How do you get off a mailing list from a rogue nation?

[Harold Mansfield]

I have been getting bombarded with pharmaceutical offers lately and I can't stop them.
It's 6 or 7 times a day on 2 different email addresses.
They are masked pretty good, with fake send addresses like no-delivery@UPS, do-not-reply@Tunes, customer-service@yahoo, and then the regular ones for Vicodin, ******, and everything else under the sun.

There of course is no opt out link, or response from customer service.

The company that is doing it claims to be Canadian, but the actual website is hosted in China.

How do you stop Chinese spam? They don't care about spam laws (that's a U.S. thing). There is no one to complain to.
I set my filter and they come with different terms...it's non stop, almost like it's personal.

What do you do?

[vangogh]

I think you change email addresses. The best thing you can do is ignore it. Set your email client to filter it in some way so it automatically goes to trash.

Usually that spam comes in waves. It'll be pervasive for a few weeks and then it slows down. I doubt you can do anything to get off the list though since any action on your part will only let the spammers know your email is a legit one.

[Spider]

If you have no need for e-mail from China at all, filter sender for .cn and send them all to trash, then delete them en bloc. If you generally check your trash and don't want the China trash to inconvience that, make a 'China' mailbox and send the filtered .cn mail there and delete the entire contents of the 'China' box when convenient.

I've given up unsubscribing from any e-mail list because even with the best spammers - including Constant Contact - you are, I believe, not guaranteed isolation of mailing lists. IOW, I have found no matter who I unsubscribe from, I still get an increase in spam after each unsubscribe attempt.

[nealrm]

I've seen a huge increase in spam also. It not just a handful full a day either, it is closer to 2-5 per hour. I one case we receive 40 emails in a single hour for ******. As a website owner, I am seeing this as more the just a nuisance, they are starting to effect the effecency of the network itself. Much the same way that a tiny raindrop can become a flood, these small emails are flooding the internet.

US based anti-spam laws won't work. Unless we start getting serious with countries that allow spam, this is going to keep getting worse.

[nealrm]

Spider, filtering based on sender is only good if the sender is honest and uses their real emails address. Most of the spam that comes in uses fake addresses. I have received spam with myself, my wife and other friends as the sender.

Instead, I suggest setting up rules to block specific words. This is not perfect because the spammers will use spelling, spaces, etc to fool this type of filtering. But it does get rid of much of it.

For everyone reading this::
NEVER FORWARD ANY CHAIN LETTERS. THESE ARE A GREAT METHOD FOR SPAMMER TO HARVEST EMAIL ADDRESS!!! By never I mean never. There are no kids that will be helped, there are no petition that are web based that have any value, Microsoft will not give you free software, nor will any good happen because you sent the email.

[Spider]

Well, if you can filter by 'Return-Path' that may work. I have just this minute received a spam message to me apparently from me and when I pull up the headers the Return-Path is <subspacewul1@nature-sound.ru>

Perhaps Return-Path is not so easy to falsify.


The problem with filtering on commonly used spam-words, is legitimate messages may use them, too - free, opportunity, love... etc.

[KristineS]

If you were to judge from my spam filter, I'm a depressed, overweight, naughty movie loving person with erectile dysfunction and a serious need for bargain basement prescription drugs, cheap knock-off watches and purses and bank accounts with far more banks than any one person needs.

It all goes into the spam folder and gets deleted once a day. I wouldn't click a link in any of those messages for all the money in the world.

[Harold Mansfield]

All good suggestions and I have tried the filter based on trigger words, return addresses ...but they still keep getting in.

I mean these people are brilliant, but they are truly getting on my nerves.

I'm glad ( not actually happy) to hear it's not just me and there is an increase in ****** and Vicodin spam.

In case you haven't noticed, this is really bothering me, because they are beating me...I can't stop them...it's almost like a game

Changing email addresses is not an option...this one is my 'catch all', my workhorse...has been my all purpose email address for years...and I have been very careful not to get it compromised by unwanted mailings...until now.

I feel like an arch rival's nemesis, even I have to pay homage to some of the brilliance ..as conscious as I am, I still find myself getting caught off guard by return addresses that seems to be from Fed Ex and iTunes.

At this point, it's a game. I'll get them sooner or later or at least figure out how to block them.

[nealrm]

Frederick your life must be more exciting than mine. I almost never use the terms "All nude women" or "sexual enhancement devices" in general emails. :)

[Business Attorney]

Frederick your life must be more exciting than mine. I almost never use the terms "All nude women" or "sexual enhancement devices" in general emails. :)

... which reminds me of an early spam program which blocked some of my incoming genealogy emails because it indiscriminately trapped messages containing the word "sex" (like "the sex of their third child is unknown").

[Spider]

Frederick your life must be more exciting than mine. I almost never use the terms "All nude women" or "sexual enhancement devices" in general emails. :)But not so dull either, if you ALMOST never use these terms!!!!

[Business Attorney]

But not so dull either, if you ALMOST never use these terms!!!!

Touché, Frederick!

[Spider]

Touché, Frederick!....... :D

[billbenson]

Blocking the spam at the server with sam assassin works better than local spam programs.

Emails on site; use forms or js to keep them away from email harvesters.

If your email is on someones address book and they get a spam harvesting virus or spyware, your email will be in every spam db in the world.

To combat the above, I send email from a different address than the incoming. That is if I have a contact us email of sales@ domain.com I respond from thebigbopper@ domain.com. My major incoming email from my sites never gets on customer address books and spammed.

Still, your outgoing emails will be in address books of customers and they use those to contact you. You could phase in and out emails, but they get on lists pretty fast if they are in customer address books. So you are still down to filtering them. I end up goiing through about 100 spam emails a day. It takes about 10 min. I probably get about 1k that are handled by filters though.