spam, are members of this forum getting an inordinate amount?

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I am getting an inordinate amount of spam, much of it from Africa with offers of money and more recently, offers of sex. This being the only forum I participate in I have to wonder why I am being the target and would like to know from other participants how they fare. I am aware that the word 'photography' has a porno connotation in some circles as you can readily verify from a google search. Thanks

-- Julio Fernandez (gluemax@sympatico.ca), May 31, 2002

Answers

define inordinate. I now use this email address for site only, but I used to use it on newsgroups, etc. I get 20-30 spams PER DAY on this account, 99 percent of them are from Korea. Moral: never use an address you want to remain spam-free on sites like this, or Usenet.

(I dont think my spam problems originated here but I could be wrong)

-- Wayne (wsteffen@skypoint.com), May 31, 2002.


I get similar spam in moderate numbers, generally at least 15 messages per day. However, I don't get the spam on the email address I post with here. Rather, it's my hotmail.com address, which in ways is just asking to be spammed in that it's a hotmail address. On the odd occasion I do get spam at this address, I am absolutely ruthless about getting myself off of mailing lists, etc. and setting up filters if necessary to automatically delete messages from specific addresses and servers.

-- David Munson (apollo@luxfragilis.com), June 01, 2002.

It's not from this site. I get almost no spam, maybe 1 or 2 a WEEK.

-- Sandy Sorlien (sand44@mindspring.com), June 01, 2002.

I don't get much, and none from other countrys. I also belong to two other forums.

-- Wes Carroll (samwes@intrq.com), June 01, 2002.

Anywhere your email ID shows up (usenet, independent forums, etc.) can be "mined" by software used by spammers looking for valid email addreses. You can set up your news reader and/or browser to promulgate a "phony" email address to these groups by including something such as "nospam" within the name and indicate this should be removed by any "real" responder. This will foil the "mining" software to a certain degree. Also, never click on the link titled something like: "click here to unsubscibe or stop these messages" as this will do nothing more than confirm your email address as valid to the spamnmer and he can then sell it for more money, i.e., confirmed addresses are worth 3 times unconfirmed addresses when spammers consolidate their lists for sale. Email filters work to certain degree also but they work mostly on the "sender" field which is routinely changed by high-volume spammers to get around this. It's a fact life.

-- Steve Baggett (sbaggett@midsouth.rr.com), June 01, 2002.


I had noticed an interesting thing with my hotmail account If you go to Options-personl profile, you will see, down near the bottom of the page three boxes. Somehow these were changed as I did not nor would not want to share my email address and personal info with others. Some other people here, university, have had the same thing happen. If you have hotmail you might want to check this out and correct it. After unchecking the three options, I noticed a small decline in spam.

-- Eric (gldn@hotmail.co), June 01, 2002.

I too am getting a lot of this spam recently but not at thios email address. instead it arrives at me work email. I do sign onto this page through that account from time to time, but strangely I never receive the spam at this--home address. go figure! Good news is the labels are so crude one can delete them all quickly. Bob

-- Bob moulton (bobmargaretm@insightbb.com), June 01, 2002.

Hi all... me too I get a lot of spam which I hate... I dont' know yet how to stop them... but I kow for sure one of the way they find us... here it is...

go to http://www.google.com/ and type in your email adress... simple as that...

as the previoius post said... "it's a fact of life..." I would add..."very very sad...and horrible"

-- dan n. (dan@egmail.com), June 01, 2002.


what baffles me is this: Are there really people in this world stupid enough to even read spam, let alone but something because of it? Sadly, the answer must be yes, or it wouldnt pay for there to be so much spam in the world. I'm amused because 99% of my spam is in a language I cant even read

-- Wayne (wsteffen@skypoint.com), June 01, 2002.

Wayne, we ought to read that stuff for you never know what good surprise comes along in the mail! I was recently offered by the son of an african dictator who needed to discretely send some savings abroad to send him my full bank numbers and details so that he could send me 17 millions of $ from which I was offered a generous 25% for my help. I would have loved to help him but my bank accounts are already packed up with all the money some other Nigerians guys sent me a while ago. Seriously, some naive people got caught and lost hundred of thousands with these guys! Julio, I occasionally get spam, but no more than 3-4 a week. The rest is sent by authorized sites. Last week though, I received many emails with weird titles and no content visible on Mac, but from the time they took to pass, I know there was some bad stuff in them. Soon after that I received Symantec's news letter with a warning about a worm that spreads in the mail and automatically send emails to the addresses in your address book. Some say the antivirus companies are the ones who spread that stuff. Really? I'm not sure...

-- Paul Schilliger (pschilliger@smile.ch), June 01, 2002.


http://www.spamcop.net/

Go there to report spam!! It's what I use with my account at work. Also, they will sell you (cheaply) spam-free accounts from which they will screen out all the spam.

There are also many products which will screen spam, and if you are hip with Unix (is that a contradiction?) and you can telnet to whatever server you use, you can use .procmailrc to screen out a bunch of stuff. I use it at work to eliminate plenty of garbage.

-- Brian C. Miller (brian.c.miller@gte.net), June 01, 2002.


I get a small amount of unwanted mail, but not any more since I satarted on this forum. What I learned the other day is when the note gives you an option to be removed from the senders mailing list, don't go for it. It only serves to tell the sender that they have hit an active e-mail accoount. If you do nothing, they figure it's a dead account and usually won't bother with it again. And as has already been posted, stay the heck away from those offers of instant wealth in exchange for your bank account number. It is hard to believe people fall for that, but they do.

-- Gary Meader (gmeaderwa@earthlink.net), June 02, 2002.

Thank you all for your responses. I have learned a great deal from your postings and will need to take the steps you recommended. I think you are right about the spam not being related to this forum. I took free space at an htp site provided by my ISP and believe that spamers are getting my email address from there.

-- Julio Fernandez (gluemax@sympatico.ca), June 04, 2002.

I've had SO MUCH SPAM FROM KOREA, that , I've had a strange craving for Korean cuisine!!!!!

m.

-- miles feigenbaum (mfa1@ix.netcom.com), June 05, 2002.


You people are cluless how this spam thing all works. No one your email addresses are all over this board. And if you use another email to "log in" cool... But places like hotmail simply have yourt email addresses sitting there ready for the taking. Hotmail uses MX technology so if I send a request to hotmail and ask if you@hotmail.com is a good address it will say yes you@hotmail.com is a good address. there are only a few hundred million common variations of an email address tom@ tom1@ bigtom@ bigtom1@ 1bigtom@ now add hotmail.com to the back of all these I bet you at least 2 put of these 5 go to someone. No is that easy or, is that easy. SO you just learned you dont have to post your email address anywhere to end up on a list. Oh and that BS about replying to a removal box is bad is just that BS - asked to be removed (YOU WILL GET LESS SPAM)

-- spam expert (none@no.valid.email), July 22, 2002.


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