NTL spam
 

Okay, I am in an unusual situation

I don't use my NTL email address, never have, never will, for whatever reason

Why do I recieve SPAM on that account and have within the TO box several other accounts, specific NTL email accounts that are obviously NOT guesswork emails. My surname cant be on any dictionary files, so its not that. So where are they getting this email address ??,

Senders IP was 56.57.182.159

I use outlook 2003 and therefore dont download ANYTHING with the emails that are sent, just delete,

Anyone know ??

Re: NTL spam
 

oh look, more spam from the U.S.

OrgName: U.S. Postal Service
OrgID: UPS-1
Address: 4200 Wake Forest Road
City: Raleigh
StateProv: NC
PostalCode: 27668-7800
Country: US

NetRange: 56.0.0.0 - 56.255.255.255
CIDR: 56.0.0.0/8
NetName: USPS1
NetHandle: NET-56-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS082.USPS.COM
NameServer: DNS141.USPS.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 1992-11-02
Updated: 2003-09-05

TechHandle: ZU38-ARIN
TechName: U.S. Postal Service
TechPhone: +1-800-877-7435
TechEmail: domainadmin@imail.usps.gov

OrgTechHandle: ZU38-ARIN
OrgTechName: U.S. Postal Service
OrgTechPhone: +1-800-877-7435
OrgTechEmail: domainadmin@imail.usps.gov

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-06-26 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

They just have bots that make up any and all addy's and send them (some of them do over 1 billion a day :shocked: ) so they are bound to get everyone eventually.

Re: NTL spam
 

interestingly, the same is happening to me.

I have never used my ntl email address either.

this appears to have started in the last couple of weeks or so.

Re: NTL spam
 

NTL is a magnet for spammers due to it's lack of Anti Spam software, we will be the same this time next year.

Re: NTL spam
 

Watch out today, it appears NetSky Z is doing its rounds, just had my anti-virus software quarantine 2 emails with zip files.

With the message:

Important data!

Re: NTL spam
 

Re: NTL spam
 

I sometimes get those, it is usualy just after I get the same message from that address myself. It is as if the mail is bouncing itself between abused mail servers.
I very much dobt it is anything to do with your machine/setup just delete it and forget about it.

And before anybody says that my machine is compromised - don't because it is not :p:

Re: NTL spam
 

Oh right, dont accept that, my surname is VERY unusual,

There is only 1 person on the planet with my name,

And they just guessed it,

Er, NO !

Re: NTL spam
 

They don't guess it, a machine just runs through the alpha numeric system and generates billions of made up name/number combinations and sends them to see if they get a result. I have seen printouts from these systems and they are huge and cover every name/number/character you can think of in all languages.

edit: ha, beat you scastle :p: :p: :p:

Re: NTL spam
 

They do send emails to random collections of letters. The average spammer also sends out BILLIONS of these combinations each day. It's entirely possible they just guessed your surname. They guessed one of my friend's surname despite the fact it is not english, and has 15 characters.

Re: NTL spam
 

Porn spam pointing at voila.fr sites, by any chance? I strongly suspect that spammers have got access to lists of valid NTL addies in the last month or so. The reason I think this is that for the last year my most effective anti-spam tactic has been a delete-on-server rule for anything with a similar addy to mine in the to/CC field. (It currently has about 300 adresses on it, which gives you an idea of the amount of spam hitting ntl's mail servers.)

Suddenly mountains of spam have been getting through that with new addies in those fields. Normally I'd just suspect a new "millions" CD had come out - but this has all been coming from the same source, and I'm seeing anecdotal evidence that the addies can't have been harvested. So I suspect an inside job, a la AOL.

Re: NTL spam sent to my NTL account
 

Belive it or not some people do reply to these emails, This chap has had an hotmail account for months but MSN have done nothing to close him down. I wonder how many CF members got the same email but with your family name??

BARRISTER JAMES YAYA ESQ, JAMES CHAMBERS 14, RUE DU BOULVARD LOME TOGO WEST AFRICA Pls,Contacted June 27,/6/ 2004 PRIVATE MESSAGES TO cooke , I am Barrister.James Yaya, a solicitor at law.I am the personal attorney to ENGR.P.O cooke ,Thompson,a national of your country, who is a Contractor and have spent most of his life in my country (Togo) Here in after shall be referred to as my client. On the 21st of April 2000, my client, his wife and their only son were involved in a car accident along bagida express road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my clients extended relatives,this has also prove unsuccessful. After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any Member of his family hence I contacted you. I have contacted you to assist in repatriating the assets and Capital valued at US$25.5million left behind by my client before they get confiscated or declared unserviceable by the management of the Finance/security company, where these huge deposits were lodged. The said finance/security company, has issued me a notice to provide the next of Kin or have the account confiscated within the next twenty Official working days. Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over 2 years now, I seek the consent to present you as the Next of kin to the deceased since you have the same last names, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you. Therefore, on receipt of your positive response, we shall then discuss the sharing ratio and modalities for transfer. I have all necessary information and legal documents needed to back you up for claim. All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through.I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Awaiting to hear from you. Best Regards, BARRISTER JAMES YAYA

barrister_james_yaya@hotmail.com :td: :td:

The con starts with you paying £200.00 to register then the goal posts are moved each time you are about to finalise the deal see the Met web site. Church funds have lost a lot of money along with UK companies. :mad:

Re: NTL spam
 

Goldoni,

Do a search on google and you'll find some people play these scamsters at their own game and string them along, they make some interesting reading. :D

Re: NTL spam
 

what lack of spam software is that then?

