[24hoursupport] Re: Fw: Unwanted Emails
- From: Ron Allen <chizotz@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Jerry <24hoursupport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:55:28 -0600
Hello Jerry,
J> I get anywhere from 5 to 15 of these type emails per day - there are some
days that I don't get any.
J> Do these type emails look familiar to anyone on the list? I can't get the
URLs to work to get these removed. Some of them have URLs to click on to get
removed [ not this one ] but the ones that
J> do - the URLs don't work. A lot of these emails are Porno in nature, some
about weight loss, etc. The senders email addy is always different.
First, please don't _ever_ click on the "remove me" links. All that
happens when you do that is that the spammers then know your address
is valid and that there is actually someone reading the mail. That is
a guaranteed way to ensure that you get more spam.
Most spam looks similar. You would think that if these people were
truly serious about advertising their product or service that they
would do something to make their advertisements stand out instead of
following the same old tired formats. Unfortunately, the same old
tired formats actually do work for their purpose, which is to make a
fast unearned buck off of the always naive, frequently desperate,
people they target. Spammers know full well that out of every hundred
thousand emails they send, only a bare handful of orders will come in.
Never the less, since sending spam is so cheap, that is all they need
to continue operating and send out another million or so spam emails.
This is also why people find themselves the targets of spam even if
they don't do anything to call attention to themselves. Spammers
collect email addresses in a variety of ways, but many spammers just
use email generating programs that send out spam to virtually random
addresses, most of which are invalid.
There are a couple of reasons that the same message comes from multiple
addresses, always
different. First, many spammers operate on a pyramid type of
organization. One spammer recruits two or three others to send out the
same spam, and those in turn recruit many more and so on. Second,
sending spam always generates complaints to the ISP the spam is sent
from and spammers frequently lose their sending privilages as a
result. Therefore, spammers use false addresses to send from in order
to hide who they really are and help them keep their accounts long
enough to send out as many spam messages as possible.
Until we have strong anti-spam laws and ways to legally enforce them,
we will all continue to receive spam. There are a few things you can
do to minimize the spam you receive. First, don't ever reply to a spam
message or click on a "remove me" link or send email to a "remove me"
address. Second, use a falsified address when posting to any Usenet
group. Usenet is a prime source of email addresses for spammers. For
example, instead of using jdoe@xxxxxxxxx, which would be the real
address, use jdoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx That way people can still
reply to your messages by removing the obvious part of your address,
but the spammers will only get an invalid address. This is because
spammers don't sit and read messages to get email addresses, they use
software called "bots" to collect anything that just looks like an
email address. Third, don't put any email address you want to keep
spam-free on any web site. Spammers also use "bots" to scan the web
for mailto links. Fourth, use an email account you don't care about, such as a
free
Yahoo or Hotmail address, on
any online forms for companies you aren't sure of. It's fairly safe to
use your real email address on well-known and professional web sites,
but be sure to read their privacy policies and check/uncheck any boxes
that give the option to not be sent third-party emails.
Other people here probably know more, hopefully someone else will
respond on this too.
HTH,
ROn
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