Here's a great example of a wonderful spam filter, provided by Google.
Floyd Perry alerted us to an email he "allegedly" got from Calvin Sneed at douglassriverview@gmail.com today (Monday, 4/5/10).
With a return address of douglassriverview@gmail.com, the message directed the receiver to click on a link, that unknowingly sent them to a Canadian drug site, to buy Cialis and Viagra.
Floyd wanted to know if we had indeed sent the email, which we had not. It was then, I checked the Douglass website mailbox on Google.
There, I found lots of "failure to deliver notices" on emails returned as undeliverable, like this one:
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.2.0 1rLR1e00E4L1cqR01rLRCZ Message identified as SPAM
Basically, our name was hijacked and attempts were made to send out fraudulent emails to everybody in our address book. But the reason there were so many email FAILURES, is, there was a bug inside the email to be sent out, that Google recognized as spam, and refused to deliver the message to the recipients (most of you all). Hooray for Google!
But here's how you'll know an email is from your Douglass Alumni Association. In the header line, it ALWAYS says "New Items (Articles, Stories, etc) or News From your Douglass Alumni Association," or "on your Douglass Website." Again, the subject line will ALWAYS say that. If you see anything else, DO NOT OPEN IT.. just delete it.
None of us really knows how computer technology works, but sometimes, it works in our favor, and these buzzards will stop at nothing to take over somebody else's work.
Hopefully, none of you received the fraudulent email. If you did and you recognize it as what we described above, just delete it.
BUT DO NOT MARK IT AS SPAM. If you do, it will consider ANYTHING you get from douglassriverview@gmail as spam (even legitimate emails from me), and your spam blocker won't let the legitimate ones through. Again, just delete it, if it doesn't say "News From Your Douglass Alumni Association" in the header or subject line. Eventually, the spammer will get enough of those "failure to deliver" messages that they will give up, and move on to the next unsuspecting victim.
Thanks, Floyd for tipping us off to this fraud.