Re: NTL spam
 

Or just go to http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...081#post193081

Re: NTL spam
 

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...77&postcount=1

or this one is quite amusing for an ebay scammer getting scammed

Re: NTL spam
 

Thanks for that I have now spent 150 minutes reading emails, its nice to see a scammer scamed, nice one and thanks for all the posted links. :p:

Re: NTL spam
 

I dont get any spam on my NTLworld email accounts - and I dont even use them. They must have guessed your email address via brute force + dictionary attacks.

Re: NTL spam
 

Brute force doesnt make sense, I can see others in the email address list and they are VERY specific, it is a list of some sort,


Dictionary, I have already ruled out, my name isnt on one, guaranteed,

The only people who know my email address is NTL themselves,

Re: NTL spam
 

Actually, spammers use a combination of hacking and brute force. They don't need to necessarily hack NTL. If you have used your NTL addy as a registration email for any websites, they may hack the sites. If you (or any of your friends/colleagues) has your address in their Outlook address book, it is possible that they (accidentally) downloaded a virus that then transmitted the addresses in that address book back to the spammers. It is also possible that these viruses have set up their own SMTP service on the affected PC and sent the emails out to all the addresses in the Address book.

On top of these (and other methods) , they do use Brute Force.

Re: NTL spam
 

Not posted my NTL email address
Dont give out my NTL email address ( No point, hardly ever works ! )

I Dont use it.

And before enyone asks,

It actually automatically forwards to an email address that I do use,

No virii get onto my PC, not wanting to sound upset, I am a programmer and not that daft ;)

Re: NTL spam
 

I heard somewhere that comcast in America bought into, or bought out, ntl over here.

If that is the case, I'm not at all surprised that spam is on the increase. Two thirds of the spam I get on my old lineone account is from comcast.net domains.

I hadn't been getting *any* spam on my ntl accounts until the last couple of weeks... but I've noticed it creeping in on my secondary accounts now, and I haven't done anything different.

Re: NTL spam
 

Didn't think you did sound upset. Actually, I didn't say that your PC has the virus (assuming there is one). What I was saying is that someone who has your address may have a virus. That virus could have accessed their Windows Address book, and then either used it (while fudging the headers to hide where it comes from), or sent it to someone who then used it for spam or sold it to a spammer.

It's also theoretically possible that somebody hacked NTL, but unlikely. I doubt NTL would have sold your details on as a) this would violate the Data Protection Act, and b) would not make them a lot of money.

Re: NTL spam
 

What demonstrable anti-spam software is in place? I see no evidence that NTL are filtering any spam whatsoever. I've seen it said on this forum before that NTL use Spamhaus, but setting SpamPal to only use Spamhaus correctly identified 99% of the spam that comes through. If NTL do use Spamhaus, then they sure aren`t using it correctly.

Until someone can actually provide evidence that NTL use anti-spam software then I simply can`t believe that they do.

Re: NTL spam
 

Its Saturday morning and all is well with the world, Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m awaiting the arrival of a NTL Engineer regarding my STB, but then I get in my inbox of one of my domain email accounts The emails are formated as in email:


Dear Lloyds TSB customer!
Please read this important message about
security. Your account has been randomly
chosen for verification. This is requested
to us to verify that you are the real owner
of this account. All you need to do is to
click on the link below. You will see a verification
page. Please complete all fields that you will see
and submit the form. You will be redirected to Lloyds
TSB home page after verification. Please note that if
you don't verify your ownership of account in 24 hours we
will block it to protect your money. Thank you.
https://online.lloydstsb.co.uk/applypassword.ibc

Lloyds TSB Bankаplc and Lloyds TSB Scotland plc are
authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority


So not wanting my account to be frozen I followed the instructions and entered my details, Name Richard Soul, my account number xxxxxxxxxxx, my sort code xx xx xxand password, ivabigun@27 ONLY JOKING I got up early this morning and have not registered to join the DH club. This was lucky as the next email believe it or not was as follows now the only problem with this email I donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t have a CityBank account so this was a big clue it must be a scam.:


We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your Citibank
account from a foreign IP address and we have reasons to believe that
there was attempts to compromise it with brute forcing your PIN number.
No successful login was detected and you have full protection by now.
If you recently accessed your account while travelling, the unusual login
attempts may have been initiated by you.

The login attempt was made from:
IP address: 173.27.187.24
ISP Host: cache-82.proxyserver.cis.com

By now, we used many techniques to verify the accuracy of the
information our users provide us when they register on the Site.
However, because user verification on the Internet is difficult, Citibank
cannot and does not confirm each user's purported identity. Thus, we
have established an offline verification system to help you evaluate with
whom you are dealing with. The system is called CitiSafe and it's
the most secure Citibank wallet so far.

