Spam drops off but it's only temporary

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Apparently a big US co has been closed down and spam levels have dropped right off :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7725492.stm

It'll all be back soon tho' they reckon

 

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I'd noticed this in the last couple of days, its a shame but I guess at least its a nice little break

 

i've notived the opposite, maybe it's all going to me

Grim

 

Haha, thats cool with me

 

I noticed an increase in the number of spam mails at the start of the week, but it's been quiet since. The biggest increase I've noticed is email that looks like it's actually our email addresses that's sending it. AV and Spyware scanners aren't picking anything up so I'm pretty sure we're clean. Is it possible for someone on a different network to "pretend" to be someone from our domain?

 

yes. they can easily spoof the address.

if ypu check the header info you may get more of a clue as to where it's coming from

 

I take it there's little to nothing I could do about spoofed email addresses?

 

Stop it totally - unlikely.

Limit it a bit - depends on how the email for your domain is setup and what access you have to it. If it's just one provided by your ISP then you would have to contact them and ask them if there's anything they can do. If you control your own domain then don't use a catch-all account, use specific addresses; that may help a bit.

You could have a read here too.

 

I was reading a articles that believes that most spammers are only getting a 1 in 12million conversion rate in terms of sales


I agree catch alls are evil i have never used them on the servers i have looked after.

 

Cheers for the link, I'll have a read at that later on. We have an SBS2K3 box with exchange configured. All mail goes through GFI MailEssentials.

 

I would have thought you should be able to do something with that to block the problem mail

 

Unfortunately it only appears to be able to block email addresses. As the spam that's causing the biggest problems are spoofed - the spam filter is seeing the emails as though they are genuine because they're from users within the network. If I apply any type of filter to it, genuine mail sent by the affected users will be affected as well as the spam emails.

 

Thats a difficult one because a lot of people move around or use third party SMTP services, so things like reverse look up and IP verification aren't so useful.

Global IP ban lists may help and Bayesian filters (train to detect trends of spam). Also software that use networked nodes that use the latter method but gather world wide data about current spam.

You using the GFI Bayesian stuff?

 

I have had none since Monday

 

Yeah, using the Bayesian filter as well. I guess I could reset the Bayesian filter and it could pick up the trends again...

 

They may only be getting a 1 in 12 million rate but thats for very little initial cost for the most part.

 

...and STILL make money hand over fist.