Tag: Spam

This Is Not SPAM

Since the past 2 weeks I have been receiving funny and annoying emails that start exactly like this:

And each of them is actually promoting different programs: i.e. easy money, forex investments. Translation:

Don’t these idiots know that when they start sending unrequested emails to multiple recipients at the same time, it’s considered SPAM?

So if I see one of them and kick them I can say: “I am not kicking you”.

TMNet Decides to Block Port 25

If you’re a Streamyx subscriber and is actively monitoring your Streamyx email you would already be aware that TM is blocking all outgoing connections to port 25 from the dynamic IP users. Simply put, home users with dynamic IP will not be able to use their email clients (i.e. Thunderbird, Outlook, Eudora, Kmail) to send emails via their own mail server.

For example, as a Yahoo! Mail Plus user I use Yahoo! SMTP at smtp.mail.yahoo.com to send my emails. With the blocking enforced, I will no longer be able to send via this server. The same goes to other users who have their own mail server for their own domains. As of the time of writing this email, I see that the blocking is still not enforced:

SMTP Blocking on TMNET

My Thunderbird and sendmail on my Linux box are still happily sending out emails via my SMTP servers / smart hosts.

Here’s the official announcement: MITIGATING SPAM IN TM NETWORK.

They are doing this to prevent spammers from sending emails from dynamic IP addresses. However they do open up an SMTP proxy as an open relay for dynamic IP users. I am unsure and pretty much would like to see the effect of having an open relay in their network.

One particular thing that is bad for everyone is that the final destination will check for IP addresses as they mentioned. But how are they going to make sure that the IP address of the smtp proxy (smtp-proxy.tm.net.my 202.188.0.174) will not be blacklisted?

Certain anti-spam implementations such as SPF does check whether the email is sent from authorized mail servers (technical: MX records), and sending from TMNET’s SMTP relay will make sure that your email will fail the SPF test. Adding it in the SPF authorized list (technical: “v=spf1 a:smtp-proxy.tm.net.my mx:smtp.yourdomain.com”) is an initial idea – but doing this will allow everyone to be “authorized” as one of your domain users 🙁

And of course, you can forget about DomainKeys as the smtp-proxy will break your signature.

As for me, as long as they don’t block port 465 (SMTP over SSL) I will still be happy.

Oh yes by the way this policy is not only used by TMNET. Last week, one of my users who were in a London hotel had the same problem when he tried to connect to port 25 (a mail server in Malta). In the end we added another listening port and it worked fine. If you own a mail server, consider doing the same thing!

So far, how does this policy effect you?

Spam or Not Spam

While monitoring some of the servers I am maintaining today, a user forwarded me an amusing email message:

Received: from [218.111.170.31] by web38606.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:01:19 BST
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 07:01:19 +0100 (BST)
From: hairiehasnie <[email protected]>
Subject: Dear XXXX,
To: XXXX XXXX <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”0-1107947314-1188799279=:79252″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

–0-1107947314-1188799279=:79252
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I use a good spam filter, and you probably do the same.
I have whitelisted you and that means that I will receive all the emails you send to me.
I would appreciate it if you would whitelist my email address: [email protected] in your spam filter.

If you don’t have a spam filter, I can recommend SPAMfighter. It is a highly effective free spam filter for Outlook and Outlook Express.

You can get the free SPAMfighter here:
http://www.LINKREMOVED.com/Pro

I hope that you will whitelist me, so we can continue to communicate safely via email in the future.

Best regards

hairie

This email is amusing because:

  1. It promotes a spam filter for Outlook, but this email is sent from Yahoo! Webmail
  2. The URL inside the email is neither phishing nor a referral URL

So I guess this hairiehasnie guy has nothing better to do. Who else has received this message? I am pretty sure it was not sent only to my user! 😉 And yes, I put his email clearly here on purpose. Let there be SPAM in his email. After all he has SPAMfighter! 😀

Unsolicited Mails

I hate it when I receive unsolicited mails such as this one. I have never registered for any services by this company, and most importantly I only use my disposable emails from Yahoo! to register for any untrusted services in the Internet.

So this is a human imbecile who harvested my email. I already have 2Mbps broadband. I was thinking of bombing their email with like a million messages a second but considering today’s computing and storage power I think it will just be useless and wasting my precious time.

spambroadband.jpg

Hmm… This low life company (so called Broadband Multimedia) is located in KL and have branches in Johore and Penang. I will never be a customer of a company who spams me without me asking for it. Never ever. I am guessing ez-marketing is an affiliate or a subsidiary who is specially created to spam Internet users. 😡

The Correct Way To SPAM

Some of us might say that there’s no right way to send spams. I partially agree especially the spams contains useless information but I do sometimes receive spams that contains interesting things and products.

Spambots is a no no. But living in Malaysia I receive quite a number of people sending emails promoting their valid services and products. I don’t like it but if you can’t stop it you have to live with it.

Some rules that is acceptable under my own considerations are:

Rule 1: anti virus

Use anti virus in your computer where you send the emails from.

Rule 2: recipients

NEVER put recipients email addresses inside the To: field. Instead, use the Bcc: field. This way, the recipient will still receive your email and know who is it from. Why? This is because 100% of the times, your recipient are not related to each other. You have no rights to reveal other people’s email addresses to the public. This also increases the chances of email viruses to propagate and send emails to thousands of people. You can control your PC but not the recipient’s.

Let’s say you send an email to user A, B, and C by putting them in the To: field, and user B is a nest of virus. The viruses in user B’s PC will be able to see user A and C email addresses and propagate themselves. This will not happen if you send using Bcc: field, where user B’s PC will only be able to see your email address and sends viruses to you. Hey, that’s the risk you have to take. You can always send an email with the From: address is not yours or make up any address but I am not going to teach that here.

Rule 3: sender

Always use your real name as sender. Use something like “special promotion” or “tawaran hebat” will definitely make sure your email end up in Junk boxes.

Rule 4: subject

Don’t use weird character like the underscore (_), quotes, or even to the extreme: normal brackets. Spams usually will try to avoid spam filters by masking words. For example a spam promoting weight loss products use the word “we_ight“. This no longer works as spam filters have been made to detect these kinds of things.

So people, if you send emails using the general rules above I am more than willing to have a peek before deleting the emails.

Be safe.