Recently in Spam Filtering Category

They're at it again

UK Food Exports, which claims it's an independent guide to to sourcing products from the UK, is spamming me and others again.

They're still using that stupid disclaimer and their phone number goes to a fax machine.

So since I can't contact them directly I think I'll just see if the UK data protection lot have anything to say about them ...

If you want to tell me why I'm getting an email (newsletter) that's fine. It's actually quite helpful, as I could easily forget how I ended up subscribing myself to a list or if I ordered from somewhere...

However putting this kind of text in your email footer is one sure fire way of getting me to list you as a spammer:

DISCLAIMER: This message is not "SPAM" because it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions. This message was offered to you for one of the following reasons: your email address has been selected from a database that you have subscribed, your email address was made public by you; you have requested to receive the offer; you are a partner of our company; your email address is in our database as a result of previous correspondence.

There are so many things wrong with that disclaimer that it's almost impossible to know where to begin.

The ones I "love" are:

"it contains our identification and unsubscribe instructions"

Um .. ok... so? That doesn't mean anything at all...

The one though that really gets me is the "your email address was made public by you"

That is both hilarious and scary

(And just in case you're wondering - I got two copies of the same spam to two addresses that aren't published anywhere .. )

I've been running my own mail server for this domain and several others for a few years. I could have used our main mail servers, but I like messing around with the server settings and trying out new things.

One thing that I hadn't been checking too stringently on my inbound email was SPF.
Sure, I had it set up on several of my domains so that anyone else getting mail from me would be "happy".
Switching it to more stringent settings and checking SPF inbound, however, has proven to be worth the few minutes it took to set it up - over 100 mails blocked in less than 24 hours!

I opted to install postfix-policyd-spf-perl as I'm using Postfix. Configuration was pretty easy - just adding a couple of lines to the main.cf and master.cf (the man page gives you the most up to date configuration settings)

While I doubt this is Oracle's normal policy, they really do need to teach their staff how to market properly.

Using email to help promote sales is a good idea, but the way that this is being done is incredibly bad and damages email marketing in general.

So far today I have received 5 separate copies of an Oracle "offer" on my work domain. I also received multiple emails a couple of weeks ago in my personal email.

It is incredibly annoying.

Why?

Because I never signed up for ANY of these emails and now I'm being asked to unsubscribe, which in some cases is going to be nigh on impossible as the emails in question do not send - they are only setup to receive only.

So how can I get off Oracle's spam list?

I can't reply to the emails, as they seem to be coming from some automated system.

And judging by the email addresses that are being targetted it's pretty obvious that the email addresses were scraped off websites.

This is more a note for myself than anything else ...

By default a lot of php scripts will send emails that appear as coming from the Apache user, which makes tracking down a rogue script really annoying and time-consuming.

You end up with entries in the mail logs similar to this one:

Apr 27 18:22:29 servername postfix/qmgr[23581]: 0F53421C1FA: from=<www-data@servername.com>, size=929, nrcpt=1 (queue active)

Which isn't particularly helpful if you have more than one site (vhost) on a particular server.

Making it a bit saner can be done via a simple addition to the Apache vhost config:

php_admin_value sendmail_path '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -f address@domain.tld'

So now any emails sent from that vhost will reference the email specified instead of the Apache user:

Apr 27 19:40:34 servername postfix/qmgr[2469]: 16A8F21C1FA: from=<address@domain.tld>, size=358, nrcpt=1 (queue active)

There are other additions to Php that can log the path to the script itself, though until such time as someone makes it available for Debian / Ubuntu I don't really fancy having to compile it in manually

I hate spam.

It's a tactic used by lazy uninventive scumbags.

I don't like politicians that much and consider most of them to be seriously overpaid.


So when I got hit with a spam from the Irish Green Party today to my personal email address I saw red.


Here's the spam itself (screenshot with personal details removed):





I love the way they wanted to "be sure" that I got their unsolicited junk.

I am not interested in the Green Party. I have never expressed any interest in them. I have not asked to be added to any of their mailing lists, so why the hell are they sending me this rubbish?

Funnily enough the contact details on their website include one for data protection - its' as if they were expecting a backlash from their spamming:




Well done Green Party - any chance of ever getting a vote from me is gone!

Morons!

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• eircom Golden Spider Awards spamming again

I have little or no patience for spammers, as most people know.

Since I run several sites that deal with domains and the internet industry in general I seem to have been targetted by TodayNic's comment and forum spammers. Over the past year or so I've had to remove multiple spam comment attacks from several sites.

It's annoying. Very annoying.

However it's even more annoying when they have the gall to demand that I remove a post I made last year about their spam.

Considering they're still spamming from what I've seen in the last few weeks I can think of no good reason to remove any posts where I've referred to Todaynic's spam.

Someone claiming to be "Chris" from Todaynic left  a comment on another one of my blogs at around 3am this morning.

Anyone who randomly sends forwards me .doc press releases without even making an effort to personalise the email stands zero chance of getting a favourable mention from me ever.

It's not terribly hard to use some mailing software to send out press releases.

Why do people presume that everyone uses Word?

How hard would it be to actually address an email to me personally? Is that too much of a challenge?

It's not terribly hard to send email - thousands of spammers manage it, don't they?

So why on earth can't someone send a press release properly?

And since Donncha has already "named and shamed", I will too.

Ifoods.tv - you really need to get a clue.

It's not a matter of web2.0 vs web 1.0 or anything like that. It's simply a matter of using, as we say in Cork, a bit of "cop on".

You may have been nominated for an award, but it obviously wasn't in marketing or email usage based on the rubbish you sent me today and the way you sent it.

Don't you just love dumb spammers?

itext.ie seem to fit neatly into that group.

Their bulk unsolicited email this afternoon checks all the boxes for spam of the worst kind.

• spammy subject line - check
• html email with bad use of colour - check
• zero personalisation - check
  
• no unsubscribe options - check
• no explanation of why email sent - check
• non-compliance with EU directives on email - check

Yes, itext.ie are real geniuses

The email looks like a viagra spam or similar to be honest, so I wonder how successful it will be

ORDB was shutdown ages ago (end of 2006!). Why the hell are people still using it on their mail servers?

Make sure your mail server isn't using it!