If you are the rightful holder of the account, click the link bellow, fill
the form and then submit as we will verify your identity and register you
to CitiSafe free of charge. This way you are fully protected from fraudulent
activity on all the accounts that you have with us.

Click to protect yourself from fraudulent activity!

I would just love to click the link and give some duff but real looking information so that they think I have fallen for their scam??? But my pooter has Spyblaster loaded, which was real lucky, as it wanted to load 41 scripts to view the web page

To make Citibank.com the most secure site, every user will be
registered to CitiSafe.

Re: NTL spam
 

A friend of mine drew my attention to an article in a paper about a fortnight ago covering this very problem! The problem is caused by trojan horses. They get into your computer via pop-ups and other advertisments.

Firewalls and anti-virus programs cannot detect these, and therefore allow them to pass through and either let them sit resident in your Temp Files or load a file folder on your C:\ drive.

Swoop101 is right about them generating random numbers and letters either for the From Name or domain sites. As there is so many combinations neither Message Rules or Block Sender cannot cope. I must have about 1,000 Blocks but they still get through. I am downloading about 200 to 300 emails a day, and it's the same old sh*t day in and day out.

The article also drew one's attention to a program called Ad-ware 6.0. It's a Swedish program and it is at:

www.lavasoft.de

I downloaded the free version and I must admit it was rather inpressive. It digs right down in all your programs till it finds them. To date it has deleted about 50 files and removed about 30 folders. It was so good I got the registered program which cost about £20!

Re: NTL spam
 

That would be the complete lack of anything useful for blocking spam. I have virgin.net and ntl accounts [both running on ntl equipment]. Both used to get about equal amounts of spam (50 to 75 per day).

About two months ago, virgin implemented their anti-spam measures and now I hardly get one per day on that account. The ntl account still gets 70+ per day. Too compare with other services - I have a hotmail account - that no longer gets spam. I have an Orange account - that gets 40+ a day (yep, they have no clue about spam either).

If, as you have claimed in the past, ntl use anti-spam software then they clearly have it very badly configured. To all intents & purposes it is totally transparent - spam just passes right through it.

Re: NTL spam
 

And I would agree with every word .... I get more spam through NTL than any other email account I have.

Re: NTL spam
 

i recently setup an NTL email address for my mum

the next week when i showed her how to use it in came about 20 spams!

and i just went to check my NTL email account and i got 823 spams in one week

something needs to be done as its getting worse and worse

Re: NTL spam
 

Do you give your email address out ??

I wouldnt be surprised if you say no !

Whats going on at NTL, I dont know ANY other ISP thats this bad, not even Hotmail !!!

Are the email address lists walking out of NTL ???

I Wonder !

Re: NTL spam
 

well my spam stopped last christmas when they started filtering for spam. used to get about 20 or so a day no I am unlucky if get 2 a week

Re: NTL spam
 

Lucky you,

Until around about last October I got very little spam, then I started getting 70+ a day on each active account. I deleted the secondary accounts and recreated new ones. They are still relatively spam free. my prime one however is still getting its usual daily dose of spam. Thankfully filtering it via forwarding to another provider and also using mailwasher takes care of that.

I have this nagging feeling at the back of my neck that the positive correlation in timing between various acrimonious events at NTL and the massive increase in spam may not have been a coincidence.

Re: NTL spam
 

NTLs e-mail service sucks like a toothless parrott.

In just four days I have got 1,488 e-mails YES you read correctly One Thousand four hundred and eighty eight of the b@st@rds.:mad: :mad: (UPDATE: 17 genuine 1 hour to sort and delete junk)

So many that Outlook locks and stops downloading even changing setting and nothing happens. so I have to use the webmail which is so ssssslllllllooooowww any one would think I have a dial up service.
any Ideas when NTL are going to bother filtering???
Also are there any ISP in the Harlow Essex area that I can switch to and still use my NTL cable modem (which I own) I'm even thing of going back to Dialup via Global Internet have anti-virus & spam filter all emails for free.

Re: NTL spam
 

:Yikes: that's incredible, is that all on one account?

I have two NTL addresses, one for a dial up account which gets 70 odd a day, the other for a broadband account, which gets virtually none.

The main difference between the two accounts is the dial up is used on the downstairs computer, which is often riddled with spyware, wheras the broadband is on my computer, which usually isn't. The other possible factor is that the address that attracts all the spam, was on my first homepage on NTL webspace as a 'mailto' link.

Other than sharing that, I don't know what to say, nearly 1500 in 4 days, sheesh :(

Re: NTL spam
 

1488 emails in four days? You need to either:-

a) Stop signing up for porn

b) Stop sticking your most important email address in every site that asks for it

c) Scan your pc for viri/spyware/adware.

Everyone gets spam, but if youre getting this much you really need to assess the way you use the internet. Its all well and good moaning about ntls below par spam filter, but mummy cant hold your hand all the time. You need to take some responsibility for why youre experiencing spam in this volume. If needs be you can always use one of the 15 addresses to which youre entitled to enter in the sites you must be signing up for.

spam filter? ntl should provide this now!
 

logged off last night around midnight. checked mail tonight, 20 hours later, 250 new messages, of which 3 were genuine. I am fed up using mailwasher to get rid of spam. I believe, the price i pay for using this isp, that there should be some sort of spam filter in place. It's getting beyond a joke. It really is. I don't want to change my e-mail address, but I am considering it. AOL seem to be able to block most of it....why can't Ntl?

