[R-390] Increase in spam

[Tom Norris]

On Oct 25, 2006, at 11:22 AM, Francesco Ledda wrote:

> Same problem here.........  very tired of it!


Before you read this, before you do anything else, google your email  
address.  If you have multiple addresses, google them all.  I dare  
you.  If you want to use an example, use mine from my defunct ISP  
"badger at telalink.net"  Then rethink a bit about the virus issue.

In general --

A lot of it depends on archiving methods, and *much* of it depends on  
the ISP.  I was getting spam the day I set up my account BEFORE I  
sent an email.  I've gotten "shotgun" spam to several of the domains  
that I administer, that sort of spam just goes for random names  
within the domain.  A lot of spam harvesters are getting smarter even  
if you "disguise" your email address within a message - such as  
"myself at my.domain hates stupid spam.com" where your real address  
may have been "myself at my.domain.com"  I don't cloak my email address  
on my military equipment list, and spam harvesters worldwide want to  
sell me all sorts of things that I'll not mention here, and I've won  
international lotteries and nigerian bankers have wanted to entrust  
me with billions. My net worth should be more than Bill Gates by now...

But....

Don't have outlook automatically open anything or use Java.  Or  
better yet, use some mailer other than outlook, anything.  Mozilla  
has a good email program builtin, their's Eudora that I've used for  
over a decade and until this simpler Mac Mail won  me over.  There's  
Agent, Pegasus, any number of mail programs.  Microsoft isn't  
inherently *bad*, but it has to be configured not to be that way.   
Me, I tried Mac a few years ago, and now like it's OS too.  And if  
set up properly no major leaks or that I've been able to break into w/ 
i my own network at home.


But you already know this, and I'm preaching to the choir...

Seriously, google my old address, google my call, or my old call,  
ka4rkt.  Chances are that if you find mine, you'll find the email of  
the person I was talking to.  And none of this counts the folks that  
put their email and web site address in their sig line. Any of that  
info is ripe picking for harvesting software to grab and stick in a  
database.  This isn't new, there's just more of it.  I think I got my  
first piece of personal spam in 1990 or something.

Oh well, I'm babbling, it's my evening meds... but I had to chime in.

73

Tom NU4G