illegal is it not? Since iinet is sending me these disgusting emails when they are addressed to someone else, then they are responsible for sending scam to me. I have indicated my intentions to them so that might just brighten up their ideas!

_Thus far, they have not even sent the usual ‘your email has been received and is important to us…’ notification.
Perhaps rather than screechy violins, they may soon be hearing metallic clangs.

[marloo2]

Yes, most go to the junk folder but then so do some important messages, so I still have to check them all. See below for my latest thought bubble. Hope it works!

[grahroll]

Since iinet is sending me these disgusting emails when they are addressed to someone else

The mail servers that providers such as iinet, Telstra and Optus implement use the information contained in the email headers to direct the emails to the various receivers such as yourself. These headers will include your email address regardless of what the body (the message) contains. Some spam may even appear to come from yourself.

Spammers being economical as well as illegal don’t bother addressing you they just create any name for the body and out it goes to everyone that is included in the list of addresses that they have. Some try to somewhat personalise it by removing anything past the @ or the first . symbol in the address so many of the spam emails I get have grahroll as the salutation eg Dear grahroll. So one of my filters junk anything that has Dear grahroll in it.

Most of the online email providers already filter these types of email as they have lots of history to use that allows them to pick up most spam before they hit your inbox and they direct it to your junk folder. As nothing is perfect they don’t delete them and then you have to check the junk emails yourself to decide if they remain junk or you want them. An easy way I have found is select them all and those I wish to retain I un-select then delete all selected ones and then re-select the others and move them to my inbox (mostly just drag them to the inbox). I normally don’t have any to move to the inbox.

If you want to report the emails to iinet you are best to forward them with an explanation of what the problem is. Not explaining why can cause problems. Also don’t forget to also report the spam to ACMA, do not alter the subject line or add anything to this one just send it, at report@submit.spam.acma.gov.au and if you have offensive spam report it to the Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner see here:

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