Re: NTL spam
 

100% agree with tech but would also add a d) Stop hitting the remove me link at the bottom of spam, as this only confirms your email addy.

I get about 350 spam emails per day and about 3 to 4 attached viruses. To combat this I have a legal "dare I say" Norton Internet Security :o that only lets 2 or three emails in to my inbox, then just scan the subject line and hit the empty the spam filter box and POOF it's gone. Most of my spam comes from the three domains I have my NTL account gets about two a day.

If NTL ever did get a working spam filter working I beat we would get loads of posts to CF " I have been waiting for an urgent email but NTLs crap spam filter keeps stopping it as spam" so my vote would be keep it as is so I can see all my email and sort it myself with the help of "NORTON" :o

P.S I have never signed up for any porn site, it would seem that others have or a robot just scans the domain web sites for email addys.

Re: NTL spam
 

I dont sign up for porn,

I dont use the NTLworld email address

I have ad-aware and spysweeper which always come up clean apart from cookies,

So, Why do I get spam on an account I dont use ?

The only people that have the email address are NTL,

:mad:

Re: NTL spam
 

See my post here for my views on NTL filtering spam.

The main problem is where you use your email address on the web - forums, web pages and particularly newsgroups. I have different email addresses for different purposes, so for example, I have an address that is my real name and it receives no spam because only a few people have it and it's only used on my CV. For websites I don't trust, webpages and newsgroups I have a spam trap email address that forwards to my main address. I have Spampal configured to assign 200 points (500 being the level at which an email is tagged as spam) to any emails sent to the spam trap address. Every now and then, when spam is becoming excessive, I delete the email address and create a new one.

In short - it's possible to manage spam yourself and keep the number of emails you receive to a reasonable level. The people who have problems tend to be those who have one or two addresses and use them willy nilly. That said, given time spammers will find your email addresses, especially if they're simple and use words in the dictionary, perhaps with numbers app- or prepended. That's happened with my two main addresses and there's little I can do except filter out the spam, but it's not excessive.

Re: NTL spam
 

This is so frustrating,

I own my own domain, i dont use my email address for anything, i only collect it to get news from NTL and to be fair, thats not really worth it,

I dont use it on forums,

I don't sign up for porn,

I have no spyware,

I have no virii

And, I am convinced that someone has either stolen or bought the address list from NTL,

Only NTL know what my email address is, no one else ! ( NOONE ! )

Re: NTL spam
 

Excuse my four-penny worth, but I think if this were the case we would see more postings on CF confirming what you are saying. Spam is a strange thing and seems to affect some more than others. The spam I get I know why one domain is hit more than others, I used a bit of software that was said to get you noticed in all the major search engines and not reading the full instructions I used one of my domain email accounts as the contact email, yes my site did start to be listed by the search engines and I got to number one or top 5 on that listing but the amount of spam went through the roof, slowly itâ₠¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s getting less and less, also sadly I used to hit the remove me link at the bottom of the spam email. So it was a case of hoisted by my own petard. That was two years ago.

Regarding getting spam on an unused NTL email account I would say is down to person or persons unknown have some way been able to get access to your address book / accounts or you have hacked off a person who has access to your account. But NTL as a company selling your details they would have to be mad as the money they would make would be far outweighed by the money they would loose if this was found to be true.

Why donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t you make another NTL address with the same name and just add 123 donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t add it to your email client accounts list, just check it from time to time with web mail and see how long it takes to get spam on that account, if your right it will happen! But I bet you it will never get one email apart from the welcome one.:)

Re: NTL spam
 

Valid and well put,

I am still curious to how these spam people have the address though, it is a question that should be answered for all our sakes, however I do accept that none seems to know or is willing to admit they do :rolleyes:

Re: NTL spam
 

Yep - same here. The Wanadoo porn-dialler spammers who are currently trying to hit my inbox approximately 150 times a day just seem to have a huge list of ntl addies no other spammers have. Wouldn't be at all surprised if it was some kind of an inside job.

Also wouldn't be surprised if their spam blizzrd was behind the latest collapse of ntlworld's mail servers. When are they going to work out that providers with no server side filtering are going to attract spam at an exponential rate as other providers get their acts together?

Re: NTL spam
 

Anybody else getting this problem, over the last few days I have been getting a 5k email from a company that times out my NTL email account. The only way around it is log on with web mail and delete the mail and then all is well till the next time. Iâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢m using Outlook 2000 and dare I say Norton NAV both have been working fine until a few days ago.

Re: NTL spam
 

Have you tried this -

Have you tried to telnet it as they may be an offending mail blocking your download etc.

To telnet it try the following -

To telnet the mail server:
Click onto Start then Run
type telnet pop.ntlworld.com 110 - press enter
+OK InterMail POP3 server ready.
type user then a space then your user.name - press enter
+OK please send PASS command
type pass then a space then your password - press enter
+OK user.name is welcome here

This logs you into the pop server.

type list.

Identify the mail you think is causing the problem and type DELE 1 or whichever number corresponds.

