spamming! who's protecting us?

sign up for free email on yahoo.com or google.com. UPgrade to the paid account ($20/ year on yahoo).

create a disposable address base word.
then setup disposable email addresses.

Use these to register with any site, or to buy stuff online.

If you start getting spammed on that address, you can simply delete the disposable address and no more spam.

You also know who gave out your address.

Another advantage is you can tell the incoming emails to automatically go to separate folders based on what the incoming disposable address is.

This without ANY filters which are often flaky.

One warning: if instead of typing in your address on a site, you are emailing friends or anyone else, be sure to change from the base address to one of the disposable addresses in case they have a trojan email virus that looks for email addresses in inboxes and sends them to spammers.

Since the base address you sign up for at Yahoo is different from the disposable email base address, no spammer can guess your base email address (which can't be changed) unless you send email out or post it somewhere.

I like yahoo's disposable addresses better than googles, as yahoo uses a '-' while I hear google uses a '+' which some sites don't accept in email addresses.

"I have been to some sites in the past and unregistered my email but to no avail."

Never do this. This just confirms your address as an active e-mail account to the spammers. When they sell their address lists to each other, they can charge more for yours because it's proven as a good address; you provided the proof for them.

"We also need to take steps in holding e-mail service providers to account for allowing illicit and irratating and unwanted mail."

In order to do that they're going to have to open your mail. Do you really want your e-mail provider reading and screening your e-mail? I'd consider it a violation of my privacy and would switch ISPs if they did this.

"in turn email providers will become more stringent and more careful about the volume of spam from there domains."

Most spammers don't use e-mail providers. Each is usually his own provider. E-mail providers can't be stringent about someone who doesn't use their services. Those few that do use the common e-mail providers set up a temporary account, send their e-mail, and abandon the account. They don't care if the account is deleted; they're done with it.

"what do you think? "

I think since spam bothers you so much, you need to do a little research on exactly how it works. Your suggestions are impractical.

thanks for the tips by the way.

I just feel that spam is the same annoying thing as getting piles of unwanted junk dropping on the door mat every door.

I do think though like the earlier days of linux if we put our heads together we could atleast try to illiminate most of it.

I have had the same address for about 9 years now. I have yet to receive more than 3 a month (if that, I often don't see s single spam email for months), usually from sources i have authorized so it is not technically spam.

You HAVE inadvertently signed up for something, posted yoru email address in a forum somwhere or SOMETHING. Email addresses aren't just guesses, they are mined by bots when they can't be obtained through agreements.

Yu omay even want to check yoru service providers TOS. I have looked at many and they ALL have a clause that they can share YOUR information with affiliates, just by your agreeing to the service, they all do it though.

When you reply to be removed from a list, most of the time you are simply confirming your email address to the spammer, and instead of getting removed, your number is added to a list to be sold.

"Who is protecting us?"

Who SHOULD be protecting you? if you don't feel it is yourself.

I have several email addresses, three are for use with website forums, etc. where yuo need an address to sign up. So I use the free Excite and GMail accounts for that garbage (sorry TR). As for my personal email, I don't type that address ANYWHERE online at all.

I pass it on to family that I trust does not have a problem with virus' and only peopl ethat I kNOW do not open junk mail and use other free emoticon, webshots crap. (thier address book can be collected and then YOU get spam because of THEIR lack of protection).

Other than a chosen few, I think there are maybe three TR peers with my actual email address, which was NEVER posted on TR.

If you were to post say, jdoe@hotmail.com in a web forum, there are bots that scour forums for valid addresses, they are then collected, compiled and sold to spammers.

ISP's are in a constant battle with good and evil. Some peopl erun legit businesses and send out thousands of email through teh ISP's service. Others do not, but they are hard to define without stopping legit businesses from working.

We had a problem at our office where the ISP would stop my distribution list from sending, in order to prevent spam, but it prevented ME from notifying opt-in clients too.

It's the same as those supid low budget spam filters, they are useless and create more false positives than teh spam they stop. Some block all email from the most popular Canadian domains, like SHAW.CA or TELUS.CA etc. What good is that?

So to answer your question, "Who is protecting us?" The answer Is and very well SHOULD BE, yourself. YOU need to protect yourself from SPAm, yes it can be done because I do it and have done it for a large company. Don't expect a fire and forget solution, good software needs heuristic refining, training etc. There's no such thing as afire and forget solution and it sure as hell isn't up to the ISP to decide WHO's email you receive and who's you do not.
They will stop blacklisted accounts but even then there are many problems with legit senders gettign blacklisted for using a server with forwarding abilities etc.

Take responsibility yourself, get a NEW email address and NEVER EVER type it in ANYWHERE. Offer people your address by phone, or from your own email account, don' tpost it anyewhere on line at all, it will get spammed.

