Enough with the porn bombs already!

March 20, 2002 7:10 PM

Enough with the porn bombs already! Isn't there anything we victims can do about this cowardly spamming tactic undertaken by so-called fellow users? I'm thinking of changing and then removing my e-mail address altogether, as it's not worth the trouble.
posted by MiguelCardoso to MetaFilter-Related at 7:10 PM (60 comments total)

Miguel, do you have any actual proof that another MeFi member is involved? If not, how's that tin foil hat working for ya?
posted by machaus at 7:18 PM on March 20, 2002

Machaus: well rodii has stopped showing his e-mail address and both dong_resin and Wulfgar!, among others I can't remember, have complained as well. It's just not worth it - getting one genuine e-mail a day plus thirty porn and scam sites.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:22 PM on March 20, 2002

A lot of members seem to have the same problem, machaus. So even if Miguel isn't experiencing this problem, other users are.

I dont think there's any way to stop it, besides making a seperate Mefi email address, and changing it periodically.
posted by Doug at 7:23 PM on March 20, 2002

OK then, just wanted to get some facts. Off to go switch to a mac.com address.
posted by machaus at 7:32 PM on March 20, 2002

If I could post my inbox for the last two weeks - that's when it started - I would. It's atrocious. I pay for my e-mail account but imagine if I had a limit. Besides, it makes it really difficult to notice real messages as there are so many porn sites with decent-sounding titles. In the last fortnight, there have been mostly "Indian", "teen" and "wives" spam.

My hope is we can change our address and hope whoever's doing it will desist - what possible purpose can this achieve? OK, it was funny. Ha ha. But what could you possibly hope to achieve?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:35 PM on March 20, 2002

For the record, I haven't gotten any porn spam. I just decided to up my privacy level for a while as a precaution. I was concerned when Wulfgar told his story. But I agree, this is a problem. I'll be back as soon as I can set up a proxy service. Any recommendations? (Miguel, why are you checking my email, pardner?)
posted by rodii at 8:07 PM on March 20, 2002

If you're really having that much trouble with spam, you might want to give these guys a try. They let you make any number of disposable email addresses that all get forwarded to your real address. If any of them start getting spam, you just change the address, plus you have definite proof of where your address was compromised. (Disclaimer: I'm not a customer, and know nothing about them other than that they exist.)
posted by aaron at 8:47 PM on March 20, 2002

Folks, I wish I had a solution, but I don't. I just want to clarify that this stuff is damned dangerous if you don't have a sheltered email account. I had to go to my boss this Monday and explain what had happened. It all came out pretty cool, as he has received gratuitous spam before, and I have the tech guys on the university side helping me out. But this could have been pretty ugly.

Miguel, you definately have my sympathy. Clearing this stuff up is harder than clearing an STD.

rodii, trust me when I say, most people round these parts think you're too cool to spam slam you. Many of the rest of us just aren't as established or liked. I'm glad you've taken precautions, because I think this is gonna get worse, well before it gets better. And thank you, again, Matt, for your recent changes.
posted by Wulfgar! at 8:48 PM on March 20, 2002

Well, I don't really find myself very ire-provoking, and I have gotten tons of pr0n spam, beginning about a week and a half ago. Luckily I changed my MeFi email address to a junky hotmail account, but still, it's evil if it's deliberate. And it's fucking cowardly.
posted by evanizer at 9:16 PM on March 20, 2002

here's a good solution:

use an email client that has filters.
posted by chrisroberts at 9:24 PM on March 20, 2002

Hehe...I've certainly said my share of controversial comments here, and have paid for it in the process. The only problem with my hotmail address right now is that the filter is full. Luckily, I am somewhat patient with this e-mail address because I have received some good messages. (By good I mean death threats and mafia-style warnings)

Miguel, hehe, I can only agree and have sympathy for you here, which I believe might be a first.
posted by BlueTrain at 9:47 PM on March 20, 2002

here's a good solution:
use an email client that has filters.

That's actually not much of a solution at all. I use Eudora and have a buttload of filters in operation, incliding one that filters some porn spam I've been getting every single day for a year directly into the trash. I never see it. Nevertheless, it passes through my employer's mail servers, and if for some reason that fact would come to light, I would have to explain what it was doing there (and this is unpleasant stuff, not something semi-sanitized like Playboy). I want my email filtered--except with people I trust--*before* it gets anywhere near my job.

