In the last 24 hours I received 244 e-mail messages…
2 were from friends, 8 were from a subscribed newsgroup and 2 music related news letters.
Is this insane or what?
Truly a shame to have to wade through so much garbage. Some of what comes is so bad it’s even worse than SPAM, more like TREET (is this stuff made from tripe and feet?).
I saw on the news the other day that the state of Virginia is ready to make the sending of spam mail a punishable offense. Although I applaud their decision, I wonder just how they plan to enforce it?
~Larry
Yes, that would be interesting to see how they would enforce it…
I’ve addressed this with my ISP’s and they both claim to have SPAM filters installed into their mail servers. This way, e-mail abusers that are on their lists get blocked. If this is true I would hate to see the numbers without the filters.
25% of my SPAM isn’t in english and most of them originate from foreign countries… US regulations aren’t tough enough for things like this.
Some things seem to run in cycles… before Christmas I got pounded with mini radio controlled car e-mails then the new version of Norton now it’s mini webcams. I consistantly receive offers to pick up my new car, claim my free vacation, lower my interest rates, increase my penis from 1-3" and make love till the cows come home, watch satellite TV for free, get an international drivers license, student loans that never need repaying, college degree without having to attend classes, clear my septic tank (though I don’t have one) loose weight while I sleep, quit smoking (though I don’t smoke) and buy prescription drugs without seeing a physican. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah, it seems 3-4 times a month I’m approached by a high ranking government official (or family member of a late diplomat) who whishes to share a portion of the millions in US dollars they siphoned from their government… just for giving my bank account number & passcode. I’m honored.
I have a theory on this - probably rubbish, but…My children who currently have under15 accounts on aol and have their first names as part of their e addies get tonnes of totally unsuitable mail. I am completely fed up deleting it.
I have a more business sounding account…starting with a non-dictionary word, and get very little apart from those African financial scams for some reason.
I use Amazon, ebay, and various forums/newsgroups.
Do these spam-trawlers just try names at random and throw names in the air? And word-sounding names too, leaving the rest more or less out of it?
Trisha
I just read an article on spam-blockers. Probably in PC Week. Sounds like you need one badly!
Tery
Trisha,
I’m sure Spammers have different methods of getting their victims. My e-mail client is Netscape and have it set to read the complete header… this is information above the body of the message that most people don’t want to see. The header has information showing who sent the mail and where it passed through. Whenever I complain about SPAM they ask that I forward this information with the complete header showing.
Sometimes there are multiple recipients in the ‘to’ field and you can see a list of others who have received the same message going to the same ISP. Typically they’re similar names like: fred@ fred1, freddy, fred54 (you get the idea) since these are address to specific e-mail accounts the valid ones will go thru. Others are forged and make it to your mailbox without a ‘to’, ‘from’ or subject. These are ones I feel is the responsibility of the internet provider to block.
Am I the only one whose e-mail address has been “hijacked” by spammers? I’m probably going to have to shut down my current e-mail adress not because of the spam I’m getting (which is enough of a problem) but because of the spam I’m allegedly sending. I get 10-20 bounce messages/week for spam that has had my address forged into the “from” field.
Tom
the only way to stop it is to use one of those filters that blocks EVERYTHING but a specific list of emails you allow to go through, or to change your email address 2 or 3 times a year. The problem with more general filters is that they don’t work. You can block domains all day long, but the spammers change them everytime they send something out, you can try to block specific words, but then they add strings of random letters to get around those. I don’t see why they can’t figure out that people ARE TRYING TO BLOCK THEM BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT THEIR CRAP.
Spam really is a bigger problem than most people think. It eats up bandwidth like nothing else, wastes time, and just generally swallows resources better used elsewhere. What I want to know is why people bother sending the stuff. Nobody reads the junk, everybody I know just deletes the stuff without even looking at it. Sometimes I get the feeling people are doing it just to be spiteful…
Check out this page: http://www.honet.com/Nadine/default.htm
It’s gotten so bad I no longer read my messages online.
I download everything, go offline then read… otherwise reading some will open pop-ups windows or call additional information from their websites through my browser thereby sending a message back to the senders, giving a list of which e-mail addresses are really current.