A simple search with your favorite search engine will turn up several sites that provide temporary email addresses good for anything from five minutes to several hours. I use mail-filter.com. It has some limitations as your base mail-filter email address is easy to figure out but for general website sign-up use it's very handy. Simply apply a filter rule at mail-filter.com and never see another spam email in your inbox.

Ozmedia at excite dot com.

and by the way, that is my free account that is a spam haven, not my personal, spam free account.

We just ahad a nother thread on that one, sometimes it is imperative and you must do business with them. I also explain the drawbacks but for teh most part, unless someoen else has a virus there is little to no problem.

You're right you are more paranoid than me, but then again you have to be, you ARE American afterall. ZINGER!!!! :D

I totaly understand what your saying, but not everone wants to become a techno on perticular subjects thats why we have specialists in perticular fields.

Your right about the fact I am not highly enlightend when it comes to email but if you have noticed alot of unwanted and fraud mail thats comes from third world country's actually are listed mainly from yahoo, hotmail and gmail.

the reason why we have organisations and goverments is to look after the rights and welfare of all, this is not just for rule but for protection especially for those who are not fully aware.

If I wanted to go out and buy a tin of beans then do I need to start to learn about the manufacturing process and what takes place before I eat them?

Everyone has a field that they are better at than others so I think its sensible to raise those issues but leave the technical issue's to the knowits, it doesnt mean that the question shouldnt be pondered or asked?

still its always worth a try though.

All public I.P addresses are visible its actualy law that there made available.

and i did not say that spammers in perticular register there I.P address. thats done automaticaly and by whoever your provider or host is.
Ofcourse theres some will say Proxy ahah no no, you can still be traced because from the point of proxy you are still visible before that connection.
every person using a machine to access the public internet requires identification and there machine is linked to that access.

Yes its hard to stop people spamming becasue there moving constantly but there are steps we could try especially in regards to those who supply email accounts.
Like i said in my prior messages we could make them responsible and with geographics taken into account spamming isnt just from country's unreachable its actually here in our own backyards.

The problem is when we get unscrupulous behaviour eminating from country's where we have no access or the law agencies find it difficult to get extradition because of bad relations then we have a problem policing individuals as well as company's. That doesnt mean to say though they are untouchable.

How do you think that criminals with all the money in the world are finaly caught up with especially in connection with cyber crime. its imposible to leave an untracable digital footprint and any hacker police authority will tell you that.

so anybody thinking that you are truly untouchable you need to think again?

we can all sit here and put on our geek heads and try to manipulate peoples words at there expens to try to make ourselves look important and intelegeant but at the end of the day true professional will see the subject and not there own eago and definately not try to inflate it.

lets think about this: if eddison was told by his neighbour that the light bulb was imposible to invent do you think he believed him?

Nothing is imposible, and its what motivates us in our private lives as well as our working lives.

my point is the qoutes made in my replys where questions not facts. and if we raise a question then doesnt that lead in turn to an answer?

Now Im going to put an answer that I believe in principal could partly help solve this kind of problem?

I think that given a geographical position in registering an email, should be locked to that location. its the same addage as not hiding your phone number from the call your making. If you have nothing to hide why hide it! and yes i do beleive that this is posible because its already in use with mobile phones.

So since myself and one other is the only persons so far to actually put in somthing positive and contributory is ther any other I.T, Professional and alike that can do the same?

So all those that have replyed and not given the reasons why its not posible or Impracticle well; Ummm how much do you realy know is what is on everyones mind now?

This is where my questions on accountability of the providers of e-mail come back to. we can atleast develop away to reduce its size and quantity and find a short term solution untill the long term.

no one ever said
"Are we saying that there rights and protection is less important than ours"
If any thing, the person who refuses to take action on their own part is saying this.

"I will but what about others who ca'nt or just dont or willy never understand"

Not to be rude, but what do you do with a child that just cant grasp the concept "fire hot"? You damn well don't give em matches. Do you really want to have your personal privacy violated because some guy in Nevada cant work a spam filter? And if an on-line user can not deal with spam, then protecting their identity will be almost impossible. The internet is not a right, its a privilege.

"here are billions of people across the globe that rely on the developers and solution finders to help protect them and its there responsibility to carry that forward"
This is a good point, but can you rely on a developer if you have no way of judging their competence?

"its like i said to some one in an earlier response if i buy a tin of beans do i really want to now how its manufactured before i eat it?"
Well, that depends, are you horribly allergic to any thing in it? Ever wonder why so many products say "made in a plant that processes nuts?" Its because many people do want to know about the manufacturing. The product warns them there may be danger, but the consumer takes the appropriate steps.

