Stupid me for posting on ebay.

[unclrob]

OK I tried selling on ebay and since then my website has been attacked.They have sent me as of 8:39 tonight 687 emails trying to sell me crap from Russia ie: gloves,blankets asd other stuff.I knew ebay was a bad idea.So if you have a website with a contact control on it I would suggest that you don't post your website address.If you need to contact me please do it thru here or my email address.I'm thinking of shutting down my website.

[jeremy3220]

They have sent me as of 8:39 tonight 687 emails trying to sell me crap from Russia ie: gloves,blankets asd other stuff.

so,how many cellphones and boxes of viagra did you buy? It's hard to believe people actually buy from these type of people. I guess they must since they keep sending spam, right? It's crazy, I don't even browse through my spam folder on gmail anymore, I just hit the delete all spam button.

[tuffythepug]

.They have sent me as of 8:39 tonight 687 emails trying to sell me crap from Russia ie: gloves,blankets asd other stuff.

How much were the Russian Gloves ???? 

Seriously, sorry you're having such a problem with the spam.  I like to eat spam but I don't like to deal with it on my computer.      I saw your guitar on e-bay and would have probably considered bidding on it if it were a lefty.

[imwjl]

eBay is not the problem unless you posed your or an e-mail address in the listing and doing that would still be your problem in a technical sense.

This is likely your culprit:
http://www.rpjguitarworks.com/contactus.php

If not that address, a bot just caught your domain and/or a DNSBL that could have been working stopped.

Good luck.

[unclrob]

Another 115 today.To send a contact to me you must fill out a form on my website which then is fowarded to my email.

[imwjl]

Another 115 today.To send a contact to me you must fill out a form on my website which then is fowarded to my email.

There's a mail to under your address (below). If that's indeed your domain or if you have a wild card forwarding email to you that could be the culprit.

RPJ Guitars works
Rob Trebor
4620 Autumn Woods Way
Tallahassee, FL 32303
Tel: (850) 514-5354
Email: unclerob@rpjguitarworks.com

I suggest removing that if that indeed forwards to you, but it could well be in databases that will be used for a long time. Look at the host headers of your messages, and it could make sense to block the senders if they're on a network that is not going to do business with you.

Good luck.

[Caleb]

Ebay can be a very good thing, if done properly.  Hang in there, unclrob.

[Steve]

Rob, Call the company you have your website hosted with.  They can help you to setup a block on the incoming emails from the spammers.  Usually you can do this yourself in you host's control panel but tech support will help you do it if you need them. 

[expatCanuck]

There's a mail to under your address (below).
...
Email: unclerob@rpjguitarworks.com

You could try changing your site to say:

   Email: unclerob AT rpjguitarworks DOT com

and perhaps lose the email <a href> link (sorry - don't mean to get unduly geeky there - I was updating my site today, and was hip deep in HTML).

It won't stop those who have your email address currently, but it should help to reduce future spammers.

Worst case: you may have to change your email address to uncle_rob@ ... or some such, and remove the prior email.
I can empathisize ... I hate the bastards that do (or facilitate) this sort of thing.

Best of luck.

- Richard

[unclrob]

Well my webmaster was able to set up a block of some sort.He told me what he did but I'm really not very smart when it comes to computers.

Thanks for the input and letting me blow off steam.

It was still stupid of me to do the ebay thing and I've chased down my friends who said I should do it,their licking there wounds.

[Randy_R]

Rob,

Posting your email in the ebay ad was what you did wrong. normally ebay hides your email address. if someone has a question, it goes to ebay and then ebay forwards it to you. that way spam is avoided (most of it anyway).

[TrinityGuitars]

Rod, You still have a long way to go. Last year, from a still unknown source, I was getting 2500 to 3500 a day!. batched of 500 to 600 at a time. It took my system down. I has to call my ISP and have them stop it at the server level. What a headache. I was almost convinced I had E.D.

[hal537]

Unclrob

I used to have a web site about my sheep in the early years of the internet until I got spammed out because I'd written my email address on the site for legitimate enquiries.  I was told that spammers have software that trawls the net and automatically lifts mails from web sites.  The only way to fight this is to write your email in such a way that a human needs to interprete it and write it out manually.  ExpatCannuck makes some useful suggestions in this regard. 

As for ebay, don't put your real email address on your announcement.  Use only ebay email for contacting prospective buyers-it's safer.

[unclrob]

So you all know they went thru my website.You have to fill out a form and that form is fowarded to my email.I also traded some service's to have there.....well a little payback.They never sent anything directly to my email.

[Randy_R]

I've quit using my normal pop3 email account at my ISP and use Yahoo email because of the spam filter they have. I get 30-50 spam every day.

[imwjl]

So you all know they went thru my website.You have to fill out a form and that form is fowarded to my email.I also traded some service's to have there.....well a little payback.They never sent anything directly to my email.

Again: Your web site has an email address on it in addition to the form. If that is indeed your domain, and if you have a wild card to send all messages to one address you'll have a problem at some point.

Note the unclerob@rpjguitarworks.com on the page:
http://www.rpjguitarworks.com/contactus.php

I don't have time or patience to give a whole lesson on SMTP, POP and DNS, but you can find www sites that will find simple problems with your setup too. Also do not believe the people who try and tell you that the style "name at something dot com" buys you anonymity. It's not rocket science to write a script that searches for specific patterns, parses and concatenates text to get the desired results.

Good luck!