hiya Hmmm,

        Freeola saying they dont see the problem is crazy, the 5-7 spam emails i recieve on all freeola hosted domain email addresses are all of a sexual nature which is surely a problem, its a big problem if the email addresses are for third party customers. Come on freeola there must be something that can be done?

    Anti spam scripts

I wrote a php web mail script where the user must complete all visible fields....
   Your name
   Your email
   Subject
   Message
   plus a hidden field
When the user submits the completed form it goes through a validating script, firstly it checks the email address the user or spam bot submited belongs to a registered domain (making the sender traceable), if successful it then checks the hidden field, if the form was submitted by a human this hidden field should remain empty, if this hidden field is empty the validation continues to check all other fields before sending, if validation fails on any of the fields, you recieve message saying so, such as `this is not a valid domain, please try again` or if the hidden field is completed you'll get, `you don't appear to be human, please try again`. After updating a contact page with this form i no longer recieve the spam, making me believe the bot sending this spam is not a very clever bot.

Also freeola offer a php web mail script that includes anti spam via the captcha image method, meaning before the form is submitted the user has to correctly type in the numbers or letters they see within the captcha image, as most spambots can't read letters and numbers within an image they cant complete the field and therefore cant submit the spam.

ive run both these antispam scripts on domains that were getting bombarded with this unwanted & bad natured spam and so far its been successful.

And thats what i call an antispam script,lol.
Happy days and keep safe m8.

lo all,

   I have serveral domains hosted with Freeola and receive 5 - 7 spam emails (offering everything i need to please my partner) on all related addresses with the exception of 1, the exception is a website which includes 2 web mail forms, the 1st being the php script freeola offer for all to use and the 2nd being a php script i wrote myself and wanted to test, as i dont recieve any spam on the related addresses i guess both mine and freeola's antibot scripts work.

OUT OF INTEREST, DO THOSE OF YOU THAT RECEIVE THIS UNWANTED SPAM ON FREEOLA HOSTED DOMAINS USE ANTISPAM SCRIPTS?


    Also 2 weeks ago (due to my website being intergrated into an instore epos system) i transfered 1 of the domains that received daily spam to a new host and kept the same email addresses, since the domain has been transfered i have not received any spam at all.

WOULD THIS MEAN THIS SPAM PROBLEM IS ISOLATED TO FREEOLA HOSTED DOMAINS OR COULD IT BE DUE TO THE NEW HOST FILTERING OUT THE SPAM?

ncrs wrote:
> I'll get the message changed as its incorrect, probably a
> misunderstanding of what the system is for by the person setting
> the autoresponder up.



Thanks.

As MS Outlook is a (very)popular email client perhaps you can also investigate to see if you can accept spam samples from this application?





^{Search Freeola Chat}

ncrs wrote:
> The header is there, but it gets reorganised by Outlook (for no
> good reason), and the software I'm using to place the complaints
> recognises they have been altered and won't generate the
> complaints.

That's a shame - can't you use the info to add the 'perps' to your spam filters?

Perhaps it would be an idea to add some more info (the format you can accept...) to your automated response when customers write to your abuse address? I would have continued to take the time to send in my spam samples for ever if I hadn't asked!!!

Response received from emails to Freeola's abuse@ address:

Thank you for your submission to the Freeola Email abuse system,  your email will be used to help train our Anti-spam system and help to minimize the inconvenience of unwanted messages to our customers.  With regards  The Freeola Team




^{Search Freeola Chat}

FWIW - [ re. Message Headers not available ]

I've tried sending emails (to myself) as attachments.

If I then drag the attached emails out of the email that contains them into another folder within Outlook then the Message Headers appear to be intact...





^{Search Freeola Chat}

Regarding the attachments, It depends on the email client whether this works correctly or not, However I can see some samples from yourself over the last 3 days, which I think were sent with Outlook (which while it sends the headers through does some reorganisation) which means they cannot be used.  Thunderbird does not have this limitation (In fact Outlook is about the only program that does) so I would recommend Thunderbird if you are going to report spam.

Whether it is worth it or not is ultimately your own decision,  ISP's (including ourselves) to a large extent rely on these things being reported to keep themselves of blacklists etc.  Reporting Spam this way does help to reduce the spam sent, but will not neccessarily reduce the amount that any indvidual account receives. 

