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"Spam on the rise..."

Hello -
Over the last couple of weeks I've noticed SPAM seems to be on the rise.

In the past I think you've mentioned a 'server' going offline - or something similar.
Perhaps someone could check the status of the 'spam filtering'?

Subjects such as:
"1 neww messsage for you"
"Its wworks!"
etc.

Please let me know if you need any samples forwarding - but I'm receiving them over a wide range of Freeola accounts so I'm sure you will have some yourself.


Thanks in advance.

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I do agree with you pb, this may be a 'mild annoyance' to you but I have received 'far too many' over the last two years to these two addresses. I initially forwarded them to freeola as suggested but to no avail. I now deal with them daily and have come to the conclusion that I should delete these adddresses and start again..but why:-(

I suppose its tricky ?.Spammers will always attempt to find ways of getting there crap mails past filtering systems.If spam filters are made a little too robust they will falsely identify legitimate mail as spam.I did mention the rise in this problem on the forum a few weeks ago and it was suggested I should forward offending mail to Freeola to update their filters.May do this with some of the more persistent offenders.I was only joking before.This is not really a massive problem,more of a mild annoyance.

Thanks for your time and explanation Eccles, but I'm still getting shed loads from two of my email addresses:-(

PS these two always seem to be the receipients of spam

Unfortunately it does take some time for the spam filters to 'learn' how to recognise a new type of spam that is coming in. Any spam filter is always going to be one step behind, no matter how clever it is. It can only successfully filter what it knows is already spam and as over 90% of emails floating around the internet are now spam is a very tricky thing to combat.

Graylisting is a form of filtering that initially rejects any email that comes from an address the email server hasn't received email from before. If the sending mail server is configured correctly (which nearly all spam source servers aren't), then it will try resending the email a few minutes later. The receiving mail server, which initially rejected the email will now have a record that it graylisted the email address and now let it through to go through further filtering methods. This has proved to be very successful in combating spam.

I suspect the rise in spam is due to a new method of sending the emails (such as switching to images or modifying the headers in some way so that filters think the email is legitimate). Unfortunately this means we have to wait until a method is found that will get rid of this new spam but not filter out legitimate email and this take time.

I'm getting quite a bit of spam coming through on my Freeola email these days (much more than usual).Found some great deals though.I have ordered some herbal manhood enhancers,sent all of my banking details to some bloke in Nigeria who is going to deposit a million $ into it anyday soon,got a great mobile contract,bought some property in Spain and put in a claim in against Nike for tripping over my shoelaces !.

When similar things have happened in the past improvements have been made - updating 'grey listing' filters perhaps?

Since starting this post I've seen some improvement - so either Freeola spam filtering has been tweaked or the spammers have been jumped on by their ISPs!

I appreciate dealing with spam is not easy and an on-going task; but thought it was worth bringing to Freeola's attention in case there was/is an issue.


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Spammers are always changing their methods and it apears they are sending very short subjects like re: order and a html image or a simple link. The only way to combat this is to do URL lookups which for an ISP is not very easy to setup because it could affect the time it takes to process mail.

Hello -
Over the last couple of weeks I've noticed SPAM seems to be on the rise.

In the past I think you've mentioned a 'server' going offline - or something similar.
Perhaps someone could check the status of the 'spam filtering'?

Subjects such as:
"1 neww messsage for you"
"Its wworks!"
etc.

Please let me know if you need any samples forwarding - but I'm receiving them over a wide range of Freeola accounts so I'm sure you will have some yourself.


Thanks in advance.

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