Just a note to all - I am a reasonably wise person when it comes to managing spam. I learned from some very bad mistakes. What I am able to do through my domain and email service is set up alias names that get directed to my main email address. For forums such as the Chiff and Fipple as well as companies asking for an email address when I register software, book hotels, purchase from an e-commerce site, I never give out my main email but use a site-specific alias like: chiff-o-rama @ hot-house.net.
I found a couple of spams in my inbox today that were addressed to candf@hot-house.net (which, BTW, has been deleted as of this morning with a new one substituted). The spams were for Windows XP from fueltaxreporting.com. I’m just telling the group in case you have your email as publicly viewable in your profile preferences, you may want to turn it off.
I have a special email address that is posted only on C&F, and mail to that address is filtered into my Whistles folder. I’ve received a couple of spams to that address over the past week or two. I didn’t note their content.
This pales in comparison to the average of 300 per day that come in to my other addresses, though.
I have similar ‘evasive’ tactics.
My ISP’s main e-mail account gets flooded with spam but my secondary addresses only get a few each day. Typically, they are not addressed to me but still end up in my box.
My domain e-mail account host has better filtering and only mail address to that box gets delivered.
Yahoo for webmail and Mozilla Thunderbird for pop3 do a fine job sorting wheat from chaff in my case. Spam isn’t as big an annoyance these days as double glazing sales calls!
I used to get between 25 and 30 of those calls a day. They woke me up at midnight and used up all the space on my answering machine. They were turning me into a crazy woman. My only recourse was to unplug the phones.
A few years ago, someone suggested I get a Zapper. I didn’t because they were advertised on late-night TV and I thought they’d be chud. The price, at $39, just confirmed it.
This person bought one for me. I installed it–you plug it into the wall and the phone into it. When the phone answers, the thing emits a chirp that sounds like the phone system’s “out of service” tone. If the caller is a computer dialer, it hangs up and presumably notes that the number is bad, thus getting you off their list.
The most amazing thing happened. The phone kept ringing once and the caller would hang up. After a few days of this, the calls dropped by about half. A few more days, and they dropped by half again. In a week, I had almost no calls.
Today, I get about one call a week, and it’s already hanging up when I answer.
Finest device ever made by man. I don’t believe the national do-not-call list will be effective, but I don’t care, because I have my Zapper.
the “do not call” list has seemed to be very effective for us. Other than the local newpaper (since I once had a subscription, they can still call) we get almost NO calls.
Of course, that was different before Tuesday and the elections - but those calls don’t come under the “do not call” criteria.
Our phone service also has the option of having a different ring (it’s actually a double one) for any calls coming from an automatic dial, etc. So we can easily ignore those.
