Where to send spam-from-sonic headers?

[Guest]

I have to say that for the last 3 months or so, I have been bombarded with spam. Previously I would get about two per day, but now it is about 20 per day.

The usual suspects are:
Open enrollment scams (well, all the below are scams)
Claim your gift card
A predator has moved into your neighbor
Dr Oz...
Credit score changes
Solar Panel offer
Undeliverable package...

And surprisingly, very few penis-related or Nigerian spam.

Can something be done about this?
johnv

[linelle]

This is pretty closely describes what I'm seeing.

[tensigh]

I have to say that for the last 3 months or so, I have been bombarded with spam. Previously I would get about two per day, but now it is about 20 per day.

....
Can something be done about this?
johnv

Hearing this actually makes me feel vindicated. I've been complaining about it a lot and the typical response has been "check your SA settings", "don't sign up on mailing lists", "maybe you got hacked with malware", etc. I'm willing to take some steps but a lot of these turn the blame towards me as though there's nothing that Sonic needs to check or do.

Some of the problem was my fault (I had a mail account that I hadn't been monitoring, mostly because Sonic wouldn't let me delete it). But part of it is that SpamAssassin is getting fooled. I have really tight settings for SA plus I've set a lot of rules from their default of .01 to 1.2 or something to prevent spam, but I have yet to get any real, solid, helpful advice.

What I'd like Sonic to do is publish something like this: "We know many customers are getting more spam than before. These are our recommended settings for fixing spam. Settings these may result in some false positives, but they should help reduce spam in your inbox" and then make some suggestions. But for the most part the advice I've received just hasn't been very helpful.

I love Sonic, but they have to remember that their service is a premium. We could get Internet service from some other place even if their customer support sucks. We pay extra for Sonic for better service. But if we get worse service AND pay more, the value of Sonic as a service provider gets diminished.

[liz]

I agree it would be great if Sonic would talk about the solutions being worked on. I did forward an untrapped spam message to abuse, it generated an unnecessary support ticket number, not sure what's up.

I do know the reason my account has seen a huge garbage increase is due to a recent data breach somewhere else. Don't blame Sonic when Target, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, etc. can't secure their own networks. Those companies leaked tens of millions of verified email addresses to criminals now using every trick in the book to spam, phish, and crack there way to success. I would not be surprised if the ratio of legitimate inbound mail is under 10% for many users.

Here are custom SA scores keeping my Inbox clean enough right now, graymail threshold 3.5:
DCC_CHECK 4.1
DCC_REPUT_70_89 4.1
ADMAIL 4.01
LOTS_OF_MONEY 4.001
DCC_REPUT_95_98 3.7
DCC_REPUT_90_94 3.4
SONIC_ALERT_IN_SUB 3.1
HTML_MESSAGE 3.001
SONIC_DEAR_ME1 3
RP_MATCHES_RCVD 2
SONIC_BACKGROUND_CHECK17 2

The rule search box in member tools helps a lot. Thanks to whoever did that.

[tensigh]

I don't necessarily blame Sonic - I just don't want Sonic blaming me!

For the record, I haven't registered my email at any of the sites you listed above and I think they get attacked more for credit card numbers then for spams, but I digress. But Sonic should get some of the blame. Both myself, my parents and a number of people this year got their passwords hacked, which a Sonic employee claimed was the fault of, you guessed it, our computers being infected with malware.

My main point is that Sonic costs more because of the expert engineers working there and the better customer support. When it comes to spam, both of those items are seemingly beginning to slip. Not a lot, but to some degree.

[liz]

Oh, so you're the one with the malware. If you know how to read email headers, you can see the sniffer filter thingy is not catching everything. I don't know when that was implemented, maybe in September when you first commented. I didn't start paying attention until recently, so must be coincidence.

I think your system being infected with malware explains the increase in my spam received, because internal (verified) messages get assigned negative scores by default. That's why I had to up the few I listed. Anyway, I hope you and friends, family have recovered. I'm feeling the urge to go change my login password now. Good luck.

[liz]

Over the weekend I've seen a big drop in volume. Support said

Modifying that rule may result in more false positives. If you happen to see a trend in the subjects or addresses regarding this particular message it may be better to blacklist a subject keyword or the email address.

so I reset my custom SA rules to default and filter by Subject.
I'll save my feedback for the automated email form, if they are still sent.

[Guest]

See this topic:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2377

I started getting a bunch of spam in just one account, starting a few months ago. Stumbled upon the above discussion tonight. Some of you are getting the same spam, which full headers reveal comes from .link, .mobi, and .me domains. Blacklist these (e.g. *@*.mobi) in spam assassin. I just did. Others say this does the trick.