SPAM
E-MAIL
Summary:
E-mail spam needs to be identified and deleted from your inbox
before opening it. The consequences of opening spam is: more
spam- unsolicited e- mail..
Purpose:
To show how to identify spam e-mail by its
origin without opening it. Ways to reduce your e-mail address from becoming
a target for spam.
It is just a matter
of time!
The
Problem:
According to CNN (January 15, 2011), E-mail spam is on the rise again, as
the holiday season progressed 3 billion e-mails laden with spam arrived
in December 2010 alone.
Well, 2010 was a banner year despite more effort by law enforcement and tougher laws. A few convictions but not enough to deter would-be spammers. Fortunately, Internet security software has become much more sophisticated and some of the worst offenders in the spread have started to take some responsibility for the spread- Micro Software Network- Hotmail- Google- Facebook & of course, your own Internet Service provider.
Why so much spam? Spam
is e-mail that you may or may not have requested though surfing, filling in
forms or mailing lists, registering software, etc. Despite the US government
passing the Anti Spam Act in 2003 (Bill, 392-5 & Controlling the Assault
of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act), spam has continued to proliferate.
Spam consumes an incredible amount of your personal time and computing resources-
telecom networks, ISP storage and bandwidth and to your personal computer.
Advice:
Email spam is destructive to your computer resources, very annoying
and a danger to your personal privacy. Tackle it at the source by knowing
what to look for. See an example of a suspicious e-mail- below. Delete
all unknown emails without opening them. Do not be kind. These e-mails
can contain spyware that reports your activities and harbors viruses
and trojan programs that can disable your system and network.
Things
you can do:
Do not encourage more spam by opening them or replying. Spammers love it
when the discover you have a live e-mail address. It is worth money. Only check
a certain times during the day (half an hour is plenty) & do not contribute
to the problem- by cc'ing everyone.
Free G-mail, AOL, Yahoo and other email services have long set ups. Through seemly harmless fill in questions that even seem mandatory but are not. If you fill in these forms, expect paid- for advertising to creep in to your safe list or appear in your email inbox.
The big thing is never accept invitations from people you do not know to become contacts. All of these people and companies derive substantial revenue from selling your contact information to generate advertising revenue with very little or no security protection for you.
It is important not to bear your soul and provide detailed contact information in your profile unless you want to be bombarded with more advertising, email spam and potential hacking.
If you do not walk down the street with a sign on your back with all of your personal information on it, we suggest not doing it on your free email accounts or social networks.
What if I can't stop major inflows of emails and spam?
It is time to get a new email address and start over. Let the important people in your life know about the change. You may want to consider the free email accounts that usually comes with your subscription to Internet services. In this way, you can access your email from anywhere and have some control over the settings.
From then on, do not fill in all of that Profile information. Do not get tricked into providing a second live email address. Avoid adding a contacts to your mail list- they maybe subject to to the same bombardment of emails and ads you are, as part of your group.
Watch for mysterious invitations from even your own contacts for special deals or more personal information, like your cell phone number. Your real friends know who you are and would not ask for all that personal info, such as your address, where you went to school, employment, location, etc.
Most Public email systems have some form of protection you can set:
Example: Live- Hotmail- MSN - Here are Microsoft's suggestions and contradictions with their latest Privacy Statement you should be aware of.
"Windows Live Hotmail helps you keep an eye out for potentially unsafe email messages, so you can stay safer online. With safety features like filters that block viruses and notifications that help you identify messages sent by people you don't know, Hotmail can help protect you and your computer with:
Safety filters. Robust antivirus filters scan attachments and downloads and help block harmful content like malware and phishing email messages.
Look for a trusted sender icon in messages. The trusted sender icon lets you know that a message is from a legitimate sender that Hotmail has verified, like your bank or the Windows Live team.
Mark email addresses you know as safe. If you trust the person or website that sent you a message, you can mark them as safe. This sends any messages from them straight to your inbox.
Watch for yellow and red safety bars. A yellow safety bar means that a message contains blocked attachments, pictures, or links to websites. Check the sender of the message and make sure that you trust them before downloading any attachments or pictures or clicking any links. A red safety bar means that the message you received contains something that might be unsafe and has been blocked by Hotmail. It's recommended you don't open these types of email messages and delete them from your inbox."
Then, of course, Microsoft contradicts themselves in their own privacy statement. Our advice is to use your free ISP's mail accounts for your most important email. It is filtered at their end and by your Internet security program to get the worst of the worst into your Junk email box or bounced back into cyberspace. If a predictor gets no response, you diminish rapidly as a good thief prospect. Resist the temptation to sign up our register for newsgroups & feeds unless they are vital to your knowledge base. Use a free email account for the rest like Yahoo or Gmail, The garbage will show up but you do not have to open any of them except specific inquiries. Be wary of sites that do not allow you to opt out of email contact.
Please note, go with a bank that does not communicate financial information or request personal details since they all ready have it. Their privacy statements are about as good as rice paper in a hurricane. And, if they sell out or are taken over, the new organization has your intimate financial information with no bounds or obligation to honor prior privacy statements.
Organize
off-line:
For the stuff you really need to keep, we set up directories and cut & paste
the text content into Notepad or Wordpad (Start>All Programs>Accessories>).
Word Pad is better for spell checking and larger files. Both formats are fine
for dumping into Word or a web page later-NB- without any viruses attached.
