[Merged] Spam/Viruses on ntl.

[threadbare]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

Assuming of course that the person/company has done something wrong and that NTL hasn't just blacklisted them by accident or on a whim or at the request of a muppet user (if the blacklist is public).


john

as if they would!

[brianlb]

I am currently receiving several hundred spam messages a day sent to my ntlworld.com address (a purely private, personal, non-commercial address -- I'm a retired public servant). I am forced to spend long periods of every day wading through all the spam in search of the occasional genuine message, wasting time that I can ill afford. If I am away from a computer for more than a couple of days, my NTL mailbox becomes completely unmanageable, overflowing with a thousand or more spams waiting to download. Many others must be having the same dismal experience.

Some of the spam I receive has been addressed to dozens of ntlworld addresses listed in alphabetical order, mine among them. This strongly suggests that someone has sold the NTL address lists to a spammer who has of course sold them on to other spammers, and so on by compound multiplication. There appears to have been a serious failure of security at NTL.

Other ISPs, including for example Yahoo (which, unlike NTL, is free), have installed reliable spam filters which they keep up to date and which identify and separate spam so that it can be checked at leisure and deleted. When is NTL going to perform the same essential service for its subscribers?

I also receive around a dozen virus-infected messages addressed to my ntlworld.com address every day. Again, other providers automatically scan all incoming messages for viruses and sidetrack those found to be infected. NTL simply passes them on, unchecked. NTL just can't, it seems, be bothered.

I live in the heart of south London and use NTL cable (since NTL has a total monopoly) for my telephones, digital TV and internet access. My NTL exchange has still not been enabled for broadband and NTL refuses to say when or even whether it is going to be upgraded. BT can't, or won't, supply broadband to my area, either. I'm stuck with dial-up.

When is NTL going to wake up? (I hope that despite having shamefully closed down the old nthellworld.com forum after buying it up in order to suppress it, someone at NTL has the wit to read messages here and get a sense of what is infuriating their customers... If so, why not post a considered reply to this message?)

Brian

[Stuartbe]

Hi m8 and to the site

Sadly you are far from alone with this one. There are some programs about that will help reduce the junk that you get. I bit more detailed advice can be found on this fab post by one of our members - http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=10441

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by brianlb

<snip>

I appreciate your frustation, but at the moment, the fact is that ntl don't implement and spam/ antivirus filters, although whether this will change in the near future, nobody knows!

There are a number of things that you can do yourself to combat spam; i only receive about 1-2 spam messages per week so i don't think the problem lies entirely with ntl.

The first thing that i suggest is to download a programme such as mailwasher, which will filter the spam on your pc, so you won't have to go through all of it to find the genuine messages.

The other thing is that if i a piece of spam contains an 'unsubscribe' link DO NOT use this! it just validates your address for the spammer, and will lead to just more spam!

No matter, how much we rant and rave, when ntl want to implement spam/ virus filtering they will, and before that, they wont!

for advice on dealing with spam at your end, see the post here

[sherer]

one thing they could do which would be fairly quick, easy and cheap to do is block the web sites that these SPAM mails refer to... If the ISP can't access them then there is no point to the spam and it should be reduced.. AOL do this already as well as having spam filtering..

[theman]

i know a friend of mine had over 2000 spam messages surly NTL CAN SOMETHING other providers do so why cant NTL

[Jon M]

A lot of people would object to that sort of activity.. for example.. would you let your postman go through all your post and filter out the ones he deemed inappropriate? probably not.

The problem is that no-one is going to be a perfect judge of what is and isn't spam... as a result many users like to reserve that priviledge for themselves.

Personally, I'm in favour of blacklisting.. (blocking email from known spammers, not whole domains) on the server side. But I am aware that many people don't want to hand over that responsibility, which you can't really argue against.

[brianlb]

[QUOTE=monkeybreath]
[snip] There are a number of things that you can do yourself to combat spam; i only receive about 1-2 spam messages per week so i don't think the problem lies entirely with ntl.
The first thing that i suggest is to download a programme such as mailwasher, which will filter the spam on your pc, so you won't have to go through all of it to find the genuine messages.
The other thing is that if i a piece of spam contains an 'unsubscribe' link DO NOT use this! it just validates your address for the spammer, and will lead to just more spam! [snip]

Thanks. I never reply to spam messages, never click on the 'unsubscribe' link, and try not to give any indication that my e-mail address functions. I have investigated a number of spam filter programs but most of them either require you to compile your own list of Reply To addresses from spams received (not a practical proposition considering that I'm receiving several hundred a day) or else have their own criteria for identifying spam which are usually so broadly drawn that they are liable to eliminate genuine messages too. I appreciate the difficulty of spotting definite spam in an automated program, but Yahoo (and nowadays Hotmail, I suspect) manage it, and I don't see why NTL shouldn't manage it too.

And for minimal expense NTL could certainly filter out virus-infected messages instead of blithely passing them on. How many ntlworld.com customers take the trouble to update their virus definition files every day (I do, and a great bore it is)? Again, others do (and send you a message telling you that such-and-such a message has been detected with a virus and has been deleted): why shouldn't NTL?

As for broadband, why does NTL give evidence to parliamentary committees boasting of their commitment to bring broadband to all their customers in the UK, and then do nothing whatsoever to supply it to their customers in the nation's capital? NTL boasted of its experiment with WHAM (Wireless High-speed Access Modem) which was a triumphant success -- I had broadband via WHAM for a year or so, and it was almost faultless -- so NTL wound it up without a word of explanation and never offered it on a commercial basis. Get the political credit for it, then close it down. Yuk.

