Off Topic Subject of Spam

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Ron.M

Posts: 7051
Joined: Jul. 7 2003
From: Scotland

Off Topic Subject of Spam

Tomas mentioned that he had a bit of reluctance to sign on to any Forum for the fear of being spammed.
I'm interested in how these spammers get hold of email addresses.
I know about email harvesters etc, but one thing that puzzles me is this...
I have an email address associated with my small electronics business.
I have never posted anything using this address, I only use it to request data and information on semiconductors etc, the contacts only being bona fide electronics companies such as Philips etc.
Yet I've had a few, not many on this address. How come?

I have another address I use to order stuff from ebay and amazon and I regularly get spammed on this one, despite any privacy policy.

Recently, I emailed Florian for the first time to his Hotmail account.
The next day I received a spam with the header "Flamenco Digeridoo"!
Interesting, since my email is flamenco@ and Florian has an Australian Hotmail account!
I mean, this was a private email, not a post, so how do they do it?
Does that mean Hotmail sells on email addresses of anyone who writes to a Hotmail email address?
I sympathise with Tomas here....
This business needs to be cleaned up.
I already have a completely unuseable ISP account due to spam running at about 500 a week.
I don't want the others to go the same way. It's ridiculous.
I'm just puzzled how they get a hold of the address!
Does anybody know?

cheers

Ron

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 9 2003 17:22:20

Jim Opfer

Posts: 1876
Joined: Jul. 19 2003
From: Glasgow, Scotland.

RE: Off Topic Subject of Spam (in reply to Ron.M)

Hi Ron,
Reminds me of when I was wee, never did like it, but my folks used to get it all the time, still I guess times were harder then and they didn't have as much choice as we do taday with supermarkets an all!
Cheers :-)
Jim.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 9 2003 17:59:25

Thomas Whiteley

Posts: 786
Joined: Jul. 8 2003
From: San Francisco Bay Area

Marty Python "Spam, Spam, Spam,... (in reply to Ron.M)

Ron;

My dad was in the United States Marine Corp and had the opportunity to visit lots of interesting Pacific Islands. The last time he had Spam was on a place called Okinawa, from April through June of 1945. When he came home he would not allow Spam in the house! Perhaps that is why thus far for the most part I have been spared! Knock on wood or a synthetic, environmentally, and politically correct material.

It is not that we lack empathy for you and those that enjoy the problem with Spam regardless of its source. What you have described is one of the negative aspects of the Internet. As so many Internet users insist and expect of anything on the Internet, Spam is free. But how do you prevent it from getting into your computer?

Now here is something strange! Recently I returned from vacation, on July 3rd. While I was away my Internet provider changed from AT&T to Comcast. My e-mail and web site addresses also changed. I had to manually configure my new e-mail address and set up my account. It had gone from @attbi.com to @comcast.net.

After setting up my new account on July 4th, I opened Outlook and received several pieces of Spam of the e-mail variety! They were dated between July 1 and July 3rd, before I created my accounts, of which there are several. The Spammer’s had me covered before I existed!

Tom

_____________________________

Tom
http://home.comcast.net/~flamencoguitar/flamenco.html

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 9 2003 20:43:06

Guest

RE: Off Topic Subject of Spam (in reply to Ron.M)

Ron, this has also puzled me, the owners of websites know what pages on the internet you have been looking at previously, also your computers name and operating system, this could be used by website creaters to make money by selling this info to spamers, if you were looking at for example at www latinoladyboys.com, the administrators of this site will know this, and I aint kidding.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 13 2003 9:23:21

Guest

RE: Off Topic Subject of Spam (in reply to Guest)

quote:

owners of websites know what pages on the internet you have been looking at previously, also your computers name and operating system

I can tell which browser you are using, version of OS etc. and which website (if any) referred you here by URL, which would mean www latinoladyboys.com would have to host a link to this site

Your IP address and any requesting host name is not going to give the spammers much help with your email address.

Spammers generate many different combinations of email addresses, harvest the Internet and hack databases. They only need you a reply and they have a live one. So delete.

REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE | Date Aug. 13 2003 12:41:50