The spammers have won. Giving up. (1 Viewer)

[Steve_Tk]

But Penis Enlargement do people actually send money for this?

It's gotta be like those Late night infomercials, phone telemarketing, and QVC. If they were not profitable then they wouldn't do it. So yeh, some people out there must be buying that stuff up.

 

[Thomas Newton]

It makes more sense for spammers, since it probably costs nil to produce an electronic e-mail.

The way that the telemarketing scum work these days, they don't come on the line until a machine hears the sound of your voice. Then they won't shut up.

In other words, THEIR time is valuable; YOURS isn't.

I also just read of a study of telemarketing for charity causes -- seems the telemarketers kept an average of 3/4 (!!!) of the money people gave in response to the calls. Some "charity"!

 

[John Watson]

So close to Christmas, but I gotta say it; not only do the harassers get paid a lot, but a lot of the "charities" that hire them are petty, neurotic frauds, doing little of any significance to improve the world.

Unfortunately, they have extensive sucker lists, of people who actually welcome the calls. :frowning:

As for telephone marketing surveys, my latest tactic, if I am ever foolish enough to have answered the phone for one, is to ask how much they will pay me to be part of their focus group?

Going back to e-mail harassment-spam, I think the senders should be taxed about 1 cent for each e-mail sent from their machines. That would stop it!

 

[Rob FM]

Of course spam pays.... don't you remember my thread from last year about the SPAM KING and his new $740,000.00 house he bought?

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=113258

People on "slash-dot" (/.) got so mad, they signed up his real home address with EVERY single magazine, flyer, and pamphlet (religious, political) they could!! And HE got mad!


Lot's 'o' money in Spam!

~Rob

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I also just read of a study of telemarketing for charity causes -- seems the telemarketers kept an average of 3/4 (!!!) of the money people gave in response to the calls.

And in the case of some charities, 3/4 of the tiny amount that actually reaches the charity is used to pay overhead and professional staff salaries. (If you have a good rep for raising funds you can easily pull down a six-figure salary as the head of a "charity") So only 1/16th of the money goes to the cause. Depending on what that cause is (direct subsidies to the poor, medical research, "advocacy") even less of the money can end providing any actual benefit to anybody, because there can be other layers of salaried people or expenses before a poor person actually gets a meal, or a laboratory gets a new microscope.

Once, when I was out of work and desparate, I actually took a job with a telemarketing firm. We were raising money for a "charity" connected with the local police union. When I went looking for the bathroom part-way through my shift I accidently opened the wrong door, evidently one that was supposed to be locked, and came upon posters, placards and roadside signs for a political candidate, all with payment disclosures saying that the police charity had provided them. I quit at the end of my shift. I didn't actually know the candidate or whether or not I might want to support him (I was new to the area), but I quit anyway. If I'm going to make political fund-raising calls it will be as a volunteer, for someone I actually support, and both I and the person I am calling will know that I'm raising money for a political campaign. That "help the local police" scam was just a bit much.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Joe Schwartz]

How much spam do you guys typically get? My e-mail address has been public (on my website) for seven years, and lately I've been getting about 300 spam messages per day. About 99% of all my incoming e-mail is spam.

Last year, I started using SpamPal, and it's been a lifesaver. It uses IP blacklists, which I've never been a big fan of, but it catches about 90% of my spam. I whittle down the other 10% with keyword filters, and I delete the remaining ones by hand.

 

[MikeH1]

Here's something I find very strange. I have a hotmail account that would get probably 50 - 100 spam messages a day, for the last 2 years or so. But since around the time they changed the "look" of hotmail (about 2 months ago), spam messages have dropped over 90%. Is there a new spam filter or something included with this new hotmail look? I have no idea but at least now I don't cringe everytime I open the that email.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Michael, my new e-mail account (for private correspondences and HTF business) is Hotmail. So far so good. Not a single spam. My old excite account, however, I only check once or twice a week. Each time, not only am I beseiged by pop-ups and Excite's own spam, but, at minimum, 80-100 spams in my "bulk mail" folder and about 50 in my "regular" inbox. The only reason I haven't abandoned the excite account altogether is because I plan still to use it for online DVD and other transactions.

 

[Michael Reuben]

I, too, have been noticing a fall-off in spam in my Hotmail account. It's the account I use for all vendor correspondence, and that hasn't changed. Either there's some new filtering in there, or the new anti-spam laws are having an effect (which I doubt, but hope springs eternal).

M.

 

[Greg*go]

I noticed a big drop off on AOL of all places! I'd say it's 95% gone now. I'm not sure if it's because of the newer version (9.0) or if that just coincided with the better filters AOL introduced. It's pretty nice to open my mailbox and only see mail that is actually for me.

