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SPAM in a Box

Mar 26, 2008 4 comments
"Hello!
my name is Sohna i saw your profile today and i became intrested in you and i will like to know more about you and if you can mail an email to my mail address i will give you my picture.here is my mail address(sohna_b@yahoo.co.uk ) hope we can move from here.waiting for your mail to my mail address above.
Sohna "


Message-ID: <8a3953830803260428x381f1405ud8c9390c9b72ced5@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:28:47 +0100
From: "Christy Dema"
To: sohna_b@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Hello!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_Part_2592_3878538.1206530927382"
Return-Path: christdema@gmail.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 26 Mar 2008 11:28:54.0297 (UTC) FILETIME=[92BCB090:01C88F34]


This is one of a hundred mails that I receive over the course of months. The reason I particularly chose this mail to disclose on my blog is because, it was using Gmail account as a sender's email address. The header info of this mail proved that. Moreover, the recipient of the mail was none other than the sender herself/himself. Why would he/she send the same message to himself/herself?

Simple, the recipients could be many and he/she has put those emails on BCC(blind carbon copy) field (while composing to conceal those email address). Another reason could be to check if email have been sent or not by confirming first on her/his own mail box.


So, normal gullible user falls prey on such mails and ends up thinking 'wow, a mail from lady'. What he doesn't know is that same mail has been sent to hundred others. Interestingly, these people are smart enough to be able to send those emails based upon one's sex. I mean, a guy would never receive a mail from guy, it's always girl and girl would receive a mail from guy. It's the smartest thing these spammers have been doing lately. Do you know how do they do it? There are special softwares to do that, they are called 'Email extractor' or 'Email harvester' . These softwares were originally launched to help user to manage their email contacts but spammers put it for their own use. So, You wouldn't get these softwares easily on regular download sites. What these softwares do is pretty impressive, you just enter some domain name on one field, and hit the 'Extract' or some other button, and booom... all emails within that site would be extracted and saved on nice 'txt' or some other format. Moreover, extracting emails from forwarded mails, chain mails, all of them is a piece of cake. So, now, you have list of emails at your desk.

The very next step that they would do is to use special softwares using their own SMTP(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server. When you send your email from gmail, SMTP of gmail is used and when you receive mails , another protocol known as POP(Post Office Protocol) is used. Maximum number of recipients on these kind of web mail service provider is very limited, so don't even think of spamming using these for long time. So, it really doesn't matter for them if they don't have this POP active. They just need to send their mails with marketing stuff, that's it. Now, this special softwares that they use are normally known as 'Mass Mailer' or 'bulk mailer' or 'email bombers'. Sometimes, these programs are equipped with their own SMTP server which lets anyone be anonymous in most cases. Normally, it would take considerable amount of your time sending one message to .. say 4000 recipients and.. of course depending upon your connection speed.

So, this is one method that I've discovered how spammers work. But this above mail that I got, he/she is not using any of these softwares, he/she used just plain gmail compose box and sent it to may be 40-50 recipients.

One thing I really didn't like about gmail is they never allow to see the originating IP of the senders to other end. Their policy talks about protecting one's privacy which seems virtuous but I THINK it's becoming more virtuous to spammers than average users who want to file complaints about the nonsense stuffs they get on their mail box.

If you're interested, I've an article posted many months ago, how to trace email and find IP(IP is used for tracking the senders and his ISP,sometimes it's used for remote access).
Here is the link if you are interested, else disregard as this post continues:
http://www.meroguff.com/2007/10/how-to-trace-email-address.html

Now, coming to the point, I don't see anything on that mail above? Is he/she selling you anything like 'how to pump boobs,enlarge your manhood,sleep disorder curing, blah blah blah '. Nope, then what could be it's intentions?

The first thing is to confirm that you are active and your email is perfect to be targeted at ...by spams. They collect working emails. And, if you have cared recently how 'make money marketing' is proliferating online. One of the method is sending unsolicited mails to thousands of mails they've collected. Believe this unbelieving fact that more than 40 percent actually buy them, the product they've marketed on spam mails. That's how spam is still in the business. Here, Spamming to me, is sending unrequested marketing promos oriented to sell/market standard/substandard products to thousands of email users all around. It's kind of boring AD on TVs but totally unethical and annoying. Pretty bad.

If I reply this mail back, my mail will be on their list and my email would get appended on their some thousands mail lists which would get sold for few hundred bucks. And, what we get is unsolicited marketing bullshits.

Everytime those spam mails make ways to your inbox, mark the sender's email as SPAM. No big deal. And, one more thing to note. If you think, it's way too much convincing (from your last visit to the fair) like "hey, you are the lottery winner, claim it".. you actually did pay for the lottery and here comes the mail, 'hey you won it'. Damn, it's pretty convincing. Halt your step before you follow any further step and search on google using the keywords on that particular mail. Smart Step than being a stupid looser.

So, if you think and follow all the suggestions that I've given here, together, we'll defeat SPAM one day. One stat shows the days ahead is of glorious spammers but imagine if everyone becomes SPAM-aware like you and me, then their days are numbered.

Spread the words , guys.

Related:
http://technewsnepal.com/tnnmain/2008/02/11/emails-like-this.html

Thank you for reading.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Meroguff, I have a tag for you please pass it on to your fellow bloggers. Thanks.

here is the tag link:
http://jccleofe.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/the-world-tag-linker-chain/
Sameera Nelson said…
Hey nice article here,
And i found some related stuff here too...
Just visit

http://www.pctrends.blogspot.com/

for computer related technology in details..
thanks
waliz said…
ha! now i know...thanks navin...i always wonder who are they and how they got my add...
Navin said…
Hi jccleofe, thanks for tag, i'm tagging you soon.

Hi sameera, thanks for your wonderful link

Waliz, you're always welcome

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