Brian

[brianlb]

Originally Posted by Stuartbe

Hi m8 and to the site

Sadly you are far from alone with this one. There are some programs about that will help reduce the junk that you get. I bit more detailed advice can be found on this fab post by one of our members - http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=10441

That's a splendid post for guidance on tracking down and reporting the originators of heavily disguised spams. But it's just not practicable if you're getting hundreds of the damn' things every day!

Incidentally I manage to divert about one-third of the spams I receive into a separate folder in Outlook Express by writing lots of Message Rules based on phrases and names that keep on cropping up in spam. But the spammers mostly work round that sort of filter by changing the tell-tale words slightly: V1agra instead of Viagra, or V*i*a*g*r*a, or whatever. It's a losing battle to keep up with the wretched nasties.

Brian

Brian

[Jon M]

brian. if you have a flood of spam.. i suggest you install "mailwasher" as suggested above by monkeybreath ..

*do NOT turn on the "bounce" feature though

[brianlb]

Originally Posted by s1lv3r

brian. if you have a flood of spam.. i suggest you install "mailwasher" as suggested above by monkeybreath ..

*do NOT turn on the "bounce" feature though

I appreciate the suggestion, and I have looked at the mailwasher website to see what's involved, but it looks to me as if I would still have to look at each incoming message individually to determine whether it is spam or genuine, and I can do that already (indeed I am forced to do it) using Outlook Express and some message rules. But users of mailwashers may be able to explain that it's more useful than it seems.

Brian

[altis]

For an instant solution - change your email address! It's not as painful as it sounds.

1) Visit:
http://www.ntlworld.com/help/custome...ilOptions.html

2) Follow 'add extra email boxes' and set up a new email account.

3) Go to the same page but now follow 'set up an autoreply to your email'. Enter your old account details and then set up a message that says something like 'Sorry about this.... spam.... aaagh... please use my new email address which is xxxx at ntlworld dot com'. Anyone that sends an email to your old address will receive this message. Humans will be able to act on it but spam engines will just throw it away. Sorted.

[brianlb]

Originally Posted by altis

For an instant solution - change your email address! It's not as painful as it sounds.

1) Visit:
http://www.ntlworld.com/help/custome...ilOptions.html

2) Follow 'add extra email boxes' and set up a new email account.

3) Go to the same page but now follow 'set up an autoreply to your email'. Enter your old account details and then set up a message that says something like 'Sorry about this.... spam.... aaagh... please use my new email address which is xxxx at ntlworld dot com'. Anyone that sends an email to your old address will receive this message. Humans will be able to act on it but spam engines will just throw it away. Sorted.

That really does look like a possible solution -- except that it's the e-mail address that I have been using for a long time as my authenticating address, e.g. for ordering things online, etc. So when I place an order, or arrange to renew a subscription, etc., a message automatically goes to that address and I have to reply to it, or click on a link in it, to prove that it's really me placing the order or renewing the subscription or whatever. Clearly the automatic message sent to me wouldn't read or act on the automated reply explaining that I have changed my e-mail address...

Still, it might be worth setting such things up all over again with the new address, I suppose. Thanks, anyway.

Brian

[ntl customer]

I appreciate your frustation, but at the moment, the fact is that ntl don't implement and spam/ antivirus filters, although whether this will change in the near future, nobody knows!

Why should it be up to ntl to filter spam and virusses?

Their email service is bad enough as it is with it without the filtering. Imagine what it would be like with the filtering! Knowing what ntl are like legit messages would probably end up getting binned as spam.

Also think about how much it would cost and how much time it would take for such a solution to be designed and deployed. Not all customers use their full allocation of email addresses but if they were to.

Each ntl internet customer has 15 email addresses. Multiply that by 1,000,000 (which is supposedly how many internet customers ntl has) and you will see what a huge task it is! Same thing for antivirus - scanning emails for each would be impractical given the scale of it all.

If you wish to filter out the virusses then you should install some antivirus software that allows you to scan the emails upon downloading from the POP3 server. Most do nowadays but its not always switched on by default.

- - -

As you have 15 email addresses available to you, why don't you try this?

Have one for each website you order stuff from or have one which you have to give out in order to download software or whatever...

e.g. if your main email you get tons of spam on now is joe.bloggs@ntlworld.com, then set up a new address for each site/purpose you use...

If you trade on ebay then joe.bloggs.ebay@ntlworld.com

If you buy off amazon then joe.bloggs.amazon@ntlworld.com

If you need to fill in your email address onto sites then use joe.bloggs.trashcan@ntlworld.com

etc.

[abailey152]

You offer some good advice on tackling spam. But I think NTL could provide some filtering to block emails from known spam relays. If other ISP's can do it, why can't NTL. Other ISP's have as many inboxes to cope with.

I run software to deal with spam, and it automatically blacklists certain senders by comparing the header with its own central database without me doing anything. NTL could run something like this. It will not stop everything but it might stop some. I've just deleted 16 emails for the last 12 hours....all spam.

Unfortunately, I rely on my main email address now, so changing it is really not an option for the most part. I can and do use modified addresses for certain sites and the Usenet, but once on the spammers lists it is impossible to get off, without an address change, so come on NTL....give us all some help.