Spam

[Dr Peter Young]

I've been away for two weeks, and have today come back to over 200
spam messages; are the new filters working yet?

Sorry to fuss, but the usual high standard of Orpheus makes me fussier
over this!

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dr J E Hurley]

Post by Dr Peter Young
I've been away for two weeks, and have today come back to over 200
spam messages; are the new filters working yet?
Sorry to fuss, but the usual high standard of Orpheus makes me fussier
over this!
With best wishes,
Peter.

Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many of the types
previously removed. I too am hoping that Paul manages to get this under
control soon. The majority of mine seems to be of three types:

the unwelcome return of the pornographic ones
"phishing" types wanting me to enter a security number
american "paper hangers" pushing dodgy stocks

Does not this limited range simplify the problem?

John

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many of the types
previously removed. I too am hoping that Paul manages to get this under

Spam is the bane of my life at the moment. It's getting quite unmanageable.
Not only is it putting a huge load on our servers (we're seriously
contemplating having to buy another server just to take some of the load
off), but it's also getting more sneaky in that it creaps past a lot of
spam filters.

My personal mail server (mx.vigay.com), which acts as a kind of test bed in
that I can fiddle about with it without risk of affecting anything Orpheus
related, completely died last week under the load. I then built a new one
from scratch and installed the very latest SpamAssassin and Exim on it, but
it's still getting hit with 1000's of emails per hour (imaging multiplying
that by 1000's and you'll get near the load on the Orpheus servers).

There also appear to be a number of Denial of Service (DoD) attacks from
the far east at the moment (whether or not that is anything to do with
censorship in China or not, I wouldn't like to speculate - see my weblog at
www.paulsdomain.co.uk for recent personal rants on that), so all servers
are getting hammered quite a bit at the moment.

Ideally, if I can fund a new server, that might take some of the load off
the main ones and perhaps dedicate one to spam filtering alone, but it does
annoy me that these spammers around the world can cost me thousands of
pounds just to get a server to filter stuff.

I wish there was a way of eliminating it totally, but without resorting to
small thermonuclear devices shoved somewhere the spammers might find
painful, it looks like it's going to be a long (and expensive) battle. :-(
If I was a bigger company with a lot more money to throw at the problem I'd
probably buy /three/ new servers and then each mail server would be
protected with it's own dedicate spam filter. :-)

However, I am battling on, so I hope people will bear with me - and you are
only seeing about 5% of the actual spam hitting the servers!

Paul

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Paul Vigay
I am battling on, so I hope people will bear with me - and you are
only seeing about 5% of the actual spam hitting the servers!

Just a quick note to let you know that your efforts are appreciated.

And I reckon it would help if there was a mailbox we could forward
the remaining 5% to, letting subscribers act as human filters.


Tennant

[Russell Hafter News]

Post by Dr J E Hurley

Post by Dr Peter Young
I've been away for two weeks, and have today come back
to over 200 spam messages; are the new filters working
yet?
Sorry to fuss, but the usual high standard of Orpheus
makes me fussier over this!
With best wishes,
Peter.

Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many
of the types previously removed. I too am hoping that
Paul manages to get this under control soon. The majority
the unwelcome return of the pornographic ones "phishing"
types wanting me to enter a security number american
"paper hangers" pushing dodgy stocks

I have not come across the term "paper hangers" before, so I
would have referred to them, perhaps incorrectly, as boiler
rooms.

Either way the fetch a few minutes ago produced 6 of them,
and there were a lot over the weekend too.

Most of them get a spam score of around 4, but the last lot,
which I did not initially even open, were different, and so
had an approximately zero spam score.

No doubt as more turn up their score will increase.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Russell Hafter News

Post by Dr J E Hurley
"paper hangers" pushing dodgy stocks

I have not come across the term "paper hangers" before, so I
would have referred to them, perhaps incorrectly, as boiler
rooms.

Can you guys please explain "paper hangers" and "boiler rooms"?


Tennant

[Dr J E Hurley]

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can you guys please explain "paper hangers" and "boiler rooms"?

American organised financial criminals, concerned with selling useless
stocks, manipulating the price of legitimate stocks or laundering money. The
two terms refer to sub species of this activity:

Paper hanging - selling dud stocks, boiler room - manipulating share prices,
insider dealing etc.

[Tennant Stuart]

Post by Dr J E Hurley

Post by Tennant Stuart
Can you guys please explain "paper hangers" and "boiler rooms"?

American organised financial criminals, concerned with selling useless
stocks, manipulating the price of legitimate stocks or laundering money.
Paper hanging - selling dud stocks, boiler room - manipulating share
prices, insider dealing etc.

Ta.


Tennant

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Dr J E Hurley

Post by Dr Peter Young
I've been away for two weeks, and have today come back to over 200
spam messages; are the new filters working yet?
Sorry to fuss, but the usual high standard of Orpheus makes me fussier
over this!
With best wishes,
Peter.

Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many of the types
previously removed. I too am hoping that Paul manages to get this under
the unwelcome return of the pornographic ones
"phishing" types wanting me to enter a security number
american "paper hangers" pushing dodgy stocks

Not getting the porn here, but plenty of phishing and stock ones; now
also several of the Microsoft Security Update ones, which I hadn't
seen for a long time.

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Does not this limited range simplify the problem?

But see Paul's posting from earlier. He's doing as well as he can, and
good luck to him.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Dr J E Hurley]

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many of the types
previously removed. I too am hoping that Paul manages to get this under
control soon.

Welcome diminution of spam to almost zero after this weekend. Hope this is
general. Looks as if Paul has got this under control. Thanks Paul.

[Dr Peter Young]

Post by Dr J E Hurley

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Sadly the high level of spam continues - including many of the types
previously removed. I too am hoping that Paul manages to get this under
control soon.

Welcome diminution of spam to almost zero after this weekend. Hope this is
general. Looks as if Paul has got this under control. Thanks Paul.

Still some here, but lots less. The thanks are echoed.

With best wishes,

Peter.

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Welcome diminution of spam to almost zero after this weekend. Hope this
is general. Looks as if Paul has got this under control. Thanks Paul.

I think I got yours! (do you want me to forward it on....? hehe).

I'm still battling with it. I think it's dipped slightly, but I'm still
receiving what I consider to be too much here.

[Bill (Adopt)]

Post by Paul Vigay

Post by Dr J E Hurley
Welcome diminution of spam to almost zero after this weekend. Hope this
is general. Looks as if Paul has got this under control. Thanks Paul.

I think I got yours! (do you want me to forward it on....? hehe).
I'm still battling with it. I think it's dipped slightly, but I'm still
receiving what I consider to be too much here.

<sotto voce>...
..he gets late night 'phone spam, as well!! ;'))
</sooty's voice>

Anon...

[Paul Vigay]

Post by Bill (Adopt)
<sotto voce>...
..he gets late night 'phone spam, as well!! ;'))
</sooty's voice>

hehe. What other ISP would offer late night telephone support with a
real-life operator based in the same time zone?

AND, still answer the phone when they see "Bill Simpson" come up on the
display.... ;-) :-)

[Lionel Smith]

Post by Paul Vigay
AND, still answer the phone when they see "Bill Simpson" come up on the
display.... ;-) :-)

and if it were Homer Simpson ....? ;)

Lionel

[Lionel Smith]

Post by Paul Vigay
I'm still battling with it. I think it's dipped slightly, but I'm still
receiving what I consider to be too much here.

According to report on silicon.com much of it was from China.

Lionel