Wulfgar: I'm a little taken aback by your comment, but thanks.
posted by rodii at 10:19 PM on March 20, 2002

Miguel, the news here in the States the past few days says that the FBI has just made a large number of arrests involving these criminal spammers.
posted by sheauga at 10:23 PM on March 20, 2002

Well, if you have the opportunity to use any mail program you want, (as opposed to a work-dictated one), then you might want to give The Bat! a try. It has great filters and features - you can choose to check your email at the server level and delete it BEFORE you download it.

Another possible solution is a mail checking program, like SimpleCheck. It's a small program that sits in your Sys Tray and checks periodically for email. It can be used to filter, delete or preview messages. There is even a function to start your email program.

Neither suggestion stops the spam, but provides a few ways to potentially lower the annoyance factor.

No way affiliated with the companies that produce the products; I just use them myself!

posted by cyniczny at 11:10 PM on March 20, 2002

I've been using Mailshell for over a year now (but only just switched my profile here to a mailshell address, after some recent pornbombing reports). It's been flawless, and is still free, surprisingly.

Highly recommended.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:38 AM on March 21, 2002

Just had a look at mailshell, but it seems that they have implemented a $3 per month charge. I assume they have left existing members on the service without charging (......for now?).

Anyway, if anybody knows of any other good services that are still free I would love to know (other than mailexpire which is quite good, but doesn't integrate different accounts and individual email addresses can only stay active for 3 months).
posted by urban greeting at 1:42 AM on March 21, 2002

I'd just like to make it clear that I wasn't complaining.
Tossing porn at me because you're angry is like tossing boy scouts a bishop because you're angry.
posted by dong_resin at 1:56 AM on March 21, 2002

Greasy boy scouts. At a bishop.

Well, either one works, really.
posted by dong_resin at 2:01 AM on March 21, 2002

Most of the porn sites state that I "signed up" or somehow indicated I was interested. Most of them are so outrageous they could be construed as humorous - a sure MetaFilter give-away?

(Miguel, why are you checking my email, pardner?)

I wanted to write to you! I have your address somewhere but you know how it is. ;)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 3:24 AM on March 21, 2002

This example illustrates one very good reason why no one should use their work email address for anything but work-related activities, and even for some of those, you should probably use a temporary address as well.

C'mon, I thought MeFier's were supposed to be savvy about this kind of stuff.

posted by mischief at 4:43 AM on March 21, 2002

Most of the porn sites state that I "signed up" or somehow indicated I was interested.

Are you sure that someone manually signed you up? I get porn spam all the time that claims I'm a subscriber, usually to addresses that appear to have been harvested from a Web page I published. This may just be a case of mail-harvesting robots finding you better because MetaFilter and your MetaFilter profile page are relatively prominent in search engines.

One thing I do to make it more difficult is to keep my e-mail address off the profile page and link to a page on my Web site where I can be sent mail. The page doesn't contain my e-mail address as text, so it can't be harvested by a bot.

An advantage to doing this is that when I got anonymous hate mail as a result of posting a link on MetaFilter, I could look in my logs to see the IP address of the person who visited my profile page right before I got the mail.
posted by rcade at 5:17 AM on March 21, 2002

Rcade: Thanks. The thing is that I only started my blog at the end of November and my address isn't on it. The only place I posted it was on MetaFilter and, apart from a little spam, it's never brought me any problems until now.

My account with KPNQuest is expensive and private. I've had it for seven years. About two weeks ago I started getting about twenty to thirty porn mails a day. So someone has put my address forward. Funnily enough, apart from one caustic but friendly letter from a fellow member, I never get hate mail. To be honest, I'm so uncontroversial and staid I wonder what I said that could have annoyed even the most sensitive person.

Be that as it may, I'm changing my address and will be e-mailing Matt and my friends on MetaFilter as I can't stand it anymore. I can't pick out genuine messages; it's disheartening to open one's inbox and see so much rubbish and I can't be bothered to waste time deleting them all either. About 75% are repeats, as well!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:33 AM on March 21, 2002

Miguel raises a valid point here, which is this : Which one of you retards pornspamed Miguel? Even when he's pissed he's kind of copacetic, not that I can remember seeing him pissed (pissed angry I mean, not pissed drunk).

