"stock tip" mails, help stopping please

[ShippMA]

Hi,

I couldn't find a more specific forum, so i hope this is ok.

Basically heres the deal. I keep getting these "stock tip" e-mails that i want to stop however the e-mail address that they give to un-subscribe is fake as far as i can make out as whenever i send a message to it it comes back undelivered after 2 days. Heres the facts that i can work out, any help would be much appreciated.

- I use Hotmail.com
- About a month ago these mails started and i always tick the "don't send me stuff" box so i'm not sure how these got my address
- The mails consits of two jpegs and a whole load of text. The first jpeg contains the whole body of the message, the "stock tip" etc.
- The second jpeg contains the very helpful do this to un-subscribe message
- The mail then has a whole load of white text on a white background that is basically random paragraphs stuck together
- The mails come from a different address each time and i get a couple a day and if i send back to the address i get the undelivered response
- The only identifing parts of the e-mail that are the same each time is the second jpeg that contains the e-mail address of nothanks@saharaneast.info and the snail mail address of e-broadcast group, 6 Effute Avenue, Kingston 10 Jamaica, WI
- Google searches on saharaneast have not turned up anything

So that is about it, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any help

Matt

[ZT3000]

Any suggestions??

Sure!

Don't ever click on the "unsubscribe me" link or "return email" EVER, unless you initiated the subscription in the first place.

If your junk email is increasing, start looking for another email address.

[Edit: You could drive down to 6 Effute Avenue, Kingston 10 Jamaica, WI, with a baseball bat, but you'd probably find an empty building/office.]

[ShippMA]

Now thats not the kind of answer i was looking for but hey,

Additionally what the hell are you supposed to do when you start getting this crap, companies "obtain" email addresses by various means and when these come in you want to get rid of them. Always making sure you check the don't send me offers etc button doesn't mean you wont get junk, companies will find you. Anyone who says they have never had unsolicited mail is either a liar or only set up the account a couple of months ago. So when eventually the junk mail idiots do find you to stop it it usually means clicking on some kind of unsubscribe me link so as far as i see it you have two options.

1. don't click the link and live with getting the crap till you change mail address
2. click the link and hope it actually works

Now i like my address and don't want to change, i've had it for 5 years and this is currently the only junk mail that gets through the hotmail auto filters. Yes I can live with 3 unsolicited junk mails a day but should i have to, NO.

So if anyone has a helpful suggestion please feel free to post it

Thanks

Matt

[foxyloxley]

Additionally what the hell are you supposed to do when you start getting this crap

Get an anti-spam app up and running, R/click on the offending mail, then in the window that opens click on the 'this is spam' link...............
next time, the mail will be sent straight to spam bin.

And WHY do we NEVER click on 'unsubscribe' ?

Because it merely informs the ****tards who sent it, that the mail address is a LIVE one !!

[MrLinus]

ShippMA, have you spoken to your ISP about their intentions of putting in SPAM filtering? Many ISPs I know have that. For example, mine has it so that the subject line gets changed to [Bulk]. I can then put a filter on my email client to watch for subject lines that begin with that and send it off to the Trashbin.

[zencoder]

If you don't want to go to the effort to use anitspamware and email filtering software (Mailwasher), then you're next best bet is to cancel your ISP account and take up needle point or something. It's a pain, and there are droves of information written about avoiding it...but once you start getting spam, it is very difficult to make it "stop". You can head it off at the pass (my choice, thus Mailwasher Pro), but once the illegitimate-illegal-offshore-whatever spammers get your address, you're toast.

[ShippMA]

Zencoder - Changing ISP wouldn't help with Hotmail

foxyloxley - i didn't think that you could you use a spam filter with Hotmail, other than the one they provided (which doesn't pick up this message). Also yes i totally agree with you not to click the link if at all possible and i don't until i have exhausted all other options and it is still coming. 90% of junk mail stops after the first one or two i find as like you say they assume its a dead address, however this is one of those 10% that hasn't stopped after more than a month and is really starting to pee me off, which is why i tried the unsubscribe option that they give (which obviously doesn't work)

Ms Mittens - I wasn't aware that you could get hotmail to change it to bulk but again as the filters aren't picking it up then i'm not sure it would be caught.

The other point is what do you filter against for this specific mail.

I want to make this clear, its NOT spam in general that i want to stop as i have that covered, its this one specific message. Everything about the message is different everytime, right down to the mail address. The ONLY bit that is the same is the message about how to stop it, and that is in the form of a jpeg, not text, so at best i could filter out all messages that have a jpeg of that size which would affect legitimate messages.

Thanks for the suggestions guys but unless there is a spam program i can get for hotmail i can't see any of the suggestions working. Also i'm not sure even that would totally fix it as i use about 5 different machines throughout the week to access hotmail depending on where i am and i don't have install permissions on all the machines, (most notably the work ones)

[MrLinus]

Ms Mittens - I wasn't aware that you could get hotmail to change it to bulk but again as the filters aren't picking it up then i'm not sure it would be caught.

Oops. That part I missed. My apologies. That said, it's a little trickier because you're using a web-based email, specifically a free one, and I find they don't have too strong of a spam filter (my work one is amazing at picking up this stuff). I did a little digging around. Some ideas:

http://www.goodbyespam.com/ <-- this would require you to download to a client

http://www.fastmail.fm <--- one of the paid options will allow you to create whitelists (a list of approved persons who can send you emails -- these work great!)

[ShippMA]

Ah yes,

A whitelist, Hotmail does this too so this is a possibility (not that name though). The only problem wit this is when you get a mail about say an order you have placed and obviously the company wouldn't be on the list, saying that though it might be time that i got a second account setup for internet orders and stuff like that.

I'm not keen on the downloading to a client as like i said i use a number of different computers that for some i don't have install rights on but thanks.

I'll investigate this further, thanks

In the mean time any more suggestions would be great

[ghostmachine]

Originally posted here by ShippMA
Ah yes,

A whitelist, Hotmail does this too so this is a possibility (not that name though). The only problem wit this is when you get a mail about say an order you have placed and obviously the company wouldn't be on the list, saying that though it might be time that i got a second account setup for internet orders and stuff like that.

I'm not keen on the downloading to a client as like i said i use a number of different computers that for some i don't have install rights on but thanks.

I'll investigate this further, thanks

In the mean time any more suggestions would be great

i am not a hotmail user but can the hotmail filtering mechanism filter out anything coming from saharaenest.com. ?