Where spam comes from.

[FrustratedPoet]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2969783.stm

A study on e-mail spam in the US proves what we knew all along. In fact, it was blindingly obvious from the beginning, not that the researchers let that stop them.

For anyone plagued by junk e-mails, the question that often baffles most is how did the spammers get your address.

US researchers at the Center for Democracy and Technology set out to answer this question in the summer of 2002.

They found that e-mail addresses posted on websites or in newsgroups attract the most spam.

Spam is estimated to account for up to 40% of global e-mail traffic and is causing a massive headache for businesses, which are losing billions in productivity.

[Dauphin]

director@fbi.gov

[Skanky Burns]

Thank goodness that research was carried out.

[optimus2861]

Newsgroups are probably the worst; the spammers can easily harvest thousands of email addresses just by having an automated script retrieve the headers of all the articles on a news server. A lot of them will be invalid addresses these days, but still more than enough of them are valid to make it worth the spammers' while to check them.

Google doesn't help in this regard; you can't use an invalid email address when posting to newsgroups via their website .

[Guynemer]

My favorite spam is the spam I get on at least a thrice-daily basis that asks me if I'm sick of spam.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Guynemer
My favorite spam is the spam I get on at least a thrice-daily basis that asks me if I'm sick of spam.

I seem to get a whole lot from companies that can enlarge my penis up to 4 inches....Why would I want that kind of handicap? 12 inches would be much to long for my girlfriend!!!


Spec.

[Alex]

I love the one that says "This is not spam"

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Spec
I seem to get a whole lot from companies that can enlarge my penis up to 4 inches....Why would I want that kind of handicap? 12 inches would be much to long for my girlfriend!!!

Not if she gets her cervix dialated.

[MBD]

Two kinds of spam that I particularly like:

1) The ones that are from the "Mail Delivery Subsystem" telling me that my email was undeliverable and to "check the transcript for details" when I know I didn't send any email. I got six of those in a row at one time.

2) The ones that have my address as the sender.

[ceroomaster]

Well, I've just given out my bank details to a CEO in Nigeria, apparently he's giving m,e a few million pounds because he's not entilied to it because it'll get taxed or something. My penis will be enlarged to 12". MSN 8 is fantastic, so I'm going to download that because it fights spam! And I'm gonna run this .com file I had from big@boss.com.

Oh wait, no. I'm *not* an idiot.
(realises that is a debatable point)


Regards

[Q Classic]

it's kinda clever, quite a few places are now moving to list emails as:

apolyton_at_apolyton.net

unfortunately, all it takes is a simple script to bypass that...

[Skanky Burns]

I like the apolyton method. Where they store a valid email address, allow anyone to send email to that address, but don't let anyone actually see that address. Any spam would have to go through apolyton's system and as such would be prevented from doing so.

Or you could just get an account with a decent provider that removes spam.

[Paradox]

Originally posted by MBD
Two kinds of spam that I particularly like:

.1......

2) The ones that have my address as the sender.

Err didnt you mean particualrly DISlike ....

[Paradox]

Ive just done a quick calculation of the time Ive wasted in last 10 yrs clicking spam mail from hotmail and turfing in the trash box.....scary thought....multiply that by say 20% of world pop with access to email + net and you have a rough approx of
20% * 6.2 billion * 30 secs to delete mail = approx 10 million yrs lost in productivity per day worldwide lost to spam...and its not even a human doing the sabotage!!!.....WTF???!!! And theyre worried about productivity in the workplace :hmmm

Scary......