Overnight, I received an email from someone how came to our site for a most unusual reason ...
"I wonder if you can help me. I have recently started receiving dozens of bizarre emails such as the one below. When I Googled some of the sentences, such as, [82][ac][c5][93]To put the top hat on it, he quickly assembled a committee .... [82][ac][c2][9d] I keep coming up with your blog."
My correspondent went on to ask for my help in getting these emails that she was receiving stopped - erroneously considering that we have some control over them. But that assumption is common enough, so let me share my explanation of what's going on here:
People who send spam don't want it to get stopped by your automated email filters, so they make each of their messages different and unrecognisable by cutting in pieces of text taken at random from other web site with which they have no association at all. So the spam reaches you because it's unique - it has text on it that's been stolen (as it's my copyright and used without my approval) from my site.
I would love to be able to stop these people using my text, but that's pretty impractical ... the best I can do is to answer occasional emails that I get like this and help you understand what is happening. Once your email address is on the list of such people, I fear you'll need to get rid of it with improved filters (ask your ISP if you need help) as requests to delete your name will be pretty ineffective.
(written 2007-03-22)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G909 - Well House Consultants - Spam, Spamming and Spammers [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
[268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
[276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
[338] OO techniques are hard to teach - (2005-06-06)
[347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
[417] Telephone Preference Service - we're registered - (2005-08-17)
[495] More spam - a success story - (2005-11-13)
[872] Email metrics - (2006-09-20)
[1037] Impact Engineering and Backscatter - (2007-01-16)
[1523] Ive just received an email from myself. Should I be worried? - (2008-01-29)
[1532] Comment spam blocked. Please comment via Forums - (2008-02-05)
[1763] Co-operating to save, yet we dont - (2008-08-21)
[1817] Marc Schneider is still having email trouble - (2008-09-30)
[1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
[2019] Baby Caleb and Fortune City in your web logs? - (2009-01-31)
[2177] Preventing forum spam - checks at sign up - (2009-05-12)
[2179] Offers that I can refuse - (2009-05-12)
[2276] Who is Marc Schneider of Multilingual Search Engine Optimization Inc - (2009-07-10)
[2398] Websitemediasolution and a goldfish called Carl Johnson - (2009-09-06)
[2697] Email metrics and filtering - (2010-03-28)
[2884] Hotlinked images onto adult material sites - (2010-07-23)
[3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
[3166] Well house is strong - confirmed? - (2011-02-11)
[3190] What do the following web sites have in common? - (2011-03-03)
[3316] Twitter Phishing Trips ... and a great new alert service - (2011-06-04)
[3352] World Trade Register - Certainly NOT worth 2985 Euros. - (2011-07-09)
[3506] Cold call contacts - preference services and turning off spam sales approaches - (2011-11-03)
[3661] Keeping forum and blog comments clean - (2012-03-19)
[3910] Identifying your real customers and keeping them well informed fast - (2012-11-02)
[3912] Sand to Arabia, Coals to Newcastle or Woodburners to Russia - (2012-11-04)
[3946] Moving from a warning system to a control system - PHP, forum spammers - (2012-12-07)
[4135] Introducing your product to Well House Consultants - single, personally tuned email please - (2013-07-08)
[4315] Welcoming genuine forum posters quickly - but turning away off topic advertisers - (2014-11-16)
[4520] No cold sales calls please - but delighted to hear from others! - (2015-09-29)
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