Then type quit to close the telnet connection.

That should then bin the offending mail.

Hope it helps.

:D

Re: NTL spam
 

Lots of innocent people, who never use their e-mail address publicly are hit with SPAM and I suspect that it's a number of things.

First, spammers seem to take a christian name e.g. John, add every surname they can find and put "@ntlworld.com" on the end and then mass mail the e-mail addresses generated.They also note the e-mail addresses of people who asked to be removed from their list, something you should never do as it confirms your e-mail address as valid and real.

Second they obtain, legally or illegally, the database address lists of companies, who are quite happy to sell them on.

Third, they hack sites and obtain their registration lists.

No doubt they also have other ways of obtaining e-mail addresses e.g. through key loggers, trojan horse viruses etc. but get them they do.

I use SPAMPal and the Rules Wizard to eliminate SPAM from my PC and that works fairly well.SPAMPal tags the SPAM and a rule in Rules Wizard consigns the tagged SPAM automatically to the "Deleted Items" folder.End of story.

I use the AVG 6.0 free version (with its e-mail scanner)in conjunction with SPAMPal to get rid of e-mails with viruses.

I use Ad-aware and SpyBot to get rid of Adware.

And I use Browser Hijack Blaster and Spywareblaster to fend off those who try to surreptitiously install ActiveX controls.

Most if not all programs update automatically and so I'm relatively untroubled.

What surprises me is why NTL could not apply similar strategies to e-mail being sent to their servers.

They would only have to eliminate e-mails from known SPAM sites and have some kind of e-mail address verification system to deal with e-mails that are SPAM made from "spoof", non-existent e-mail addresses.

I just wonder if there is something under the Data Protection Act or similar legislation which prevents NTL from doing that. Anyone from NTL care to comment?

Re: NTL spam
 

:clap: Thanks for that will give it a try next time. :)

Re: NTL spam
 

I have just been talking to some people who are very clued up to this.

Can you confirm that this is your primary account?

If it is then it is the consesus that somebody has put a 'bot' on to the 'homepage.ntlworld.com' area and is trawling through the responses, because the username from 'homepage' is the front of your primary addy.

Re: NTL spam
 

Now that's quite possible,

Many thanks :rolleyes:

I Presume then it's possible to do a 'list' or 'directory structure request' on the NTL homepage servers,

Isn't this also a little stupid ?

Re: NTL spam
 

I personally do not know what these people can do, but if it is possible they will do it.
There are way too many stupid people that respond to these spam-mails and that is why it goes on.

Re: NTL spam
 

Good point... My father inlaw has been using mailwasher for months now and gets 1000+ spams a day...

I was helping him with an outlook problem last week and discovered to my horror that mailwasher was not only removing the mails but bouncing them as well !!! --- How stupid can you get !!!

If no body reply'd to these mails then they would have far less spam as most spam mails are generated in the hope of detecting live addresses.

Re: NTL spam
 

That's very true.

Mind you, the SPAM wouldn't get to you in the first place if the NTL servers used a decent filtering system. If they did, each of us wouldn't be in this position of having to find our own Anti-SPAM strategies.

It's a bit like having a useless police force and having to solve crimes yourself!!

Let's hope that someone from NTL can tell us what actions (if any!!) they do take to prevent SPAM reaching us.

Re: NTL spam
 

I've made a note of this thread so that when NTL implement anti-spam software and accidentally wipe inboxes or flag 90% of emails as spam and there's a thread full of people bitching about it and NTL, I can point everyone here and remind them to be careful what they wish for :D

Interesting about checking the homepage site and constructing email addresses from the directory listing. I just checked now and directory listing is enabled. I turn off directory listing as a matter of basic security. They also have server sig enabled "Apache/1.3.26 Server at homepage.ntlworld.com Port 80" which tells me they're using an old version of Apache. NTL huh :rolleyes:

Mailwasher should be banned.

Re: NTL spam
 

I think we are wishing for effective and efficient Anti-SPAM measures that eliminates SPAM and nothing else.

Even if NTL just get rid of 50% of real SPAM and leave proper messages intact it will be a major improvement.

From what you say,it appears..as if we didn't know..that NTL is behind the times and part of the problem, not part of the solution. Maybe when someone successfully hacks their servers they will sit up and pay attention.

Re: NTL spam
 

Agree with you about Mailwasher; its bounce feature is almost criminally irresponsible, and it's not as though they haven't been told. But as to server side spam filtering - in six months time that will be a forgotten argument, because either ntl will introduce it, or their entire mail system will collapse. As other providers implement it, clueless outfits like ntl will be exponentially targeted, and expanding server capacity to keep up will not be a viable option. They only real question is, will they implement it in as cack-handed away as they seem to do everything else? As for losing mail - well, that's already happening during mail server outtages anyway, despite their denials.

Incidentally, a support droid told me on the phone during the May mail fiasco that the reason for the outtages then was migration to new servers and the implementation of spam filtering, which would be complete by mid June. Lies or delays, I wonder?

Re: NTL spam
 

Not only that but also blacklisting - it allows mupper users to blacklist willy nilly, which totally undermines the validity of the blacklist.


