Successful Spammers?

[Kuciwalker]

slowwhand

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
As far as AOL goes, there is no such thing as an "upgrade" .
AOL isn't even the internet.

You don't think I'm stupid enough to actually look at the garbage AOL provides do you?

It works well enough for email and web browsing and that is all I need or use.

[FrustratedPoet]

The AOL adds are pretty funny, though. To look at those you'd think that streaming music and downloading movie trailers was only possible if you sign up for AOL. They even seem to suggest that searching for stuff is some kind of magical feature.

And the concept of "AOL Keywords" makes me laugh too. I once saw an advert on the side of a bus for Harry Potter the Philosopher's Stone. The advert made the express point of telling us that, if you wanted to find the movie's official website, the AOL Keyword you should use was ... wait for it.... "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". You could have knocked me down with a feather. Thank goodness those kind folks at AOL saw fit to help us, we'd have had no idea what to type into search engines otherwise.

[SlowwHand]

AOL breeds incompetence, and spam.

[Flandrien]

Apolyton in the subject makes me open the mail, that's for sure.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
AOL breeds incompetence, and spam.

I am not in the business of defending AOL but before you claim they aren't doing anything about spam check these stories.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2988207.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2949887.stm

This one is interesting from a european point of view

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3068627.stm

No ISP can afford to have its users annoyed by spam so it is in their interest to stop it. AOL is particularly prone to this since many of its users aren't capable of dealing with spam themselves so the company has a lot to lose if they don't take a lead on fighting spam.

[SlowwHand]

Anyone who uses AOL is going to burn in Hell.

[Adagio]

I get tons of spam each day, but I've got mailwasher installed, which automaticly deletes spam messages, and messages with the usual words in the subject/name field...

It deletes automaticly about 80-90% of all spam

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Spiffor
For some time, I opened to go to the "unsubscribe" link. Since the spam I got trebled in a matter of days, I quickly stopped

Sucker

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Sucker

Well, someone working in a mortgage agency (that was Plato IIRC) told me that they had strict legal requirements to stop spamming those who unsubscribed. What a sucker I was to trust a mortgage salesman

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Well, someone working in a mortgage agency (that was Plato IIRC) told me that they had strict legal requirements to stop spamming those who unsubscribed. What a sucker I was to trust a mortgage salesman

Oh, I think you can trust him on this matter. The Spammer who sent the eMil to you probably won´t send another Mail.

He jut didn´t mention, what they do with your eMail-Aress after they have removed it from their Spamming-List.
As you have klicked thiir Link and therefore have proven to the Spammers that anybody reads the Maiols they send to your eMail-Addi, they can sell your Adress for a lot of money to other Spamers (AFAIK there are large Lists with thousands of eMail-Adies in them, which are sold from one Spammer to another, those which contain Adresses which don´t respond to the Spam [and therefore have no proof that anyone reads them] are a lot less worth than those where it is proven that the eMails get retrieved and read [for example by klicking on unsubscribe ])

So instead of receiving one Mail per Month from this one Spammer you receive 10 Mails from 10 Spammers, beginning a short while after you klicked on unsubscribe.

[SlowwHand]

All one does by "unsubscribing" is verify a working address.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
Spiff: Replying to any form of spam mail is the worst thing you can do. It lets them know they've found an active email address. But I guess you realise that now.

Back in the good ol' days when non-RFC compliant mail servers were common and spammers used to operate from their own domain (emailking, etc.), I used to play back with spammers.

Now I just delete delete delete.

[Shi Huangdi]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
I upgraded to AOL 8.0 a couple of weeks ago. I get occasional spam emails but now happily click the "report as spam" button and they disappear.

I know - I must be the only person on Poly who is actually quite happy with AOL but there you go.

What is really nice about 8.0 is the pop-up blocker. There seems to be more pop-ups on Poly recently and a typical visit now racks up 5 or 6 pop-ups but not with AOL, all I see is a counter going up and don't have to close the unwanted windows.

Didn't see this before.

You do realize you don't need AOL for pop-up blocking, don't you? You can download one free of the interent.

[Egbert]

I have had a private e-mail address for about four years and so far I think I have only received one spam .

I have had an e-mail address at work for nearly two years and have yet to be spammed.

Am I lucky or what?

BTW I deleted my spam (all one of it) without reading it.