Do not try to cut & paste the pictures or ads unless you really need them
to make a point due to size considerations and potential virus infections. For pictures, "right click" on
the picture or graph and choose "Save Picture as". We create a new Folder called SPAM, just for downloads. Start> Computer> Click on "Spam" Folder and save here under a new name then right click and run your scan. We do the same for files, we receive manually on a USB drive before allowing them on to our computer.
Most Internet Security packages allow you to scan files individually before you accept them or as soon as they are saved. Do not open them again until you scan them by going to Computer> Find the file in question where you saved it to > Right click and run your scan. If there is a problem, delete immediately, empty your Recycle bin and re-start your computer.
What can you do in to find out more about the unknown sender in Microsoft
Outlook?
1.- In your Outlook Inbox- Do not open by LEFT clicking on the message. Be
very cautious of any attachment.
2.- Highlight the message- RIGHT Click only, then scroll down and select "Options".
This will display further information in Message Options. There will be some
helpful information presented to help you determine whether to open the contents
of the email or to delete it.
3.- Watch for any reference to any Tracking options activated and "Have
replies sent to:" since intruders will re-direct your response by using
a false address in the first place. Intruders want you to open it and reply
since it the very least they will know you have a valid e-mail address.
4.- In the Internet header: box, look to see what the return path (email) is
and if you recognize it by the received from server & IP address.
In this case, it refers to infinitum.com (unknown). We ran a check on their
web site using a simple search in Internet Explorer using Google. We found
a web site address but when we tried to load it- nothing came up on own screen.
We did an "Whois" check (see site below) which revealed who the supposed
owner is actually:
"Infinitum Security
8 Temasek Boulevard
Suntec Tower 3 Penthouse Level
Singapore, Singapore 038988
Domain Name: INFINITUM.COM
Administrative Contact:
INFINITUM, SECURITY
admin@securefusion.com (oh! Another web site company- access denied)
8 Temasek Boulevard
Suntec Tower 3 Penthouse Level
Singapore, Singapore 038988
Phone: +65 6893 3098"
WHO IS?
Ever wonder how accurate WHOIS registration information is?
Only as accurate as the person or entity wants it to be. To our knowledge,
a domain name registration is mandatory though enforcement is minimal at best.
You can check WHOIS when you want to verify the owner of a web site at www.whois.org.
The site in question above even responds to a ping, so it is live- just no
web pages, Hmm. Looking
pretty suspicious so far.
First, we do not know who NRC Europe is in the From field and we find
it actually came from gicmowrn@riddler.com. In checking further, we find riddler.com
which is a games site with no address or phone number governed by the laws
of New York. And if you want to win anything, you have to provide your Social
Insurance number to claim a prize. Then, of course, when you shut down the
site, your browser comes up with a popular poker site.
In addition, our e-mail address at xxxx@example.com had never been used or setup. Though, it had been set up at our ICANN certified domain register.The only location the address appeared was on their servers. Their email servers could have been compromised recently or their company was the provider of this email address, probably for a price.
Most
free services do not allow you to view the source prior to opening,
like Windows Live Messenger (Hotmail & MSN Inbox), Yahoo, Freenet,
etc. If you Right click on a message all you can get is something similar
to the following:
" /cgi-bin/getmsg?msg=2E0DAEDA-528F-4E26-9D01-D447C83BA0&start=0&len=7374&imgsafe=n&curmbox",
-
which is close to useless. Time for the delete button if it is not obvious who
the sender is right away.
Example of the source code of an email discussed above:
Return-Path: <gicmowrm@riddler.com>
Received: from toip6.bellnexxia.net ([219.276.175.174])
by tomts48-srv.bellnexxia.net
(InterMail vM.5.01.06.14 241-256-172-140-114-20050324) with ESMTP
id <20061024221520.PSDI20947.tomts48-srv.bellnexxia.net@toip6.bellnexxia.net>
for <xxxxt@us.com>; Tue, 24 Oct 2010 18:15:20 -0400
Received: from eforward7.name-services.com ([64.74.123.16])
by toip6.bellnexxia.net with ESMTP; 24 Oct 2010 18:14:12 -0400
Received: from c9mailgw21.amadis.com ([216.163.188.221]) by eforward7.name-services.com
with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
Tue, 24 Oct 2010 15:15:28 -0700
Received: from dsl-189-128-38-192.prod-infinitum.com.mx (unknown [189.128.38.192])
by c9mailgw21.amadis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 285FF16C8BE
for <xxxx@ourdomain.com>; Tue, 24 Oct 2010 15:08:33 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <000e02c6f7b9$6968f803!c0768#bd@apltr19hz0mm4y>
From: "Europe NRC" <gicmowrm@riddler.com>
To: us@ourdomain.com
Subject: project Chairman Bill
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2010 16:11:53 -0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related;
type="multipart/alternative";
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000A_01C6F787.1ECC7800"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2869
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2962
X-CTASD-RefID: str=0004.0B091201.453E8G9A.0020,ss=2,fgs=0
X-CTASD-IP: 189.128.38.192
X-CTASD-Sender: gicmowrm@riddler.com
x-ctasd: suspected
x-ctasd-vod: uncategorized
x-ctasd-station:
Return-Path: gicmowrm@riddler.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 24 Oct 2010 22:15:28.0534 (UTC) FILETIME=[E9833B60:01D6F7A9]