Do you also throw darts at pandas? What the hell's wrong with you?
posted by dong_resin at 6:09 AM on March 21, 2002

About two weeks ago I started getting about twenty to thirty porn mails a day

Hmm. I think it was Schweppes_girl.
posted by iconomy at 6:16 AM on March 21, 2002

As a domain holder, I have the ability to create different aliases for the same email account, so I can see where stuff comes from. I've been lucky so far, I guess. No porn bombs from Metafilter, that I can tell. I do get lots of spam (200 messages a day, give or take), porn included, but it doesn't seem to be due to Mefi.
posted by crunchland at 6:47 AM on March 21, 2002

mefi member nic wolff offers what looks to be a fantastic spam-proofing solution, so long as you have access to your mailserver. i've been meaning to set this up for some time but haven't yet, so i can't confirm that it works. but mr. wolff claims that it's nearly perfect. and i believe him.
posted by mlang at 6:56 AM on March 21, 2002

Just a question: maybe I'm naive, but I'm amazed to hear that some employers actually get upset about their employees getting spam. Don't they know what spam is? And if they do, how can they possibly consider blaming the employee for it? I've worked for an Internet company for six years, and I've *always* received spam, since I first got an email account. I can't imagine how an employer could be so clueless as to think that because something shows up in your inbox with your email address on it and says you "subscribed" that it has anything at all to do with you. It's no different than getting Publishers Clearinghouse junk mail (except it promises hotteensexXXX and doesn't have Ed McMahon).
posted by biscotti at 8:16 AM on March 21, 2002

Hmm. I think it was Schweppes_girl.

Iconomy: hmmm, you're uncommonly knowledgeable for a newbie. So just watch it. Leave my beloved icon alone! Are you riviera? Do you back-comb your hair? Is wrestling fixed? Ok, I give up - it was you, wasn't it? :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:35 AM on March 21, 2002

I'm amazed to hear that some employers actually get upset about their employees getting spam. Don't they know what spam is? And if they do, how can they possibly consider blaming the employee for it?

This is exactly what the IS department of my company is currently doing. They recently made some totally outrageous claim that 30% of all incoming traffic to our company was porn. IMO, the only way that they could have come up with that figure is by counting unsolicited e-mail. Basically, they're doing this in order to justify some incredibly stupid proxy filtering software that they installed a few months ago without telling anyone.

Fortunately, our engineering department is standing up and calling bullshit on them for this.


posted by MrBaliHai at 9:00 AM on March 21, 2002

Biscotti: A company I worked for did not have public e-mail addresses. They were for company communication, ie: the only way for you to get mail of any kind from the outside world was for you to give your address out, barring some ass you worked with doing it for you(not really likely, assuming professionalism in the world), or one of your business contacts doing it(again not all that likely).
Yeah, some spammers just blanket name combinations, but if you're the only person known to be receiving messages, that's a little telling, no?
posted by Su at 9:00 AM on March 21, 2002

Miguel,

I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.

No wait...what I really meant to say was, I have always admired the way you work a bold tag ;)

No, of course wrestling isn't fixed...damn you, why must you be so jaded and cynical? And I am a newbie in posting alone - I've been reading MetaFilter for over 2 years now, and still somewhat fondly recall your first flowery and timid post, and how someone wryly called you the Don Juan DeMarco of Metafilter. I just had nothing to say until last week. Hard to believe, isn't it?

No I am not Riviera.

No I did not spam-porn you. Or porn-spam you.

No I don't back-comb my hair. Or maybe I do. What is back-combing?
posted by iconomy at 9:30 AM on March 21, 2002

Su: I don't know how telling it is. I changed email addresses a while ago and the *first* piece of mail I got at the new address was pornspam, before I'd even given the address to anyone. I get spam addressed to my online name and all possible combinations thereof (like buckshot, maybe one will be a hit). I mean, it does seem odd if only one person in a company gets it, but even then, how is there any evidence that the reason the employee is getting pornspam is because of some direct action on their part? It just seems loopy to me, since I don't randomly give out my email address, I use a hotmail account for most non-work purposes and yet I get tons of pornspam at my work email address, so if it happens to me, surely it happens to other people. It's pretty scary that something whose causality is so hard to determine (and that's likely random, anyway) could have such severe repercussions.
posted by biscotti at 9:36 AM on March 21, 2002

