posted
My spam problem has gotten really out of hand recently. About twenty emails a day, for Cialis (technically, for "Czialis" or "CIAzLIS") and stocks. Images of text, so that spam filters can't read the text and filter it. Random text at the end, also to fool spam filters.
I took our IT head's suggestion and googled my address. It's not in many places.
I wonder if Hatrack could find a way that we could communicate without having the email printed plainly when you click the email icon? I think spammers get email addresses from web pages. I'm trying to reduce the places where mine appears.
Whether or not -- I think I'm moving to a whitelist system. That is, if I don't have you on my whitelist, the email goes to a quarantine folder. This will interfere with critiquing here at Hatrack, but not much, since I'll have access to the quarantine folder.
posted
You could consider using a program like Mailwasher to filter out, bounce, and report spam to Spamcop before you download it into your email program.
Also be aware that many people hate whitelisting services. I, personally, cannot be bothered to go through the rigaramole required to get myself whitelisted. If you force me to go through the whitelisting process, I just won't bother to email you. That, and the hassles it can present to email lists when not configured properly...
You are correct that spammers harvest email addies from websites. One solution to this would be to not have your email addy visible, but rather force anyone who wants to contact you to do so through the PM system. You then get their email addy and can email them directly from your email addy. But your email addy does not have to be visible.
Another way spammers harvest email addies is in all those forwards. You know, the cutesy smarmy preachy crap that gets forwards to five hundred billion people by people who don't know how to do a blind carbon copy, so you can see the email addy of all the other five hundred billion people who received the email. Yeah, that. It's a great tool for spammers and for those who send out viruses and other malware - makes their harvesting so much easier. So, if you have friends who send you forwards like that, educate them on blind carbon copy. Or, do like me and run everything they send you past snopes along with a lecture to not send crap like that out.
Another possibility is to have throwaway email addies for signing up on sites and such. When the spam gets bad, retire that addy and get a new one.
And seriously, only 20 a day? I can't remember the last time that was all I got...
[This message has been edited by quidscribis (edited July 11, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by quidscribis (edited July 11, 2006).]
posted
Please, if it's appropriate here...can you explain "blind carbon copy"? This sounds like something very useful.
(Plus it gave me a moment of nostalgia...does anyone remember how test papers smelled when they came off those old mimeograph machines? With the purple ink...and the papers would still be warm, sometimes, when the instructors passed them around?)
posted
I really have to hope that GOP USA wasn't the ones who sold my email address to all the porn and gambling sites that have been spamming me lately.
I went to "contacts only" for a while, and things really quieted down. Of course, I probably also lost contact with someone I really need to make amends with.
posted
Will, I'm a big fan of gmail; it does an excellent job of filtering. I have half a dozen other spam-heavy addresses forwarded to that account, and maybe 1 or 2 a day show up in my inbox; the other 50 or so just go in the spam folder. I look that over once a day just in case but have only seen 2 messages inappropriately marked spam.
It also allows you to send e-mail as if from another account, so you don't have to get rid of the old account.
Whitelist requests bug the crap out of me and I usually just delete them. If someone wants to talk to me, they can put me on their list themselves instead of assuming I'm a spammer.
(Note to everyone using a whitelist: if you submit stories via e-mail, make sure the editor who replies to your submission doesn't have to jump through hoops to contact you.)
posted
Oh and: blind carbon copy is the BCC: line on your e-mail. No one can see who's on that line. Every e-mail client that I'm aware of supports it.
posted
I have only gone through the whitelist business with two people. They are married and have recognizable names, so I don't blame them for wanting to go whitelist. That's the only reason I would bother.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Though I egosearch my own name often, it never occurred to me to Google my email address. It turned up in fourteen places, of which they displayed three---all from my Internet Fan Fiction period.
Right now I don't have a problem, though a few years ago my box filled up with all sorts of crap. Hey, I delete a lot of stuff I know comes from legitimate mailers, sites I've done business with. I don't need to know every item Barnes & Noble claims to have on sale...
(Also I think AOL's current spam filters are more efficient...they shield me from the worst of it and I only have to deal with the spam box every so often...)
((Of course, you should see some of the stuff I have to deal with in physical form through the US Postal Service. Online I only deal with my own. There, I deal with everybody else's first, and then my own when I get home...))
posted
Spam was out of fashion for a while, but I've noticed that recently it does seem to be making a comeback.
Ultimately, the only way to reduce (not eliminate) spam is to charge people for sending email on a per-message basis. That's not going to happen anytime soon.
posted
Blind carbon copy, or Bcc, is a similar field to To. There's also Cc, or carbon copy, and should be in the same area. I've yet to see an email program that didn't support it, although it's not always obviously visible. Posts: 83 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I'll ditto Beth's recommendation of email. If you'd like to give it a try, I'll send you an invitation.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Thanks, Mary. I'll be using the new gmail address here. (The address I had up before is still valid; use it if you know it. LH denizens, I'll keep the old one there, where spammers cannot break in to steal.)
My current plans: * I still have a Yahoo! address to give to potential spammers * This gmail, for writer friends * My work address. That one's a pain -- spammers got it, and I can't very well give it up, or take it off all web sites. I think I will use the whitelisting thing, but if you're not on my white list, it shouldn't ask you to do anything -- I'll just go through the quarantine folder periodically to retrieve things I need
It sure is a pain to find a user name nobody's thought of yet --!
Of course, the sad part is that if I'm successful, I'll miss out on being a svelte, rich, PayPal and eBay customer in good standing who can Do It all night long, with long being the operative word. Ah, well.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited July 12, 2006).]
posted
I freely distribute my hotmail address, and I keep my work address private. The irony is, I get hundreds of spam on my work e-mail and very, very few on my hotmail. I don't get the logic behind that, but others at my work make the same claim. Though we are now getting a new and better spam filter, so we'll see if that stays true.
Posts: 303 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I am liking the whitelisting program I'm trying, so far. It should be invisible to those sending email to me. It is so cool to look in my Inbox and see nothing about erectile dysfunction.
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
Here's another bit of info for you about spam...
While it's true that spammers harvest email addies off of websites and other email, they also do common word/name spam to domains.
For example, they'll send spam to info@johnsmith.com, webmaster@johnsmith.com, sales@johnsmith.com, etc. They'll also send spam to john@johnsmith.com, smith@johnsmith.com, jsmith@johnsmith.com, johns@johnsmith.com, etc. They're playing the odds that at least one of those email addies will work. That, and many domain owners don't :blackhole: email send to anyinvalidemail@johnsmith.com, but rather have it forwarded to another account.
Another thing is that they will harvest email addies from popular email lists, ie Yahoo! groups. There's one I'm on that has well over 8000 members, and I use one email addy only for that particular list. I have to recycle email addies for that list every month or two because of the spam that starts coming through. Someone on that list is a spammer, and when my addy changes, s/he grabs it and I get spammed again. Then there's the issue of such groups that don't keep their membership lists private - that's a spammer's dream come true. Easy harvesting without joining.
Because email is free, they can afford to send email out to 5 million email addresses even though only maybe 1/10th or 1/100th of them have been confirmed as valid. It doesn't even use their servers as usually, they hijack someone else's email server - that of domain owners or domain hosting companies that don't lock down the email servers to validate upon send. No cost for them, so why not?
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