Is there a DOCTOR in the house - for eMAIL??

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ed4copies

ed4copies

Local Chapter Manager
Joined
Mar 25, 2005
Messages
24,637
Location
Racine, WI, USA.
The bash team needs a pro.

Someone has sent Randy a whole bunch of junk instead of entries to the trivia. So, he is attempting to find a way to "out-think" the spammers.

The methods we (the bash team) have proposed are creative, but NOT what I would call, professional "out-thinking".

I have to believe there are members who have GREAT ways of accomplishing this, since the problem is not new.

PLEASE POST HERE OR SEND RANDY AN E-MAIL THROUGH THE FORUM.

HE IS "SPEARHEADING" THE SOLUTIONS AND HE asked for my input --- this thread will result in my input since I know NOTHING about email.

Thanks to all who reply -- especially those who are usually paid to give such answers but will voluntarily provide a solution to the IAP.
 
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Download eremove and enter the username/pass and you can view all the email headers without downloading them. You then can select them and delete them.

http://www.tucows.com/preview/251006

We used to use this a LOT when I did tech support years ago.

If your wanting to combat the new spam coming in.. the email address should be put as an image or brokeup so spiders dont grab the email address.

http://services.nexodyne.com/email/index_custom.php

example:
image.png
or triviaemail -- AT -- penturners.org
 
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The problem is that, once you post your email address in a forum or other website, it gets harvested almost immediately by spammers. The way I get around this, and this may or may not work for anyone else, is to impose strict spam checks on my mail server. I use a combination of DNSBLs (blacklists), header checks, MIME header checks, attachment squashing, strict protocol requirements, and even body checks when it gets really bad. I don't accept the mail and then check it, I check it during submission, and then respond with a REJECT and no other info. That way the spammer sees my server rejecting the mail during submission, but no other info as to why - that way they can't adapt to the particular check that initiated the reject.

Obviously not everyone runs their own mail server, so this is a very "high end" method.

What I would suggest is, instead of posting the email to submit trivia to on the forum, you obfuscate it like such:
email (over here at) penturners (dot org)
or
email (shift-2) penturnersdotorg
or
email (the single character equiv of 'at') penturners dot org

Nothing is foolproof, and the email harvesting viruses that infect the average computer users' computers can see through simple obfuscation like "email(at)domain.org", so you have to really take care to compose it carefully.

Personally, I'd be changing the email alias that's now in the spammers database to something else, since stopping the flood is going to prove pretty difficult at this point.
 
ALPHAGEEK to the rescue... :)

I have a solution that can almost guarantee success for IAP. And it can be setup quickly and change as needed. I'll send an email to Randy with details.
 
run the message through gmail (they support downloading messages for other servers). the spam sniffer works well, and like was suggested above, apply a filter to only display messages that contain the word trivia in the subject.
 
If he got a lot of spam, why is he still using triva2? Shouldn't he move on to 3 and start fresh?
 
chuybregts said:
run the message through gmail (they support downloading messages for other servers). the spam sniffer works well, and like was suggested above, apply a filter to only display messages that contain the word trivia in the subject.
Click to expand...

Great minds think alike Chris... Definately part of my recommendation that I sent to Randy... Gmails filter and forward rules would be a plus here too.
 
DEAN!!!!

For Pete's sake!!!!

Now RANDY will spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the combination of CTL, ALT, shift and digits that will give him the GREEK alphabet!!!

We'll NEVER get anything done!!!
 
ed4copies said:
DEAN!!!!

For Pete's sake!!!!

Now RANDY will spend the rest of the day trying to figure out the combination of CTL, ALT, shift and digits that will give him the GREEK alphabet!!!

We'll NEVER get anything done!!!
Click to expand...

And how is that different than any other day :eek:

Oh.. and no CTL or ATL to get the greek alphabet at all :cool:
 
Thanks for all of the suggestions. I think we have things under control for the remainder of this year and can cogitate in leisure (unless we get arrested) about making major changes to the system for next year.

If others see this thread and have additional ideas, please post them. We are not locked into anything at this time.
 
pipecrafter said:
.....Personally, I'd be changing the email alias that's now in the spammers database to something else, since stopping the flood is going to prove pretty difficult at this point.
Click to expand...

Kurt: We did that immediately and the spam is gone. Real problem was we hid the new email addy so well that people who could not use the "CLICK HERE" option did not know what email addy to manually enter into their address bar.:eek:

pipecrafter said:
.....What I would suggest is, instead of posting the email to submit trivia to on the forum, you obfuscate it like such.....
Click to expand...

Wonderful word and that is exactly what we did!!
 
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this is the advice that I received when setting up my website.

instead of posting the email address in the text, post it as a jpg image. since the address isn't a text format, the harvesters have to actually look at the image, a person can do it byt not a program.
 

Attachments

  • trivia.jpg
    trivia.jpg
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I have it on good authority that Jeff is not worried about the salary cap!!!

(He'll pay hefty fines to keep his "A-team")
 
We could have just posted our antsirs here in the forum, and subtracted five hours post time for the Aussie , 4 hours for the British members, and then added two whole days for the Asian members.

That way we would have all known who was the first correct antsir. That wood have saved us the grief with the spam.

P.S. whoever waded thru the spam, could you make me a nice thick samich?
 
mywoodshopca said:
If your wanting to combat the new spam coming in.. the email address should be put as an image or brokeup so spiders dont grab the email address.

http://services.nexodyne.com/email/index_custom.php

example:
image.png
or triviaemail -- AT -- penturners.org
Click to expand...


That is a good solution, but makes it difficult for people to reply to you.

At our company, we used all the above plus a combination of IP address blocks.

One solution for web pages is to include your email address as javascript.
The spiders and bots normally don't parse javascript.



I hope this doesn't break the Vbulletin:

<!-- Original: CDR Software -->
<!-- Web Site: http://www.cdrsoft.com -->

<!-- This script and many more are available free online at -->
<!-- The JavaScript Source!! http://javascript.internet.com -->

<!--
user = "randyrls";
site = "comcast.net";

document.write('<a href=\"mailto:' + user + '@' + site + '\">');
document.write(user + '@' + site + '</a>');
// End -->
 
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