Yeah - I'd agree that NTL implementing spam filtering is inevitable. Also inevitable that they'll make a balls of it :p: I just hope they'll give customers the choice - mail or mangled mail - otherwise I'll have to source my email provision from elsewhere.

Re: NTL spam
 

Problem is, no computer algorithm can ever be as good at deciding what's spam & whats not. And how many false positives is acceptable? 1%? 5%? 0%? It all depends on the person, the value of the content of the messages, the chances the content is similar to spam messages blah blah blah.

If you think about how long it takes for your own Outlook/Mailwasher/whatever rules to sort out what's (probably) spam & what isn't, then its probably only a few seconds a day for most people. Any NTL side spam filtering is unlikely to be better at spotting what's spam than your own personal rules, so it's likely that it'll be no more efficient. But multiply those few seconds by every NTL customer & you've got a huge amount of processing power requirement, which to be frank I'd rather see spent somewhere else that'll be of more benefit to most users.

Add in the legal risk to NTL of providing editorial control of customers emails, extra CS time dealing with 'wheres the email my customer sent me..' complaints, etc, and I can't see how it could be better than leaving it to individuals to take responsibility for controlling their own inboxes. Perhaps if it was to be offered as an additional cost service it could make commercial and practical sense, but somehow I don't think many people would be that keen to pay.

I can see the argument for having some kind of filtering for the big show stopper spams with huge attachments that actually stop the service from working, but even for those I'd just like to see them held server side giving you the opportunity to block, delete, or receive based on the header or body text, and I don't think these are that common anyway.

Having said all of that, I don't actually have any answers to the problem itself ;) !

Re: NTL spam
 

Cookie makes a very good point - that the decision as to what is spam and what isn't has a personal element to it. So one man's spam is another man's interesting newsletter, so to speak :)

:tu:

Re: NTL spam
 

I often worry about spam emails that have html content. It would be very easy for them to put some code in that send a cookie that confirms your email address ect into the code, and being as outlook likes to run scripts without asking its another way that spammers can confirm an address is live !

Re: NTL spam
 

I got this in my cable forum email


ntlbroadband2 vbmenu_register("postmenu_", true);
Banned

Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 3
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/im...tation_pos.gif


NTL Anti-Spam
Hi, excuse the apparent advertising nature of this PM, but if you have an NTL address we have setup a service which will route your NTL mail through our servers. You will benefit from 99% of spam being removed before you download it, viruses being removed, legitimate e-mail never wrongly tagged, spam segregated to a seperate folder and all of this can occur instantly (i.e. our anti-spam does not require any user set up such as whitelisting, blacklisting or any other kind of training). I know this sounds too good to be true but reply to this PM and I will setup a free trial account. You can forward your NTL mail to our servers using http://selfcare.ntlworld.com whilst still receiving it in the ordinary way until you are satisified with our server (i.e. less than 1 day to be converted!).

Is this genuine the site looks like NTLs. but i've heard about people copying front pages that ask for password. If it real why isn't it done automatically.

And i've NOT typed anything into it (I'm not that stupid)

Also I posted a note about 1488 emails in four days!! I don't touch porn nor give my email addresses out willy nilly and the following day i received another 250. "burn spammers PC"

Re: NTL spam
 

That member has been dealt with by the team. Please delete it.

Re: NTL spam
 

In a Private Message (PM)?

As Stu has just said, that member has already been dealt with.

selfcare.ntlworld.com *is* genuine & is owned by NTL. It's the page you go to to set-up forwarding or auto-replies if you have an @ntlworld.com email address.

However, that is no guarantee that the email address you would be asked to enter into it to forward your NTLWorld emails to for the "spam service" would be genuine.

Re: NTL spam
 

Can anyone "in the know" say when the promised upgrades to the NTL email service are going to come to fruition? We were promised a more reliable service with anit-spam and even AV options using all new reliable, commercial server software. Clearly this is not in place yet as NTL even managed to run out of disc space earlier this week.

What is the hold up, please? Originally someone said it would be online in June.

APS

Re: NTL spam
 

It's coming soon ;)

No one has notified us of any dates - it will happen but only ntl know when.

Re: NTL spam
 

Well, no. Firstly, there's the issue of download time, secondly, there's the issue of inboxes going over quota. My experience is currently this:

On an average day, up to 250 spam messages hit my inbox. 150 or so are from the wanadoo porn dialer spammers, the rest from assorted other *******s and sleazeballs. Even running the fantastic spampal and an aggresive set of OE rules which kill 80%+ of the crap on the server, downloading and filtering a day's worth of spam on dial-up takes rather more than a few seconds. But worse, if I go away for a couple of weeks, how long before my mailbox goes over quota and I start losing legit messages that way?

Actually, properly implemented server side spam filtering would almost certainly save ntl bandwidth and resources. For a start, the bandwidth wasted by users downloading spam would be saved.

The issue will inevitably be forced soon anyway. Think about the wanadoo dialer spammers. Presumably their strategy is to send so many messages to maximise the probability of one opening in an insecurely configured OE/IE preview pane. Just one outfit doing this has managed to come close to rendering my addy unusable. What's NTL's strategy for dealing with 10 outfits doing the same thing?

