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How to sue a British spammer

Bruce — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 15:30:09 +0000

How to sue a British spammer | The Register Chartered engineer Nigel Roberts became the first person to win a court judgment over a company's breach of the UK's anti-spam law late last year. His success received widespread media coverage—and now he's encouraging others to do the same.

Faxes not spam via Vodafone Mail

Bruce — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 19:42:14 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Vodafone Mail customers have a combined Inbox facility for e-mail, faxes, and voice mail messages. The usefulness of this facility was limited—until the introduction of e-mail filters—by the inability to avoid spam messages. Sure, you could log in via webmail to view faxes and play back voice mail, but at the expense and irritation of a handful of spam! E-mail filtering allows you to receive those faxes using your usual e-mail client without having to download all the spam as well... Login to Vodafone Mail Choose Settings and select Email Filtering. Choose to Receive emails only from listed senders and either enter your own address then click Add: Save and Logout. Note: You can also optionally choose whether to receive a free SMS notification that you have a new fax—in case you don't check your e-mail very often! Set up your e-mail client The following instruction assumes you are using Mail 1.3.9 under Mac OS X Panther. Create a new e-mail account, calling it "Fax" or an alternative of your choice: Don't enter your Vodafone Mail username at Email Address or your name at Full Name, otherwise the account will show up in the Accounts pop-up menu when composing a new message. For Incoming Mail Server use imap.vodafone.net; enter your Vodafone Mail username at User Name and your Vodafone Mail password at Password. You don't need to select an SMTP server, as this is going to be a "receive only" account. Now, when you receive a fax, it will appear in your Inbox just like an ordinary e-mail (with the fax itself ...

AddressGuard: anti-spam tool from Yahoo!

Bruce — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 13:49:36 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

The disposable e-mail address: it's often the simple ideas that work best... In an effort to reduce spam I give my personal e-mail address only to people I feel I can trust not to sell it. Previosuly, whenever a website asked for an e-mail address I gave them one from an old Hotmail account. But soon that account started receiving lots of spam: had the address been guessed, or was it passed on by some unscrupulous individual? Being one address and many websites, it was impossible to point the finger. Yahoo! (with Yahoo! Mail) and BT Yahoo! Mail (in partnership) came up with a solution I have made good use of: the disposable e-mail address. They call it "AddressGuard": The basic idea is this: you create (up to 500) "aliases" to your real e-mail address, each one of which can be assigned to a particular company or purpose. All of your e-mail arrives in your in-box as normal (or you could set up filters to re-direct it based on the alias). Using the webmail interface you can even use an alias as the "From:" address to send or reply to a message (sadly this doesn't work with your ordinary mail client, unless you manually add an account for each alias). BT Yahoo!'s help pages explain: Each disposable address has two parts: a base name and a keyword. Base name: The base name is the same for all your disposable addresses but it's different from your BT Yahoo! Email address. By using this profile, you ...

Digital signatures and Apple Mail

Bruce — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:00:00 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Did you get an unexpected e-mail that appeared to be from bioneural.net, but contained a virus or a message about following a link to read the full message? You've just been spammed via a trick called "spoofing"! Can PGP or S/MIME help you separate the wheat from the chaff? Spam, or unsolicited e-mail, is so-called in homage to a Monty Python sketch in which a group of Vikings drown out a conversation by singing "spam, spam, spam". You can hear the original sketch here. Spammers (may they burn in hell) use a number of tricks to achieve their evil goals. Among these is "spoofing": using a fake e-mail header to make it appear that an e-mail was sent by someone else and not from the spammers own account. Someone has been spoofing e-mails that appear to come from me. How do I know? Because I've recently been getting a number of mail delivery failure messages concerning e-mails I never sent to persons I don't know. Is spoofing ever legitimate? Yes. If you change the "Reply-to:" field in your e-mail client to redirect any replies to e-mail sent from one of your own accounts to another account of your own. Read more here. What should I do if I have received (illegitimate) spoofed e-mail? If you receive a spoofed e-mail, never open any attachments and never follow the link: delete it immediately. If you are curious and have the time, you may be able to trace where it really came from. How can I verify the sender's identity? Public-key ...

