STOP SENDING THIS GARBAGE TO MY EMAIL

I just got an email from Gloria Minnick a few moments ago. Let me quote:

STOP SENDING THIS GARBAGE TO MY EMAIL

Thanks Gloria. Good to hear from you.

Gloria, and thousands of others have been receiving emails touting small stocks, sent as if they were coming from my site. Here’s the email she received. Actually, the email was an image, not a ‘real’ text message. Images can’t easily be read by computers, so they better evade spam filters which might be looking for keywords in the mail.

Gloria’s mail came from Margaret Moore at cul@geofffox.com. There is no Margaret Moore here nor is there a legitimate mailbox with that address.

Hi Gloria,

My name is Geoff Fox and I own geofffox.com. Unfortunately, like you, I am a victim here.

In order to pass through spam filters, these creeps have become incredibly crafty! They take real domain names, like mine, and throw in made up ‘real names’ and email addresses to make their message seem more real. And, there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing!

In fact, their message is an image – not text! Try and select letters with your mouse. You can’t. It’s all to fool the filters.

Imagine someone running all over the world saying they were Gloria – and then doing stuff like this! That’s what’s happening to me. In the case of these particular emails, where they are trying to pump up a stock, there is no trail I can find. I suspect the company touted is also an innocent bystander (though I can’t be sure).

I get dozens of (mostly) automated bouncebacks every day. I am hoping, after a while, they’ll pick on someone else. They have done that in the past.

All the best,

Geoff Fox

Hamden, CT

In the past I’ve written about changing email protocols to make email more secure. If our society’s deepest secrets will travel the Internet, and they will, we’ve got to make the Internet a whole lot safer – and soon.

2 thoughts on “STOP SENDING THIS GARBAGE TO MY EMAIL”

  1. Geoff,

    I notice you don’t have an SPF record for your domain. A good number of the popular mail services are using SPF records now to bounce mails or at least flag them as spam.

    Check out (from microsoft of all people)

    http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

    to have one created. I’m sure your DNS hosting provider will be glad to include the record on the DNS server (it’s quite simple)

    And if they arent willing to support SPF – maybe a little leaning on them will get them to do so.

  2. You could also use the Open SPF wizard:

    http://openspf.org/wizard.html

    When my family website was the “sender” of a bunch of spam about a year ago, I noticed a spike in traffic to the home page – probably people going there to get off the list. I added a message about the spam and how it wasn’t us sending it, and the angry letters stopped after that.

    While I’m not sure if I believe the SPF records will make a difference, I’m doing it anyway – a few seconds work for the possible few hours free time is a good price to pay.

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