I use Eudora and have a buttload of filters in operation

the question is what kind of filters are you using? are you matching words and phrases or are you matching regular expressions? i find that matching a regex works best and i have quite a few filters that i use but it results in only one or maybe two spams a day getting through. then i look at why they got through and build a regex that will catch them too. you aren't going to get around spam. no matter how careful you are with the disclosure of your email address, it will still find it's way out. unless you know that none of the people you know use outlook. or that none of them will send you some stupid chain letter that is cc'd to a thousand other people because they think it's cute.
posted by chrisroberts at 9:53 AM on March 21, 2002

Iconomy: Ok, you seem legit. So if you don't know what back-combing is I have it on the authority of the MeFi veterans to let you in to our little secret, as practised by jonmc and me. Well, ever since our mid-life crises started, anyway.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 10:01 AM on March 21, 2002

I'd have to second the recommendation for The Bat! as a spam-killing, highly configurable and filterable mail client.
posted by websavvy at 10:08 AM on March 21, 2002

mefi member nic wolff offers what looks to be a fantastic spam-proofing solution, so long as you have access to your mailserver.

Sadly, almost nobody does any more. So-called "progress" at work. I'm not even allowed to run my own mail server over my cable modem. I HAVE to use their own servers, which are so unreliable, and nonspamproofed, that they're the laughingstocks of the industry.
posted by aaron at 12:01 PM on March 21, 2002

i work at an isp and we recomend that our windows users give mailwasher a try. basically it's a mail pre-checker, but it's quite handy and allows such things as passing the mail back as a "bounced" message. very keen.

hope you get rid of those pesky spammers miguel.
posted by boogah at 1:16 PM on March 21, 2002

the question is what kind of filters are you using? are you matching words and phrases or are you matching regular expressions?

Huh? My filters do the job fine, in terms of putting messages where I want them once they've made it to my local machine. They do nothing about the messages getting to my mail server in the first place, which is what I'm concerned about. And, like Aaron said, I can't do anything to affect what my mail server accepts and rejects. At work it's administered by trained chimps clueless undergrads. At home, well, feh, SBC hell. I can't even choose which SMTP server I use. Either way I'm powerless to exclude spam at the mail server.
posted by rodii at 3:45 PM on March 21, 2002

At home, well, feh, SBC hell. I can't even choose which SMTP server I use. Either way I'm powerless to exclude spam at the mail server.

Okay, I'm completely ignorant on this kind of stuff. But it seems to me that if you had a permanent internet connection and could get somebody to provide you with an MX entry on their email server (and a backup MX entry with some backup space in case your connection or computer went down for a while), then you could set up your own email server at home using a dynamic IP redirector (there are plenty of clients that will update the free services like cjb.net ).

Three questions then remain. One: Would this actually work, or am I just completely ignorant of this stuff? Two: Is anybody out there providing free or very cheap MX entries like the ones I described. Three: Could you get your email (which, I presume, would have to be sent directly through your dynamic email address - ie, gd779.cjb.net rather than gd779.com) to look like it was sent from your domain?
posted by gd779 at 4:30 PM on March 21, 2002

Oh, and this assumes you have access to and could load Linux onto a cheap 486 machine.
posted by gd779 at 4:33 PM on March 21, 2002

[1] Big Hair first, *then* corset.

Let me make sure I have this straight, Miguel - first you and jonmc do your hair big, and then you put on corsets? Got it!


So........any pics of that ?
posted by iconomy at 4:35 PM on March 21, 2002

Ike: Evanizer bought the exclusive, sorry. :-)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:15 PM on March 21, 2002

Let me make sure I have this straight, Miguel - first you and jonmc do your hair big, and then you put on corsets? Got it!

Ye Gods!

I had somewhat big hair back in my headbanger days, but I'm so damn skinny(6' 1", 135) if I put on a corset I'd probably disappear.
posted by jonmc at 5:23 PM on March 21, 2002

I think you'd look fetching in this little number ;)
posted by iconomy at 5:45 PM on March 21, 2002

only if you throw in garters and fishnets. ;)
posted by jonmc at 5:49 PM on March 21, 2002

That's Kevin Rowlands from Dexy's Midnight Runners, right?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:55 PM on March 21, 2002

I mean is it any feckin' wonder I get porn-spammed if this is the way I behave on my own threads?
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:04 PM on March 21, 2002

what makes you think the porn is from metafilter? I get porn spam all the time, and lately a lot of it says "this is the result of your feedback form".

is that what you're talking about?