Unsolicited text (SMS) messages

Bruce — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:23:11 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Complain now, complain loudly... The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 cover unsolicited direct marketing activity by phone, fax, text/ video/ picture messaging, e-mail, and by automated calling systems. So what to do the next time some bastard sends you a text message like this?: From: +447781478228 Hi! Do you fancy a chat with people from your area? Just answer "GO" and enjoy the Mobile Chat! To opt out txt back "STOP". POBox 39822 W11 1NX To send a complaint to the Information Commissioner, download a form here.

ExtraHit/ GAINtrafficFAST spam

Bruce — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 12:00:10 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Getting spam e-mail from a company called "ExtraHit" or "GAINtrafficFAST"? These scam artists use unethical tactics and deserve to be named-and-shamed. ExtraHit.com send spam messages proclaiming to be from Rachel Evans at sender@extrahit.com or rachel_evans@extrahit.com. GAINtrafficFAST.com send spam messages proclaiming to be from Sharon Brown at bounce@gaintrafficfast.com or sharon_brown@gaintrafficfast.com. Both spammers have a Message-ID ending in "trafficglue.com", and both scams are selling higher search engine rankings for Web site owners. Their e-mail includes an encoded link, presumably so that if you click on it the spammer knows that their message was received. What can we do? Well, publish their addresses on the Internet so they get a dose of their own medicine! The gaintrafficfast.com domain is registered by DNS Direct (webmaster@submitpartners.com) and the extrahit.com domain is registered by PD Host Inc (kthomas@pdhost.com); feel free to complain to them too. TafficMagnet.com appear to be responsible for the "trafficglue" content of these messages (support@trafficmagnet.com) should you wish to ventilate your feelings to them. Update 11.12.03: Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 came into force today. Spammers must not conceal their identities and must provide a valid "opt out" address; nor can they send spam without the prior consent of the recipient. You can download a form for making a complaint from the Information Commissioner's Office website.

PD Callsaver/ PhoneDirect spam

Bruce — Sat, 25 Oct 2003 11:14:15 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Getting spam e-mail from a company called "PD Callsaver" or "PhoneDirect"? These scam artists use unethical tactics and deserve to be named-and-shamed. Are you getting spam from "PD Callsaver" or "PhoneDirect" with the subject line beginning "International calls..." These messages contain a variety of (possibly false) e-mail addresses, including: PhoneDirect@pdtinternet.com; pdnsadvert@gmx.net; pdesadvert@gmx.net; pdesadvert@gmx.net; ukcs@pdtinternet.com; pdfsubman@mygb.net; pdhsubman@mygb.net; pd@pdtinternet.com. Their web page additionally includes the address Support@pd-dial.com. Spam pertaining to "dq118.com" appears to be related. Addresses given in the e-mail headers (again, possibly false) include Info@dq118.fsnet.co.uk, dq118xx@gmx.net, Contacts@dq118.fsnet.co.uk, and dq118s@mygb.net. Of course the messages say "If you are not interested in reducing your phone bills and would not like to be informed of any other similar offers from ourselves, please reply to this message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject heading." This goes against widely publicised advice never to do this, as it informs the spammer that you have a valid e-mail address. Who would do business with a company that utilises such unethical marketing tactics? What can we do? Well, publish their addresses on the Internet so they get a dose of their own medicine! Both the pd-dial.com and dq118.com domains are registered to PhoneDirect by Scarlet Charger Internet (admin@scarletcharger.com); feel free to complain to them too. Update 11.12.03: Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 came into force today. Spammers must not conceal their identities and must provide a valid "opt out" address; nor can they send spam without the prior consent of the recipient. You can download a form for making a complaint from the Information Commissioner's Office website.

Messenger Service and pop-ups

Bruce — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 14:35:20 +0000

From http://www.bioneural.net :

Getting annoying pop-ups from spammers like "www.DESTROYADS.com" when Windows Messenger (4.7) is running? These are taking advantage of the Messenger Service which can be disabled without affecting your ability to use instant messaging for chat: From the Start menu, choose Run and type in services.msc then click OK; A new window appears with lots of "services" listed on the right hand side; Scroll down to find the Messenger service; right click it and choose Properties; Under Startup Type select Disabled; Click the Stop button; Click the Apply button; Click the OK button. Update: Windows Messenger 5.0 lets you "filter out instant messaging spam". Download here. Might this address the issue? Update: Microsoft plan to disable Messenger Services with Windows XP Service Pack 2 according to a report at The Register.