E-Mail Address Extractor

Hey!
Does anyone know of a program that will extract all the e-mail addresses from a text file, even if its got loads of text and other stuff in between.

Basically, I want to save an item of junk mail as a text file, then run a program on it to get a list of e-mail addresses I can then use to send one back to every single one of them so that I can advise them not to send me any more junk mail...

The thing is... its got loads of To: From: and Cc: entries
as well as replies and forwards
Therefore, theres quite a few e-mail addresses, too many to extract manually.

Any suggestions?

It may sound weird...

ignore / delete the unwanted SPAM!

Do not respond!


From a spammers point of view.... (I'm not a spammer, never have been, never want to be!)
If you reply / flame them, to either their reply-to address or their real point of origin (read all the headers) it tells them that your email is real and working....


Then your email address will get sold onto hundreds / thousands of 'working' "Email Lists" in no time...
...you've got a tenfold increase on your own intake of Spam!

Delete the emails!
Filter them to /dev/null, whatever!!
Your wasting time trying to reply to these *****ers,
active email address's are their bread and butter.


And another note of caution..

The To: 'line' of a spam email contains a small snapshot of other poor *****ers getting the same unwanted email, look to the headers for the origin and leave the recipients alone.

If possible filter your email before you download it, if the emails are HTML'd then you also run a risk of having a 1x1 transparent image (or any of the on-line content) logging the working email on some temporary or permanent web-server.

If I wanted to see what IP your on, I send you a HTML email with a graphic uniquely referenced on my website, you read it (whilst on-line) and great... my web server log tells me that dialup.sucker.isp.com just fetched my imaginary image,

then I know...
1. Your email is working
2. You read the email
3. Your ip address for a (given period of time)
4. A good guess at your OS (if your not via proxy)

I hope this helps,

J.


PS...
My suspicion is that every single opt-out address is just an invitation to receive more unwanted shite in yer email.
Don't try an opt-address unless your over 95% confident it's legit.

i cant really see that there will be anyway to do this... as the email addresses have nothing disimilar to the text of the message. however, if you were to say post the text on the site and have automatically parse urls then the addresses would come up as mailto: hyperlinks i think lemme try ....

sdfsfdsdf sdf sfd sdf sdfds,dfjhkjha kjhsa dfaksdsafhlsiuildu asldifhasdf as luihdaflisudhflas dfgsgfsdfgsgfsfgs fsagsdfgsdfgsd sdfgsdfgsd dlnicholls@twizted.net kjhsdfks skjhfdsk skjhfdksjd ksjdfhsk skjdfhsk kjsdhskdj skjdfhsk ksjdfhks
djgh;sdjkghs;dfjkgs sdf;gjoshdf;gjksdhfg sdgsgortg santa@northpole.com sudfgsjdf sdfihsgdf sxdfijsdhgf sudyfgsudyfsu dfusdygfusd fsuydgfusfgsudhfg sdufysgdufygsd

hows that ... it works.

Was my mad idea any help?

Yeh, Sorry I should've made it clearer... I'm aware of all that, its not spam as such, just friends sending annoying forwarded mail about love and how good the world is & it annoys me... and i'd remove the To: section from the text file...
I just wanna send an e-mail to everyone its from telling em not to send me any more cos it annoys me... But i guess I'll just delete it like I usually do!

Thanks for your advice, anyway, but i already knew most if it.

Interesting comment about the Opt-Out addresses... I hadn't thought bout that before!

Hey! Thats a good idea - i can write a web page that turns real URLs into a URL, then paste the lot into it... or even FrontPage or Word 2000 would do it

Anyway, Ive decided to just leave it, they are my friends and I guess they dont realise it annoys me - I'm givin them the benefit of the doubt!

oh and you might find this info helpfull

http://www.networksplus.net/kelly/gtmhh3.html

(Yes its the Carolyn Meinel stuff)

OK. Thanks for all your suggestions, and I've decided to let them off this time, and I thought i'd read all that carolyn meinel stuff years ago & i never read that bit!

Still, I know all the stuff its saying, only in more detail, now!

Thanx anyway

Hello Everyone....:)

I had alittle time and decided to write this program...

What it does:
You simply copy and paste the "TO:" text into the textbox.

Example Input:

"Person 1 Name" <Person1@hotmail.com>, "Person 2 Name" <Person2@hotmail.com>, "Person 3 Name" <Person3@hotmail.com>, "Person 4 Name" <Person4@hotmail.com>, "Person 5 Name" <Person5@hotmail.com>, "Person 6 Name" <Person6@hotmail.com>, "Person 7 Name" <Person7@hotmail.com>, "Person 8 Name" <Person8@hotmail.com>, "Person 9 Name" <Person9@hotmail.com>, "Person 10 Name" <Person10@hotmail.com>, "Person 11 Name" <Person11@hotmail.com>, "Person 12 Name" <Person12@hotmail.com>, "Person 13 Name" <Person13@hotmail.com>, "Person 14 Name" <Person14@hotmail.com>, "Person 15 Name" <Person15@hotmail.com>, "Person 16 Name" <Person16@hotmail.com>, "Person 17 Name" <Person17@hotmail.com>, "Person 18 Name" <Person18@hotmail.com>, "Person 19 Name" <Person19@hotmail.com>, "Person 20 Name" <Person20@hotmail.com>

It will then parse out all the names and display only the email address, which can be pasted into your emails "TO:" line:

Example Output:
Person1@hotmail.com, Person2@hotmail.com, Person3@hotmail.com, Person4@hotmail.com, Person5@hotmail.com, Person6@hotmail.com, Person7@hotmail.com, Person8@hotmail.com, Person9@hotmail.com, Person10@hotmail.com, Person11@hotmail.com, Person12@hotmail.com, Person13@hotmail.com, Person14@hotmail.com, Person15@hotmail.com, Person16@hotmail.com, Person17@hotmail.com, Person18@hotmail.com, Person19@hotmail.com, Person20@hotmail.com

The program is a small 24k (6k Zipped) and I will be glad to email it to anyone who would like a copy :)

I will be posting the program and source code on my site later tonight (in the PL Projects Section) for anyone interested.

Rewandythal - I attempted to email it to you, but you do not allow email from AO

Hey thanks for reminding me... I was gojnna enable that e-mail from AntiOnline thing, but I just haven't had time...

I'm gonna enable it now, and my e-mail address is

chronatonburst@hotmail.com

anyway, if it doesn't work by enabling the AO option.

And Thanks!!

Can I have the source code as well?

What prog. language did you use, by the way?

I have sent you the compiled program and the source!

The program is written in VB6! :)

You'll notice when you run the program that you can customize how the information is parsed....

For example Hotmail uses "," (commas) to seperate the person's name and email address and uses "<>" to surround the email. So a typical line might be:

"Someone's Name" <Someone@hotmail.com>, "Another Joe" <Joe@hotmail.com>

But the program can also be configured to parse emails with different setups, for example lets say email address were serperated by ";" (semicolons) and surrounded by "()" (Parenthesis')

"Someone's Name" (Someone@otheremail.com) ; "Another Joe" (Joe@otheremail.com)

Just a little option I decided to throw in there...Anyways have Fun with it, and if you decide to make a cool modification to it, then please send me the source!

Thanks