This might be old news but came as a surprise to me.


http://www.eastsidejournal.com/92308.html

Thanks for this notice Chris. I haven't used hotmail for years (and dropped yahoo just recently when a change in their policies pissed me off), but I have a few friends who do use it and have forwarded the notice to them.

Jeanie

Thanks very much Chris. I have hotmail because I got free internet access for 6 months when I bought a computer. I am totally unhappy with hotmail and MSN. If a company as large as Microsoft can't handle things the way they should be handled, I don't have much use for them. In fact, if I felt the way I do now, six months ago, I would probably have bought a Mac. I have received more spam in the last few days than I ever have. I wondered how they were getting my address.

Ed

Same here Ed, my hotmail is of this moment filled with 500+ pieces of junk no doubt including explicit porn. I get the occasional message saying the inbox overflow is sent back to its source so I keep it up to the brim.

I'm starting to dread the weekends when my mailbox is flooded with porn mail - I have never subscribed to anything that even remotely smacked of porn and yet every weekend, I get dozens of invitations to porn sites.

The thing that is most disturbing is that this x-rated stuff is being sent to the address that I usually only use when I'm dealing with a company that I would be proud to do business with. What a shame.

Margaret

Seriously, I never get porn junk mail. It seems like everybody gets it but me. I wonder why?

Ed

Poor Ed...let's band together and send him our porn email, ok? :)

Gee thanks! :)

Ed

I have a few things that I do to fight spam. In my personal mailbox, I only get about 1 piece of spam per week, so I guess it's working pretty well. (I attribute that one piece to some residue left over from before I started seriously trying to ward off spammers)

1. On my newsreader for newsgroup postings, my return address is shown as me@privacy.net. If someone gleans that address and sends anything to it, they get a nice little note bounced back to them... Go ahead and send some mail to it and see. Anyone can use the address.

2. In the sig line of my newsgroup postings is an address that really will get the mail to me, but its through www.despammed.com which is a forwarding service that filters spam. After it has gone through despamming, it shows up in my OE mailbox

3. I also use the me@privacy.net address for sites I have to register for when I'm sure I won't want to receive mail from them but they require an email addy to register or get info. This also cuts all of the opt out caca

3. For places I register where I might actually want to receive something from them and need to use a good address, but don't want it showing up in my OE mailbox or am afraid they will sell my addy or have a bunch of opt out stuff, I have a Hotmail address. It mostly collects Spam, but I check through it about once a week or so to see if there's anything legit there and delete the spam that has amassed.

4. For those very infrequent pesky things that do leak through all of that, I have my OE filters set to send certain words and phrases directly to my trash bin.

It sounds like a lot, but it's really easy to do and it cuts the crap WAAAAYYYYY down.

Ed your too pure !

Come on Chris. I didn't ask them not to send me any! :D

Ed

2. In the sig line of my newsgroup postings is an address that really will get the mail to me, but its through www.despammed.com which is a forwarding service that filters spam. After it has gone through despamming, it shows up in my OE mailbox

3. I also use the me@privacy.net address for sites I have to register for when I'm sure I won't want to receive mail from them but they require an email addy to register or get info. This also cuts all of the opt out caca

Well, it's obvious you know a lot more than I about email. Can you tell/help me how to git rid of the Koreans that are sending my 15-20 spams a day. I do a block sender and have set some rules about certain symbols, but it never stops. It's like they multiply. I use OE5.
TIA
Greg

Can you tell/help me how to git rid of the Koreans that are sending my 15-20 spams a day

You too!!! Those Koreans drive me MAD with their junk ... totally unreadable too. Please, if anyone knows what to do about these people, please tell all!

Originally posted by Sam


You too!!! Those Koreans drive me MAD with their junk ... totally unreadable too. Please, if anyone knows what to do about these people, please tell all!

I haven't had any of the Korean stuff show up, but read in a newsgroup that someone had copied some the odd symbols and put them in their filters. They said that had helped.

Hotmail Rules Change

This might be old news but came as a surprise to me.

thanks chris, I hadn't heard about that yet. it doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me, because microsoft does that kind of thing all the time and I just use that email address for all the forwards and junk mail I get. thanks for the info

- David :)

Thanks for passing on this great information Jakaleena, I'm sending it to all my personal contacts. :)

Originally posted by Ron
Thanks for passing on this great information Jakaleena, I'm sending it to all my personal contacts. :)

You're very welcome. My first and foremost rule these days is that I NEVER put my REAL address ANYWHERE on the web. I used to do that, and it really did get me good and spammed....

If for some reason I can't use one of the other email options I mentioned, I just don't register or use the website.

Wow - GREAT info Jak!! Thanks so much for posting it here.

As usual, I learn new (and useful) things here every day! :D

Jeanie

Thanks Jeanie. I REALLY hate getting junk mail in my personal email box. I have really gotten on a vendetta against it lately. I hope this stuff is helpful. I'd love to see those guys have absolutely no one to send that crap to!

I just wanted to add a couple of things to that. I also do things to try to keep from contributing to my friends and family getting spammed.

1. I always BCC emails I send to multiple recipients instead of using To or CC. BCC is Blind Carbon Copy, and it just means that the email addresses of the recipients will remain invisible. That way, because so much gets forwarded, I'm not inadvertantly passing other people's addys around the net to Gawd Knows Who!

2. I either cut and re-paste messages to be forwarded or erase any residual addresses of anyone left on it.

Also, I just had a relative mention today that he thinks that spammers are getting his address from those free e-card places since he has a few people prone to sending e-cards to him. I am not one to really send many e-cards, but I have sent a couple in the past. I think I'll keep that in mind when I'm trying to protect my friends addys. I'd hate to be the one passing THEIR info around to spammers!

Jak: There is an app one can use that sends the spam back to the source. I may even have d/l it. I loose stuff in my HD. I'll look for it today.

If I had a fast connection, I would send a big graphics file, like 20mb, to jam up their mail.
Greg

Originally posted by fugitive
Jak: There is an app one can use that sends the spam back to the source.

I just got one! Somebody else recommended it to me and it is WAAAYYYY cool! It previews mail from the server and you can bounce spam back to it's source before it's downloaded so that it looks like they have a bad address. And it's FREE!

It's at www.mailwasher.net