[pchelpers] Re: Mountains of spam

Hi Eric and Scott

Contrary to what the subject says, this returned mail is not spam; it's 
legitimate mail caused by spam sent in your name. Be happy it's coming 
from automated systems and not angry individuals. The former enables an 
easy automated response; the latter requires, at least in principle, a 
personal response and often lengthy discussion with many different 
individuals.

> EF> These last few weeks I suddenly started receiving a mountain of
> EF> "returned" mail that I never sent to addresses that are not in my
> EF> address book.
> 
> You can't do much about "returned" mail; 

See below.

> your bigger problem is people
> who actually received an email which appears to be from you, and
> ignorantly believe that you are the guilty party.
> 
> EF> I'm receiving from 50 to 70 per day.  Short of
> EF> changing my email address, is there anything I can
> EF> do to stop this flood?
> 
> Not really, aside from filtering it. 

Installing Thunderbird or any other good email program with a spam 
filter will probably be able to also deal with such incorrect, "spoofed" 
returned mail. In addition, it's easy to make a filter that 
automatically sends all returned mail into the trash. You can then check 
the trash a few hours after sending an important mail to see if you got 
a message saying there was a problem in delivering it. Tell us if you 
want help making such a filter.

> As Cy suggests, have one email
> address for trusted companies, and another for messages which may
> become public. Anything sent to friends should be assumed to be
> potentially public. For example, any message posted HERE should be
> assumed to be avilable to the oublic.

Well, it's only public to those on the list, which is why i reacted to 
quickly to the spammer we had as a member a while ago. On the website, 
the addresses are obscured as eric.furman@xxxxxxxx, for example.

You can easily get many new free email addresses by subscribing at any 
number of free email providers. I'm guessing that your problem, Eric, 
was not caused by you telling your main address to a company but by 
posting it in forums or on webpages. I even seem to dimly remember you 
talking about posting it on your own site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam#Avoiding_spam has many more 
tips about how to avoid getting spam.

> EF> How did whoever - or whatever program - get to use
> EF> my address in the first place?
> 
> USING it is absolutely no problem at all.  ANYONE can SEND email
> which appears to be from ANY email address.

The operative verb in the question is "get" not "use". The spammer "got" 
i.e. was able to use your address by harvesting it from a public source 
such as a webpage or by turning into a zombie a computer that belongs to 
an acquaintance who has your address on that computer. Another big 
problem is people who put addresses into the "To" or "CC" fields when 
sending several copies of an e-mail instead of using Bcc.



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