I spend a fair bit of time dealing with spammers both their sending from our networks and mail coming to our network, and from my own experience I don't see any ncrease in the spam coming through, though its possible that they are being more successful in hitting live accounts

Hmmm... wrote:
> Tony, glad to hear you aren't receiving any spam ;¬)
>
> As I mentioned earlier one of my Freeola clients has had to move
> her email to BT due to the nature of some of the spam to her
> Freeola address.
>
> I have a lot of Freeola domains (100+) so can see the same spam
> is going to a range of accounts - as I've mentioned earlier.
>
>
> Tony wrote:
> It seems most likely to me that spammers are simply getting
> better at circumventing spam filters or solutions, and this
> will
> almost inevitably result in people receiving more spam if their
> addresses are compromised.
>
> As I've mentioned earlier (a couple of times) my local Outlook
> junk filter and GoogleMail's spam filter do pick up the spam 100%
> of the time! - it's just Freeola's filter that's missing it -
> hence this thread.  I'm ok, I'm just trying to look after some of
> my clients who are getting fed up with it.
>
> Hmmm... wrote:
> The emails I've sent to the abuse@ address are sent as
> attachments does this give you the header information you
> require?
>
> Can Freeola say if sending the spam samples as attachments gives
> the required header info?  But after reading Tony's reply is it
> worth me continuing to send samples to the abuse@ address?
>
>
> Thanks - ^{I'm only trying to help...}
>
>
> ^{Search Freeola
> Chat}

Dragonlance wrote:
> Hmmm... wrote:
> Since my return I notice the type of spam has moved on to png
> and rtf attachments - again over numerous Freeola domains - I
> wonder if any others are seeing this?
>
> Hi Hmmm, can most certainly agree with this....infact just
> received 3 with rtf attachments...

Thanks for that Dragonlance - As I have a large number of Freeola domains (100+) I like to think what I see is a useful 'barometer' across the board.

'Sort of' glad to hear you are seeing similar activity along with me and some of my clients.  Unfortunately Freeola don't seem to see/acknowledge this activity so I'll have to live with it.





^{Search Freeola Chat}

I have six Freeola free addresses, of various ages, some extremely old.  I also have another eight addresses at my own domains hosted by Freeola.

I have just checked all of my addresses and I have no spam at all except at one address which is known to be compromised and has been widely used.  Even my predictable addresses have no spam.

People should avoid using predicable addresses as these can be caught by dictionary or name attack.

In the past I have found that schools, councils and various people who circulate emails have left the recipient addresses in the header (providing all recipients with the entire list of recipient addresses). Very few companies would fall into this trap, but non-commercial organisations constantly do.  People receiving emails which give away their email address should complain to the sender.

It seems most likely to me that spammers are simply getting better at circumventing spam filters or solutions, and this will almost inevitably result in people receiving more spam if their addresses are compromised.

If the spam becomes to much of a nuisance then people really do need to change their addresses.  In my experience things can improve over time if you take an address out of use temporarily.

ncrs wrote:
> Regarding the abuse address, we use that address to complain on
> behalf of the user receiving the spam to the ISP's that are
> forwarding the mail on.  If you do have anyone sending mail to
> that address, can you please make sure that they include the
> headers for the mail, as at least 50 percent of the mail sent to
> that address is not possible to chase as they only include the
> contents not the headers.

That's a better way of explaining what I was trying to say.

Warhunt wrote:
> The abuse@ is generally for use tracking Freeola customers who
> are sending spam. We take this seriously, and the OM does
> continously resolve issues in that regard.


Hi Warhunt.
Are you aware of this recent growth in spam (all of a very similar sexual nature) to Freeola domains or are you saying it's just 'business as usual'?

As I have quite a number of Freeola domains, I can see the problem is generally across the board and not just isolated accounts.

As I mentioned my junk filters capture it all so it should be possible for Freeola to do the same?!

In the last week some of my Freeola clients are raising this with me and one of them (a teacher) has asked me to change their email from Freeola to BT(!) as they can't risk the children seeing this spam!


Thanks in advance.


^{Search Freeola Chat}

Neilj99 wrote:
> I have to agree.
>
> The amount of spam on my domain has gone through the roof - all
> sexually explicit.
>
> I use Mailwasher Pro to filter my mail and its just *full* of
> sex spam.
>
> I'm used to spam, but this seems to be wayyyy off the scale.
>
> Neil

Have been with Freeola for perhaps 10 years now and so cannot make any comments regarding other ISPs. But my accounts have always received a lot of spam - subject lines are sexually explicit but the message is always some viagara link. In the past I used to create Message Rules but the amount of variations was enormous. Now I just delete them - a pain but not a problem and yes I do agree, there has been a tremendous increase over the last five or six weeks.....but that's good old net life for you:-)

However I did have one client, a few months ago, who believed that it was a personal attack on him because they 'seemed' to always come from the same person. A quick phone call to Freeola solved his problem - delete the entire contents of his inbox on the server - there must have been thousands!! Made me smile afterwards as this client is 84 years old, in no need of viagara and can barely read his monitor unless the display is set at large font and he uses a magnifying glass...:-D

I have to agree.

The amount of spam on my domain has gone through the roof - all sexually explicit.

I use Mailwasher Pro to filter my mail and its just *full* of sex spam.

I'm used to spam, but this seems to be wayyyy off the scale.

Neil

I know the abuse@ is continously checked by the office manager who takes the relevant action. I will mention your comments to him tomorrow and see how he responds, and then get back to you :D

In regards to the current upward trend in spam I also notice my hotmail account is inundated with spam too lately.