The "People" That Send Spam (2 Viewers)

[Chuck C]

Everytime I get a junk message in my Eudora mail box whether it be about loans, mortgages, losing weight, finding the best deals on the web, gaining weight, etc., it seems that a woman's name appears as the sender. Jessica, Heather, Julie, Katie, Emily and so on. Is this another ploy to get people to open an email CUZ IT'S NOT WORKING! Does this happen to you guys? Do women get spam from "men"?
I wish real women would email me instead!

 

[Kevin P]

I haven't gotten spam in a while since my work email changed, but as I recall most of the spam with "female" sender names were of the porn spam variety. The other kinds of spam I used to get--body part enlargement pills come to mind--tended to have generic names (e.g. [email protected]) rather than "people's" names.

 

[Tim Hoover]

In a weird twist, I get spam from myself - well, at least the prefix of the email. Lesson #1: Do not EVER reply to be removed from a mailing list!!!

 

[Anthony Moore]

Do not EVER reply to be removed from a mailing list!!!

why not?

 

[David King]

why not?

because then they know your e-mail address is active and will send more

 

[Philip Hamm]

Because by responding you confirm that the message has been opened by a real person. This means they know that you are there and not just an email dump, and will email you even more than before.

 

[Greg Rowe]

...because the removal is just a way to confirm that you are in fact a real human being that *read* their message.
Ask your ISP to install spamassassin (www.spamassassin.org) on their mail servers. It's a great piece of software that scans an email and attempts to figure out if it is spam. It's not 100% accurate, since nothing *can* be but it's pretty good. It will insert headers into the email that you can then use to filter the spam into a junkmail folder or simply the trash.
Greg

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Does anyone actually BUY anything from these people after getting emails?

 

[Karl_O]

I never did as do people on the Internet I know. Other than the annoying penis-enhancement spam, most spam I see are suspicious in claims.

 

[John Watson]

It costs so little to send the stuff, that if even a very small number of total idiots buy the garbage, it pays off.

Sad but true aspect of the "information age"

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Not necessarily true. I have done research at work and spam was drastically reduced by unsubscribing vs. just deleting. I was recording which sights I unsubscribed to for further investigation should it have increased.

ymmv with certain sights, but they are required by law to stop, not just pass your name along.

 

[Dennis Reno]

Say what you will about spam, but it has changed my life. I now work part time from home, make thousands of dollars a day, got rid of all my debt, have a huge-mongous... uhhhhh nose, can go all night with a natural viagra alternative, have increased the size of my breasts by two cup sizes and more! Yes sir, thank you Mr. Spam!
I actually cut down on a significant portion of spam by getting a Yahoo email address that I use when shopping on-line or when I need to register something. 95% of the spam I get is directed at the Yahoo account. My home account through Comcast receives next to nothing.

 

[Greg Rowe]

I am lucky enough to be able to administer my own email server. Every time I fill out any form on the web I make a new email address (just an alias to me real address). If I get spam to that account I just delete the alias and the problem is mostly solved. I say mostly because the spammers still wasted my time and money. They ate up bandwidth for something I never requested.

So far though only one company (Directed Electronics) has had my email address that I gave them go into the wrong hands.

Greg

 

[ThomasC]

Other than the annoying penis-enhancement spam, most spam I see are suspicious in claims.

Unless it's for a brand name you've heard of like Viagra, it's a scam.
MSNBC - Sexploration - Do penis products actually work?

 

[JoshF]

If you have a Mac, upgrade to OSX. The new Mail client has great anti-spam tools built in, as well as a "bounce" function that makes it look to the sender as though your email address doesn't exist / isn't active anymore.

 

[BrianW]

I am lucky enough to be able to administer my own email server. Every time I fill out any form on the web I make a new email address (just an alias to me real address).

You're pretty lucky, all right, but this same thing can be pretty much accomplished simply by having your own domain name and setting up aliases through that. You still have to have a place to forward those emails (like an ISP), however, but for only a few bucks a year, it's worth it just to have an endless supply of disposeable email aliases.

 

[MikeAlletto]

I'm thinking of installing a linux box to act as a mail proxy. Have it go out and always get my email for me automatically all day long. Install spam assassin (or something like it) on the linux side to filter the mail automatically, then on my windows box pull the email from the linux box. In theory it should be pretty easy to setup and work, but I haven't gotten around to it.

 

[Greg Rowe]

Michael,

Look into fetchmail. It will fetch from many different sources (pop, imap, pop over ssl, imap over ssl, etc) and inject them into your local delivery agent.



Greg