because *everyone I know is getting that spam, people with accounts here, and people without. it's just the newest wrinkle in spam as far as I can tell.
posted by rebeccablood at 7:00 PM on March 21, 2002

Well, if that's the case, I feel a bit like this guy...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:35 PM on March 21, 2002

well, the last one of those I got came to my email address, my email address with the words REMOVETHISBLOCK in it (which I recently added to my address on my website) and three other webloggers. in other words, I sincerely doubt it came from here. I never even thought that it might be other than regular old spam.
posted by rebeccablood at 7:53 PM on March 21, 2002

rebeccablood, the exchange server where I work is actually very well maintained. I never received any spam mail, unless I deliberately signed up for some such nonsense, which I never did. In the middle of a heated discussion on Metafilter, I'm suddenly receiving subscription notices and pictures of asian porn queens, all addressed directly to my exchange email account. Several subscription notices right after each other, all escalating into a flood of tripe. Sorry, but I'm damn sure that this stuff, (at least in my case) resulted from deliberate action by someone here. What I didn't consider, but Matt did, is that it might have been a visitor, instead of a regular. However, consider the frequency with which its happening now. I think somebody here has a new toy, and a will to play with it.
posted by Wulfgar! at 8:43 PM on March 21, 2002

well, that sounds reasonable. keep in mind, also, that once you get onto spam lists you're there forever.

spamcop has a new mail filtering service available.

also, please call me rebecca. or rcb. if I'd known I could have spaces in my username I would have.
posted by rebeccablood at 9:29 PM on March 21, 2002

I'm in Wulfgar's boat as well. Three pornspam free years with my hotmail account abruptly ended when I made some dopey remarks about warbloggers.
It was mixed in with various other angry missives, so I'd say it's pretty clearly a retaliatory tactic for some people here.

I did get one for amputee porn, so at least there was a wee bit of effort from whatever twelve year old I've annoyed.
posted by dong_resin at 6:00 AM on March 22, 2002

okay, well that could be the case, I suppose, I certainly have come in for my share of attacks here as a result of my political beliefs.

but the email I just cited was clearly scraped from webpages.

also, I've received those "this is the result of your feedback form" emails for a while now, and some of them are not porn, though most of them are. I was thinking it was just a new template that someone was selling to others (not MLM!)

and there's this: if you wanted to put someone on a pornspamming list, just where would you go to do it? I'm just thinking this through.


posted by rebeccablood at 12:47 PM on March 22, 2002

porn4free for a start. No, I'm not going to give the URL, but anybody who wants can probably find it easy enough. I feel like I'm aiding and abbetting as it is. Then again, probably not, 'cause whomever gonna' do this kind of stuff already knows anything I could teach them.
posted by Wulfgar! at 1:11 PM on March 22, 2002

I don't see that it'd take anything more exotic than simply visiting porn sites that promise you free inbox-exclusive content if you give them an email address.
Pretty much all of them.
posted by dong_resin at 1:30 PM on March 22, 2002

well.

maybe that's how it started then, though no one has had the balls to send me personal email stating their disagreement with my political positions.

I just filter it out.
posted by rebeccablood at 1:58 PM on March 22, 2002

You know, that's kind of the paradox for me. At the same time I was receiving porn-in-a-can, I was getting angry emails from some users here. Many of them thought I had some kind of angst about dirty words, a couple wrote in plain defense of rodii considering something I had said, and some were just expressing that they didn't like me, something I've always found funny on the anonymous Internet. The truth is, I respect (to some degree) the people who mailed me.

If (and I'm convinced there is) an anonymous spammer here, then they're not really expressing displeasure as much as trolling, just as much as privatepartswingermcgroin was. Sadly, they were successful, in that we now have a thread dedicated to their efforts. That's not a complaint, Miguel. This stuff needed to come out in the open, and though they won't work for my exchange account, many of these suggestions are very useful.

My best friend, who runs a web-journal visited by many folks, has now been thinking about how to protect his visiters from spam-bots. I'm hoping this could be a wakeup call for many of us. I know it has been for me.
posted by Wulfgar! at 2:21 PM on March 22, 2002

The funny thing is, I don't even remember what we were arguing about anymore, Wulfgar.
posted by rodii at 7:07 PM on March 22, 2002

boogah: thanks for the mailwasher tip!
posted by pmurray63 at 3:16 PM on March 23, 2002