"yes some may get desensitized to spam but i feel the majority just feel that no one wants to realy do anything about it?"

desensitization is the mechanism of indifference. And they are correct to a certain point, spam filter companies have no desire to END spam. If they did, their billion dollar industry would be gone. Spammers get more virulent and sneaky as spam filters get more effective, a nasty circle. Each is feeding the other.

Overall, making the ISP responsible for spam is like making the DOT responsible for a drunk drivers actions. "Well, if you hadn't built that road, he never could have hit me!"
Also, as an email admin, I can tell you, if you are getting more then 4 or 5 spam a week, you did something to get on a mailing list, and it will get sold, and your spam will multiply.
Our spam filter blocks about 1 million spam a week. Of that 1 million, 97% are dictionary attacks dropped (never bounced)because of no valid recipient, of the remaining 3%, 2.8% can be reliably blocked by reputation filters, and a simple custom filter blocks the rest (we use 3 custom rules).
And while this is very effective for our business, the spam is still using internet bandwidth. Going after the spammers is the only "effective" way atm to slow down spam.
Like the war on drugs, its completely un-winnable by any means (on a large scale), until education is improved and profitability is removed.

After telling the manager why I was taking my business elsewhere.

Off-topic: Fantasy racing involves each player picking real-world drivers and then getting credit for the points those drivers earn at the track. Rules, dues, and prized vary by league.

In our case, we take NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers and sort them into five groups based on current point standings. Before each race you pick one driver from each group. You can pick a driver only nine times in the 36-race season. Just before the race starts I publish each player's selections so everybody can see who everyone else selected. After the race I total up your points (okay, the software does it for me) and publish the results. We're a "workplace" league with most members from work, with relatives and invited friends. We charge $5.00 each a year to cover the web site and software, and don't pay any cash prizes; strictly a bragging-rights and trash-talking league. Peer mail me if you want the gory details, or visit

http://www.switchracing.com

No need for 500.

I just use one online account for 99.9% of all web logins, etc where an email address is requried.

The others I have are for specific uses, I don't kill them off or use them temporarily. I simply don't use my personal address for anything, everything else is on a free email account. One main inbox for most of it, I just scan for messages from a TR memner before I delete all messages in one go, once a month. VERY little effort and NO spam at home.

Just about everythign you buys these days has an online registration form. I NEVER register anything, you simply don't need to.

If you have a recipt, you can return or have teh product repaired, you DON'T need to register it. They also tease you with offers of free updates and free coupons etc. These are usually useless and never used either. If they have a deal for you, you will be bale to get it through other means, just as anyone else will, its never s ecret savings club.

As for phone numbers, Radio Shack used ot do that, (they were notorious for info collected to buy a blank cassette tape).

I just give them a number that's off by one digit, IF they insist. That way even at a later date, it was simply written down wrong by the employee, close enough if a warranty issue that requires such proof but they never do.

How is the next mass market email campaign going to go if spam gets stopped?

If you want to attack the real problem, you need to look a bit closer to your desk.

Wait, you're going to tell me that none of your mass mailings are unsolicited right.

How do you tell a solicited mail from an unsolicited one? You mark it as unsolicited as soon as you read it. The purpose of the mail, to be read.

Seeing the wee technical problem here?

No one is protecting us from spam, people in sales, marketing and business development have them assassinated as soon as they foolishly raise their heads above the parapet.

it was a common trick to play. but the guy down the hall was the "admin" for our campus so it was no biggie.

I don't know anybody who sells sceptic tanks.

and you do indeed have the right to have an opinion, and I defend your right to that opinion, even if I disagree with you.

I had a bunch more but I realized I had no way of saying it that would not come across to you as rude, judging by your response to my earlier posts.

"of things in your replys that did make me stop and think about the otherside. but that doesnt mean they will drift away from the original point."
Glad you stopped to think, and at least you know what the other point of view and its arguments are, your one up on me, since you have not "presented your side" so to speak.
Now, I challenge you to make me stop and think about your side.

now it seems you do, or at least have the opportunity ;)

will always be a part of life. Just as advertisements are always there in every medium. So long as there is a service that reaches a multitude of people at once, there will be advertisers taking advantage of it. Postal service has been inundatd with Junk Mail for years now, and that has not gone away. Because to do so would mean creating a law banning such things, which would then carry over into a Freedom of Speech argument. No one wants to go there!

So of course when email service was created, junk email service followed right behind. Can you really hold a company accountable for [b]annoying you[/b]? I could see attempting to go after them if they were mass sending viruses or phishing links. But normal spam that simply advertises services or products just goes along with the flyers you get in your snail mail box.

Just plop them in the garbage/recycle bin.

Tink :)