Re: NTL spam
 

We use spam filtering at work, and as I understand it, the extra load on the server is a small percentage of the load from running the email service, and is considered a small price to pay for the loss of problems due to spam.

On the other side of that, we cater for about 25000 users, not the millions that NTL cater for.

Re: NTL spam
 

Point taken, but I was thinking about bb rather than dial-up, this being the cable forum after all ;) Maybe I'm just being a bit blinkered since I don't get much spicy ham and my OE rules seems to do the trick ... famous last words, perhaps ? :erm:

Re: NTL spam
 

On Sunday I check my inbox after returning from a to week holiday on Saturdayand discovered 2100 emails in my inbox which took over two hours to sort and delete <20 were valid.

Having seen NTHellworld fornt page it looks like the spam problem may start to be resloved, I'm not holding my breath though.

All so 1.5Mb Whoo hoo

Your Connection


Downstream 1451 Kbps (181.4 KB/sec) 1567 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 241 Kbps (30.1 KB/sec) 260 Kbps (inc. overheads)

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp

Re: NTL spam
 

Your lucky I had a week away and had 1,879 emails and only 5 were valid emails. I just hope the email problem gets sorted

Re: NTL spam
 

I get lots of spam to one addy only.I've set it up to be my spam,sign on addy so I expect it.I use Cloudmarks Spamnet.

I deal with none of my spam as this application filters it straight into a Spam inbox for me.All I do is check that nothing legit disappears,if it does I just unblock it.Any that aren't filtered I block myself.

Every two days I upload the details of all the spam I've had to Spamnet,takes about 10 seconds

I regularly update it too so I get all the details of new spam so my spamnet can automatically block it for me.Yes I pay for this service but it is worth it not to be so plagued by it any more.No one else is going to do it for me.SO I don't need NTL to do it for me.

All I need to then is open and read my legit mail.

Re: NTL spam born in the USA
 

Have a look at this link born in the USA

Re: NTL spam
 

I have today received a spam email stating: 28 million people will see your ad for free...This was sent to my NTL account so I had a look at the header and surprise it was sent to a block of NTL email accounts starting with To: frances.xxxxx@ntlworld.com, francesco.xxxxxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francis.xxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francis.xxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francis.x@ntlworld.com, francis.xxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francis.xxxxxx@ntlworld.com, franciscoxxxx@ntlworld.com, francishowxxxx@ntlworld.com, francishxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francisxxxxxxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francisxxxxxxxx@ntlworld.com, franco.xxxxxxxxx@ntlworld.com, franco.xxxxxxxx@ntlworld.com, francoisxxx@ntlworld.com, frankxxxxxx@ntlworld.com which as you can see is a block of NTL email addresses my question is how did they obtain them? Has NTL got a leak??

I phoned CS and basically they donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t want to know. The only advise they could offer was one: change my email address Two: block the sender. So some real good advise. :erm:

The company this came from is situated in Seattle, WA 98111 :mad:

Having said all of that, I don't actually have any answers to the problem. Has any CF members got any advise????

Re: NTL spam
 

They probably ran a program to generate those addresses, or harvest then.

Re: NTL spam
 

But if it was a harvest why are they not all mixed up? I bet if other CF members (those that are with NTL) check the header if they get the same email it will have another block of NTL email addys. Seems strange to me. What I know about how they get the names can be written on half a postage stamp so you just may be right ;) but your first option just can't be right as the names I have crossed out do not follow on.

Re: NTL spam
 

yesterday i finally had enough of spam mail , i changed my e-mail address , so far i aint got any spam , i suppose time will tell if it starts happening again :erm:

Re: NTL spam
 

Exactly what I did. I set up up a very complicated name as the main name, which I have no intention of ever using. I then set up a number of subsidiary names, one for close friends and relatives, one for regular email shopping, one for one-off email shopping and a number of junk ones. If any become "contaminated", it will be ruthlessly binned. Even with the subsidiary names, I'd recommend not using the "Fred159" type of name; they obviously start with Fred1 and continue to Fred999999, as I quickly found out. Use something like Fred159xy.

Re: NTL spam
 

well hopefully the addy i have chosen will last for a while :erm: :D :D

Re: NTL spam
 

I must admit my yahoo.co.uk address is excellent, I get about one spam e-mail a week. Not sure if it's their spam filter or my name?? :confused:

Still as long as it works!

Re: NTL spam
 

i'd got an address where I just randomly hit a few letters and numbers and it gets no spam. I've only given the addy out to a few people. they either reply or have it in their address book so the name of it doesn't matter

Re: NTL spam
 

I have used Spampal for several months now, I have about 6 addresses in the whitelist, the rest of the filtering is done on the default rules, blacklists and the regexp filter. In all of that time I have only had one e-mail accidentally classified as spam (an e-mail newletter from Game) so that got whitelisted and only around 5 spam messages that were not recognised as spam. Addresses that I send mail to are automatically added to the whitelist so I don`t have to worry about those.

On the basis of your percentages, my spam has ben classified correctly with as good as 100% accuracy with probably about 10 minutes work on my part at the very beginning.

If Spampal can do it this well then there is no reason (theoretically of course) that NTL couldn`t do it.