For a while they thought they’d get me to open their emails by putting my name in the subject line. But I didn’t do it, as all they were doing was putting the part that was in front of my email address as my name. They thought they’d get clever and just use the first initial, but I never go by just my first initial. The prevailing tactic lately seems to be false mailer dæmons. What do they think? That people will say “How clever! They lied to me in the subject line! I think I’ll order some herbal Phen Fen”?
Spammers are like cats. You don’t try, you don’t get. And, like cats, it’s all about them; our ill will is only important if there’s a consequense. :roll: If there’s so much as a bug on the floor, Mubu will find it.
(This from a diehard cat person)
N
I like spam. It makes me laugh.
I get the same email all the time: ‘Re: Your Amazon.com order’ and when you open it, ‘HOT RUSSIAN LESBIANS WITHOUT A CREDIT CARD, RIGHT NOW!’ I kid you not. It comes from about 40 different addresses, too. LOL.
I have also be inundated with spam offering to keep my septic tank in tip top shape (I’ve never had a septic tank in my life) Lately, I’ve been forwarding all my spam to the FTC before I delete it. They can’t do anything if they don’t know who’s doing it. uce@ftc.gov
Here are a couple sites with good suggestions:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,16240,pg,6,00.asp
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/inbox.htm
http://www.visualware.com/training/email.html#headers
And these guys really seem to be on the up and up:
And this one is the best. They have people testifying before Congress on the dangers, and especially the hidden costs (that we all pay) of spam:
http://www.cauce.org/
If we don’t help, we will never crush the spammers.
John in Boise
Thanks for the links, Bikehunter!
I’m so damned tired of spammers wanting to help me add 2" to the length of my p&*%$, and the daily offers of reduced-rate Viagra. I may be 51, but I still can function. All spammers should be shot!!! 
~Larry
FWIW, I have come to swear by McAfee’s SpamKiller. It does require minimal maintenance on the user’s part, and as TSam has pointed out, the buttheads are always trying to find ways around it, but it gets 95% or more and that level is acceptable. It blocks on multiple factors, all of them user-assignable. Sender address, domain, keywords in subject line, keywords in message text and country of origin can all be blocked. You’d be amazed how much of this garbage comes from, or at least through, China. Furthermore, it saves the ones it kills so you can always recover the rare desired message that got blocked (like when Aunt Tessie writes totell you about her trip to NIGERIA).
Government attempts to legislatively control spam are foredoomed to failure, for three reasons:
1: The jackasses that write the code that the Spammers DL and use are smarter and better equipped than the government coders;
2: The buttheads, buttressed by a bunch of well meaning fuzzyheads and a few less well-meaning political types will fight (and win) any attempt to regulate it based on the First Amendment. Whether their objections are ideological or cynical doesn’t really matter;
3: Technology always evolves faster than regulation.
I don’t get it. SPAM is so prevelant… it must be profitable. I am curious. I don’t respond to it. I don’t know a soul who does. Every single person that I have ever met in my life deletes SPAM without reading it.
Now that I am thinking about it, I did have this salesman, Tom, who I semi-promoted to “internet manager” back in about 1998. He must have responded to every SPAM advert in the universe because I am still getting loads of garbage on that account addressed to him every month and he’s been gone for at least 3 & a half years. I even closed the account to email for 6 months once. Didn’t do a bit of good. 
Anyway, he is the only one that I know of. Just wondering…
Chuck, I agree with you on your first and third reasons that the government won’t be able to control spam, but I’m not so sure about your second one. Although the sending of spam may be arguably covered by the first ammendment, it can also be called harassment - which means the sender has violated the rights of the receiver, thereby cancelling any rights the sender may have had. But yes, they will never be able to completely enforce any laws they write.
~Larry
Paul, I would agree it costs next to nothing to send SPAM. The real costs are collecting the e-mail addresses, but there are companies that sell e-mail lists on CD that help generate mass mailings. I know 'cause I’ve received SPAM messages trying to sell me the CD’s
The company pounding out mail about chemicals to clear septic tanks only needs to fill one or two orders to pay for a list of e-mail addresses. Years and years worth of free advertising… abuse at it’s finest. “What?? only two replies in ten thousand… send out the list again… that’ll show 'em”
One of my customers worked for a ‘vacation’ company. I didn’t understand exactly what that meant and asked if she was a travel agent. She told me she ran the e-mail advertising department to a company that books weekend criuses. I understood ‘e-mail advertising’ to be SPAM.