Email SPAMMERS!

[Bob Gollihur]

With my email address spread all over my site and others, I sure do get a lot of spam email, probably 2-3x as many emails a day, which is a helluva lot.

They are really getting clever lately-- I've gotten a bunch that masquerade as a Delivery Failure, Postmaster, etc. -- complete with all the gobbledegook (sp!) and a little spam message at the bottom -- HA! Made You Look!! Thought I cannot believe that their achievement makes you consider their offer!

Today's was a new one - a brief but obscenity-filled accusation that I was a spammer! With a little link to a sex site at the end.

I'll bet they get their share of responses (which confirms to the bastards that they have a valid email address to continue to spam and sell) from folks.

But somehow, I think the most money made by spammers is selling the email addresses back and forth to each other. It's amazing. I wish that they'd enact some meaningful legislation to at least cut back back on the volume!

[Mike Goodbar]

My favorite is the one from the widow of the recently slain Nigerian general who wants to transfer $60 million into your checking account for safekeeping. You keep 10 percent. All you have to do is supply your checking account number

[Bob Gollihur]

Originally posted by Mike Goodbar
My favorite is the one from the widow of the recently slain Nigerian general who wants to transfer $60 million into your checking account for safekeeping. You keep 10 percent. All you have to do is supply your checking account number

You mean that's not real!?!?! I was looking forward to retiring.

[anonymous0726]

Being a geek can be to your advantage.

I had one 'business' in particular to which I had replied innumerable times so as to get off of their list. After enough attempts I took matters into my own hands and wrote a program that sent copies of a personal, and not so nice, message from me rapid-fire. I let it run for the weekend, sending 3-400,000 copies of the message. I haven't heard from them since. The part that surprised me most is that my ISP didn't disable my account!

[oldsaw]

Hey Ray,

Why not share that little program with the rest of us. You shouldn't be the only one to have fun with spammers.

[anonymous0726]

This one wasn't very user-friendly and I pitched it. I guess I could write a better one without much effort. It's pretty illegal to use though, I think.

Also, you have to dig through the header of the email and see where it really originated. The sender's info can be faked for the average email application (yours) so that return mail goes into the ether, and then all that you get is a delivery failure message for each that you sent out. Another thing that happens is that a lot of these folks will send the mail via some kind of automation through a HotMail account or something, and by the time you try to reply the sending account has already been caught by HotMail and disabled. The Spammer doesn't care in this case as he has gotten his crap out on the wire. The thing I do is to track the header and see from where the message was originally sent and then look up as best I can the contact information for that company and make a polite and firm complaint. A lot of the crap comes out of Russia (.rz? or .ru), I think. This stuff I just delete with no hope of getting rid of it. I've been noticing less and less of the HotMail Spam-Scams. I think the free email services are finding ways to slow downthe offenders.

[jimclark68]

Bob, because I use internet e-mail (hotmail), and also because I stupidly selected a handle using my name, I get anywhere from 100-150 junk e-mails a week, the vast majority of which are porn. Hotmail has a filter, which catches much of it, but a few slip through each day.