Re: NTL spam
 

I thought this was interesting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3584534.stm

Re: NTL spam
 

Yeah! wonder how much it's going to cost to buy.

Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

I'm sick of it. Yesterday, I checked emails after 3 days with the computer off and I had > 130 emails of which 3 were not spam. I use Spampal to filter it into a separate folder but it still takes forever to download the spam.

is it worth reporting spam to anyone? I have tried Spamcop in the dim & distant past, but found that it took even longer to deal with the spam and I was never convinced that I was achieving anything. What do you advise? Ignore it, report it ( it's complicated to understand the headers, my emails are mainly received by a uk2.net domain address that is memorable and fun, then sent to the NTL address so I don't want to get UK2.net labelled as a spammer, and I am never sure which "received from" lines in the headers are genuine and which are not).

spammed of hertfordshire

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

You could try using Mozilla Thunderbird as your email client. This enables you to easily mark something as spam (or Junk) mail and delete it. You could also try setting it to just download the headers. This way, the only mail that gets downloading is that which you read.


It takes a while to train it, but Thunderbird is fairly good at recognising spam and marking it appropriately. Note, unless you tell it to, it will not delete the spam.

To download, go to http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

I use mailwasher pro, I found that blacklisting & bouncing were a waste of time & now just use it to preview my mail boxes, before I download them, in order to delete the obvious crap.

I also found that forwarding mail for the account receiving the most spam, to my hotmail address, reduced the amount I get, considerably - talking 90% reduction :)

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Isn't "bouncing" emails back the worse thing you can do?

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Yes, because then spammers then assume it's a valid address..

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Not when he's bouncing it to his own hotmail account, which will have decent spam filtering before it reaches the inbox.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

I use spampal and spams are deleted at the server never get through to my PC.

Just check a log which shows over 3 days 150 spams deleted.

Spampal runs in the back ground and you can just forget about it.

http://www.spampal.org/

Well recommended

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Bouncing it to hotmail is fine (hotmail does seem to have good spam blocking now).

I believe Russ was talking about bouncing it back the spammer though (which would only work if the from field wasn't falsified). If it is a false address, bouncing it back would just generate extra traffic, or notify the spammer he has just sent to a valid address.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Once well trained and with well designed filters and accept/block lists I find mailwasher to be excellent. I have it auto-delete stuff on my block list, but still do a cursory check on things it's flagged as spam.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

I had 12 so far on my Yahoo account today. Its the first ever e-mail address I got and do not use it much not but I do not bother with Mail Washer anymore, I just let Outlook 2003 junk mail take control of it. I just add it to the blocked senders list and empty it once a week.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

My stats for today, so far:

I receive 150 to 250 spam emails a day, from three email accounts (including one which has another account forwarded to it). Like Mike, I use Spampal - have done for years. The Bat! has common folders - i.e. folders that are non-account specific - so all the spam addressed to all my accounts goes into one folder where I give it a quick glance and hit ctrl-A and Delete.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Odd.... I use Spampal and it first downloads the spam, then adds "**SPAM**" to the subject field so it's easy for Outlook Express to have a rule to pop it into my spam folder ( so I can double check before deleting). Can Spampal be used with an NTL account to delete it at the server? I find it's very accurate at sorting the spam, but it downloads the whole lot. Mozilla ( and something called "The Bat" ) seems to be very popular, I'll take a look, thanks.

And none of you have answered my question, are you all politicians?
;-)>
is it worth reporting spam or not?

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Bouncing is WORSE than useless, as the sender address is invariably forged.

As I understand it, with Spampal, you can delete IMAP mail within spampal, but not POP.

If you are CERTAIN of your spam tagging, you could use a delete from server rule, but I'm not entirely certain if that would pass correctly through, or if there is a risk of skewing the numbering.

One thing, seems to be that the typical spam/bulkmail message-id formats are quite good predictors, and only need a small degree of cross-checking for legitimate bulkmail - or perhaps, secondary checking for known rotten IP ranges, like 24.0.0.0/8 , and perhaps the entire APNIC controlled range as well.

Mark it differently, and delete only that marking from the server.


Reporting:
To be honest, I used to report, now I've thrown a fairly solid blocker up - the days when spam had traceable sources are long gone, it's usually from an open proxy, on a "don't care" ISP, pointing to a website in "don't care" China.

Actually it looks like NTL might be despamming, as since I threw the block on my old Freeserve account (I used THEIR spam marking, with exceptions for any known good senders that were getting marked, and delete from server), I haven't noticed ANY spam at all - the ones that used to come through on both, don't seem to be coming through at all.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

WTF?
Can you put that into English please?

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

I delete spam and emails from mailing lists from the server, so the only copy is a local one. It prevents my inbox from going over its limit. All other emails I leave on the server. With IMAP you never download your emails, which is only of use if you don't mind NTL deleting them for good. I do :)

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

Just thought I would tell you that my tv internet email address yesterday had 83 spam messages sent to it. I just deleted the lot. First time I have known that to happen. :)

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

He was talking about some of the characteristics of spam emails, which allows them to be identified as such.

Re: Spam spam spam spam spam spam
 

The Regexp filter plugin for Spampal - NOT for the fainthearted - there is a preset ruleset for it, but it's rather "fuzzy matched".