Of course, I guess this means spammers will just have to figure out a way to get around these filters, but it's nice right now...

 

[chris_everett]

I also use two seperate e-mail accounts, including a hotmail one for general use where I expect spam. The odd thing is, with hotmail's enhanced filter setting on, I get almost no spam anymore. I used to get a ton of it there, but now I get less than 5 a day, (usually one or two) and only a handful even ends up in my "junk mail" folder. I assume hotmail is just tossing the obvious spam and deleting it. At work we use a product called "Brightmail" that filters about 90% of spam out. About 54% of the total e-mail that we recieve is flagged as spam. Brightmail updates it's spam detection rules from a central server every 15 minutes! Tells you how fast the spammers change to keep ahead of the filters.

 

[Josh Simpson]

My junk mail is also down a lot, which is very nice.

 

[Kenny Goldin]

What I hate is that they try an insult my intelligence. Half the words are not spelled correctly and there is always a paragraph of gibersih at the end. I only get ONE spam message, but I get it several times a day. Check it out:
---------------------------------------------------------------
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Both of our proiducts will work for you.

1. The best supprlement avaiclable! - Really works!
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and

2. Enhakncement Oil - Get stixff as a roqck in 60 secvonds!
FINzD IT HbERE

The two procducts woqrk great togezther


------------------------------------------------------------

For women only, our excmlusive muti-orgrasmic oil. FuIND IT HEgRE








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This is a strait copy and paste--at least make me think you have half a brain in your head and use a spell checker. I am sure there is some reason these are misspelled to miss the words that generally get filtered out...

And to think I once refused to hire a man to paint my house because he had several misspelled words in his contract. That always tips me off that someone lacks professionalism. And they expect me to order something for my "pexnis," my most prized posession?

 

[Alex-C]

I was getting 400 spams a day so I bought this program called junk-out for $25. I use it with Outlook and its been 99.9% accurate (actual statistics).

It has filtered 35,000 messages since I bought it, sometime around November.

I recommend it and the guy who made it has updated it so it works with Outlook 2003.

 

[Scott L]

Use Hotmail's highest junkmail protection and you should be fairly good. I use Hotmail for bidness, forum emails and Comcast for personal. I've used the same Hotmail address for about 6 years now. It's not that hard or overwhleming at all.

 

[Paul_Fisher]

This is a strait copy and paste--at least make me think you have half a brain in your head and use a spell checker.

I think you mean "straight".

 

[MickeS]

I think Hotmail has improved their spam filtering in the past few months, because I get WAY less spam now. I easily got 70-80 spams a day from there last year, but now I get just a few, maybe 10-20, which are filtered to the junk mail inbox.

I really don't have much of a problem with spam at all now, even though I've been using the same e-mail address from them for about 8 years now, and it's the only e-mail I use.

 

[MarkHastings]

If you are using a well known service for your e-mail, such as hotmail or any major ISP, you are going to get spammed.

Places like Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL have member directories that the spammers can search for you addresses. This is where they get you. I've also used my Yahoo name to post on the Yahoo message boards...All the spammers need to do is add the "@yahoo.com" after your ID and they've got your email address.

Also, I've heard of programs that the spammers use to search the internet for "mailto:" scripts. Meaning, whenever you put your email address on your personal web site (with a clickable link) - example:

[email protected][/url] looks like - mailto:[email protected] - in HTML code.

so the spammers just find the mailto: code and swipe the email address after it.

 

[Angelo.M]

I use a university-based account for all e-mails involving work, and a commercial e-mail account for everything else, including on-line vendors and shopping. Interestingly, I receive no spam on my commerical account and perhaps a half a dozen spam messages per day on my university account (which I've been using for several years, prior to the proliferation of spamming, so the address was "out there" for a while). Thanks to very good filters, all but 1 or 2 of these messages make it to my inbox per day, easy enough to delete before opening.

I tried MailWasher on my commercial account, but, as I mentioned, I wasn't getting any spam so I can't comment on how well it works. I've heard good things, however.

In related news, I've settled on a firewall/anti-virus package for now and the (near) future (at least). It's Computer Associates' package, and it works very well.

 

[Jack Briggs]

So far, after several weeks of Hotmail, not one wretched shred of spam. My old excite account, though, is random-generator beacon. I don't access it from home over the weekends, but every Monday morning there are at least 80-100 spams to delete (which I prefer doing on the T-1 line at work; at home on my dial-up account, it'd take an hour to delete all that shit).