Entries posted in Email

Honeypot spam statistics

Around ten months ago, I talked about the effectiveness of the project honeypot blacklisting system on this website. Recently, they reached the very significant milestone of receiving their 1 billionth spam message.  More »

The Ultimate VoIP Offer?

I recently got spammed by Vixtel, a new startup in the VOIP arena, whose “incredible offer” seemed to indiscriminately extend to anybody who loves a good bargain: From: Vixtel <sales@vixtel.com.au> To: xxx@lutrov.  More »

How not to promote your services

Around a week ago, I got spammed by a dodgy outfit called Logistetica, who claim to “re-design web sites and create new ones”. Even though they used Lyris Listmanager to spruke their wares, they made the careless mistake of targeting common business-related mailbox names. From: “Logistetica” <info@logistetica.  More »

Offshore development spam

Like probably most of my competitors, I get unsolicited offers of cheap software development “services” on a regular basis. But this recent email stood out like a sore thumb. And not because of typos and grammatical inadequacies either: From: Babita Tiwari <babita@otssolutions.com> To: xxx@lutrov.  More »

Why your newsletter is useless

There seems to be an increasing trend by businesses who send out email newsletters to their customers to assume that everyone who subscribed to their newsletter prefers to receive messages in HTML-only format. Sometimes, it may be due to inferior bulk mailing software.  More »

The ICE campaign

I got this in my mailbox a few days back, and just for a change, the message was actually useful, practical and very sensible:  More »

The honeypot works

Since we implemented the project honeypot blacklisting system, it’s already becoming a very effective tool for us. Their simple API enables us to quickly check whether any given visitor to our website is an email harvester, comment spammer or one of a number of malicious bots circulating the globe.  More »

Spamming people doesn’t do your campaign much good

I got this spam from the American Hunters & Shooters Association today, asking me to become a member, even though I live in Australia, and even though I hate guns: From: The American Hunters and Shooters Association Foundation <info@huntandshoot.net> Subject:  More »

Spam still thriving

Here’s a scary statistic.  More »

Worldsoft easy money scam

Here’s a pretty obtuse way to fish for legitimate email addresses.  More »

Bank of America phishing scam

Got this phishing scam from some knuckleheads in the USA who must have been hoping that (1) I’m a Bank of America customer and (2) that I’m even dumber than they are: From: Bank of America <onlinebanking.alerts@bank0famerica.  More »

Microsoft gives away fake prizes

I got spammed by the giant of Redmond a couple of weeks ago, offering me “cool prizes”, just to search the web using their struggling search engine.  More »

Spam harvester tracking

Stumbled on this today, while investigating dodgy user agent strings: “Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website.  More »

Trust the Midas touch?

I received this “mainsleaze” spam a few days ago from Midas. Now this is supposed to be a reputable, mainstream company but stupid actions such as this are likely to damage their reputation for quite a while: Looking at the email headers and body reveals that apart from “dataxlt.com”, “online-replies.  More »

Dell phishing scam

I received this email, claiming to be from Dell, and offering to give me a free laptop, just for answering a short survey: From: “Computer Testing Program” <KelleyDominguez@shulogu.matfelon.  More »

The scams are getting dumber

Some knuckleheads from the other side of the world tried scamming me (along with a few million other people) a couple of weeks ago.  More »

Reject those nosy email messages

MS Outlook uses a “tracking option” which enables the sender of an email to determine when the recipient has actually read it. If, like me, you find this “feature” an intrusion of privacy, you can do something about it.  More »

Scamming the scammers

Warning: This post contains concepts and phraseology which may be offensive to some of our readers. A few weeks ago I got a lovely email from an aspiring Russian bride who wanted to get to “know” me, so to speak.  More »

We sell America for the ruble!

I’ve been copping a spate of Cyrillic spam in the last few weeks, which my mailfilter has been happily dumping into the garbage, where it belongs.  More »

Don’t send HTML-only newsletters

Does your organisation send out email newsletters to your customers or prospects? If so, here’s a tip. Don’t assume that all recipients on your newsletter prefer to receive your emails in HTML format.  More »