Do you hate spam? Sure! We all do! In fact, we've made a few posts on the subject. But do you UNSUBSCRIBE from it? There are two schools of thought on this.
1. While some spammers may use it as a verification that your address is "good" and send you more spam, most will remove you from their list, and therefore, your overall spam will be reduced.
2. Most spammers are not honest, or they wouldn't be advertising underage porn and warez. Therefore, any unsubscribe attempt will only increase the amount of spam.
I have the ability to check all of my daughter's E-mail (well, most -- if she downloads it first, I won't see it). Around August 14th or 15th last year, she started getting tons of spam. She hadn't gotten any (well, maybe one or two pieces) since I got her her own laptop in August 2001.
I tried unsubscribing from those, but mostly kept getting spam, so I couldn't tell if there was much of a reduction. Eventually I got her her own domain with E-mail forwarding and showed her how to give everybody a unique E-mail address.
Her spam had dropped off to about two pieces per day recently on her old account. One day, two pieces came in from the same From address, so I decided to unsubscribe (thinking they might send more if I didn't).
Well, it was off to the races for the spammers almost as soon as I did that. Since that day, she has been getting 5 or 6 pieces a day, sometimes more.
That's why I voted to only unsubscribe from the ones that look legitimate (from companies that you've actually heard of).
I do occasionally call those "business opportunity" spams that include phone numbers and tell them what I think of their marketing to 12-year-old girls. Usually the people seem quite reasonable, claiming they just got her E-mail address from some list. I point out that maybe they should use double opt-in because they're getting unreliable lists. It is interesting to hear what they think, though.
By the way, I now have a "honeypot" email link on my web site. If a webbot grabs all the email addresses off the site and that address is used to send spam, the messages are automatically deleted from my mailserver and the sender is blacklisted so I don't see any of their spam going to my real email addresses. :mrgreen:
My, how very devious! :-)
Yeah, I like that. I suggested a different kind of honeypot last year, but it was designed to waste spammers' time and bandwidth.
Yeah, I like that. I suggested a different kind of honeypot last year, but it was designed to waste spammers' time and bandwidth.
I like your idea as well.
Jason: I wish I could take credit for the honeypot I'm using, but I read about it somewhere. I also started changing my mailto links to the ASCII (Bob Bemer R.I.P.) codes for each character. But I think that most spiders have been updated to figure that one out. :?
I do freelance design for one of the largest spammers on the west coast. He has had an ongoing legal battle with microsoft, and has been sued by them four times now. If any of you are familiar with BrowserAid, then you are familiar with this guys work.
Long story short, clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of your spam does nothing but verify you recieved the mail. "Opting out" as it's called simply puts you on another list which is harvested and used again on another IP Block so you'll continue to recieve spam no matter what.
Currently, there's no way to stop spam, there are programs out there available to spammers which will hijack MSN for example, and send their spam out using their network. Another popular method is to send an email to an address that doesnt work, and relies on the mail server do bounce back the email to whom it was sent from, however in this case the person it's sent from is the actual victim's email address, and not the spammers. End result, you get spam at no cost to them.
Don't bother emailing these guys your gripes, or trying to track them down, because they're fiendishly smarter than you when it comes to playing this game. If that wasn't the case, you wouldn't have companies like AOL disabling entire ip blocks...
Some userful tips for keeping a spam free email box is:
1- make a new account for signing up to messageboards and any other service that asks for an email address to confirm your account. I'm not saying all sites will use your info for personal gain, but all it takes is one, and it's all down hill from there, since every spammer pulls addys from the same data-miners. I recommend using a free webbased email like yahoo for this.
2- when you absolutely have to post your email address, spell out the @ sign, or put some kind of breaks in there so that bots can't harvest it when they spider the web. Ex: reader(at)pocketpcthoughts.com
3- If you get spam, don't opt out, just create a filter to block the address.
Hope that helps, I look forward to infecting your inept relative's computers again in the near future.
By the way, I now have a "honeypot" email link on my web site. If a webbot grabs all the email addresses off the site and that address is used to send spam, the messages are automatically deleted from my mailserver and the sender is blacklisted so I don't see any of their spam going to my real email addresses. :mrgreen:
My, how very devious! :-)
Please explain? How does this work?
__________________
Rick Gomez - Owner/Consultant
fiona Systems Integration www.fionasystems.com
By the way, I now have a "honeypot" email link on my web site. If a webbot grabs all the email addresses off the site and that address is used to send spam, the messages are automatically deleted from my mailserver and the sender is blacklisted so I don't see any of their spam going to my real email addresses. :mrgreen:
My, how very devious! :-)
Please explain? How does this work?
On your web site, you provide an email address, such as dontuse@domain.com in very small font (or white text on a white background, etc.) You can even indicate: "If you send email to this address you will be blacklisted."
Then, using your anti-spam program (I use Mailwasher Pro) you set a filter that automatically blacklists any from address that sends email to the dontuse@fomain.com address. This is known as a honeypot since it attracts your prey to the trap.
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