BlueFrog: New Ammunition In Your Spam-War Arsenal

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Hey guys,

????[/tab]I came to know of this service quite sometime back through one of the Ad Banners at Asta. I've been using it for over 1.5 months now. It's a new service intriduced by BlueSecurity.Com. You simply download this tiny client which sits in your System Tray and helps you fight spam - but with a difference.

 

????Rather than being just another one of those anti-spam tools, this one actually scans all your spam mails and then lists the sender domain/services in their own database. Then they approach those particular spam vendors and keep bugging them till they are forced to remove your address from their database.

 

????If you're using an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird, the spam reports are sent directly to the BlueFrog database. In case you use only Web-mail, BlueFrog supports Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. In both IE and Firefox it installs a small toolbar that comes up ONLY when you've logged into your email account. When you click on the REPORT SPAM button in that toolbar, it automatically scans your SPAM folder and sends those mails to their own database for further pursual and action. For fun's sake, they even give you a Weekly Ranking according to the number of spam reports you sent in.

 

????I can't say for sure how effective this service is - but surely in my mail Gmail account - they managed to get me unsubscribed from quite a few spam services and as a result I havent received a single spam in that for well over 2 weeks. It allows you to add in as many email accounts as you want - and protects them all. Many of the spam sites work on the Opt-Out principle - but it's a tiresome job to go to each site and opt yourself out. BlueFrog does just that job for you - in a single button click.

 

Here's a screenshot of BlueFrog in action on my Gmail account:

 

BlueFrog can be downloaded from: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

????Funny enough - today in my Microscopic.Earthling_AT_Gmail account I received this threatening mail from one of the spammers. Really nasty threat that they're going to SPAM my inbox out of existence if I didn't unsubscribe from BlueFrog. So it seems their service has really got the spammers bugged - BIG TIME. When I checked out the BlueFrog community, I found out a lot of members have received similar mails and the spammers seem to have got real desperate now to try something like this.

Here's a copy of the mail:

Hey,

 

You are recieving this email because you are a member of BlueSecurity (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/).

 

You signed up because you were expecting to recieve a lesser amount of spam, unfortunately, due to the tactics used by BlueSecurity, you will end up recieving this message, or other nonsensical spams 20-40 times more than you would normally.

 

How do you make it stop?

 

Simple, in 48 hours, and every 48 hours thereafter, we will run our current list of BlueSecurity subscribers through BlueSecurity's database, if you arent there.. you wont get this again.

 

We have devised a method to retrieve your address from their database, so by signing up and remaining a BlueSecurity user not only are you opening yourself up for this, you are also potentially verifying your email address through them to even more spammers, and will end up getting up even more spam as an end-result.

 

By signing up for bluesecurity, you are doing the exact opposite of what you want, so delete your account, and you will stop recieving this.

 

Why are we doing this?

 

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails.

 

 

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails, but do not believe for one second that we will stop this tirade of emails if you choose to stay with BlueSecurity.

Just remember one thing when you read this, we didnt do this to you, BlueSecurity did.

 

If BlueSecurity decides to play fair, we will do the same.

 

Just remove yourself from BlueSecurity, and make it easier on you.

 

Dionne Deal

 

Let her have one!The eye of the outside world, which had slipped away from the Dragon Lady these last few years, had now returned with a vengeance.Paul rolled backward quickly, hoping he had been in time.The gotta, as in: "I know I should be starting supper now — hell be mad if its TV dinners again — but I gotta see how this ends..

 

[tab]Anyway - the point is, I think you guys should give this service a try. It might be well worth it. At least my mail account entirely stopped getting spams.

[iGuest 3]

Nice program, let me try it out. One thing I would ask is that wont it slow down my PCs boot time cause you said that it runs on system tray and most programs wchich run on the system tray run at start-up, the problem with my PC is that it has 128MB ram with P4 1.7GHz processor with Windows XP running on it. This makes the PC run really slow.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

YIKESS - just 128MB ?? Then you shouldn't keep it running. XP itself takes up most of your RAM leaving very little to other applications and thus increasing disk-paging hundredfolds. No wonder you system's slow. You can alwyas turn it on when you're reading mail - but that kinda spoils the fun

[HellFire121 0]

Hmm I might try this..Wonder if it works with Opera's integrated email client (That's what I use mainly)Sounds pretty good at defeating spam though-HellFire

[iGuest 3]

YIKESS - just 128MB ??

Ok, I took your advice and guess what I got a new 2GB ram (actually 2x1GB). I tried that anti-spam software you mentioned but it did not seem very useful to as I use GMail and GMail's anti-spam filter seems to work quite fine.
But sure enough GMail's filter does not filter everything, this nice anti-spam filter filtered some of the mails I received though. The problem with such programs is that they are not effective from the beggining, I mean you need to train these programs by adding more filter settings.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Ok, I took your advice and guess what I got a new 2GB ram (actually 2x1GB). I tried that anti-spam software you mentioned but it did not seem very useful to as I use GMail and GMail's anti-spam filter seems to work quite fine.
But sure enough GMail's filter does not filter everything, this nice anti-spam filter filtered some of the mails I received though. The problem with such programs is that they are not effective from the beggining, I mean you need to train these programs by adding more filter settings.

You see that's where BlueFrog comes in - it's not supposed to act as a spam filter. Admitted Gmail's filters are excellent - but you still do get spam.. though they land up in your spambox rightaway without you having to intervene in any way. BlueFrog takes up the job from there - studying your spambox and then going over to each spammer and constantly harassing them, till they're forced to remove your email from their database. Thus both these tools work hand in hand in battling spam.