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JUNK E-MAIL!!!!

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Does anyone know how those spam lists work? My Hotmail account is out of control. I get upward of 80 junk messges a day, so if I don't check it very regularly I could possibly miss messages that I need to get because the mailbox gets over the storage limit.

Now if I sit here and unsubscribe to every one of these messages will that stop the mail, or do each of these companies likely buy my address from someone else who gives it to them? Hence I get off one list but the next week they sell it again to another company.

Please help, this is getting so annoying.

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Do you use the Junk Mail filter?
    That gets rid of about half.

    I have got a Block list as long as my arm too, so that stops a lot of the routine ones. <IMG SRC="smile.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    Moral of the story?
    Never give your email address away to random sites, and always tick the box that asks if they can give your details to "reputable" companies.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    When you display your email address on a website, put SPAM at some opportune point in the address.
    As far as I know, emails are found on websites (like this one) and lists are produced.
    I'm not sure of the exact mechanism.

    The only reason I don't get loads of spam is beacuse the uni mailserver blocks spam (something to do with reverse DNS lookups).

    Use the spam protection/junk mail protection thing in hotmail. You can also tick the box next to the email and click "block".

    Replying is probably a waste of time.

    Hope that helps <IMG SRC="smile.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I've got the Junk Mail filter set to exclusive in Hotmail. The problem is not the messages that get through to my Inbox, its the messages that fill up my Junk Mailbox take up so much room that they always threaten to put me over the limit.

    I will try blocking every one that I get from now on. Hopefully that will help.

    Thanks guys.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Why don't you try changing your e-mail address, tell everyone who could possibly NEED your e-mail address that it has changed and then not check your other account, thus allowing it to close.

    I changed mine about 6 months ago and haven't had any spam yet. I know it is a hassle, but worth it in the end!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by BumbleBee:
    <STRONG>Why don't you try changing your e-mail address, tell everyone who could possibly NEED your e-mail address that it has changed and then not check your other account, thus allowing it to close.

    I changed mine about 6 months ago and haven't had any spam yet. I know it is a hassle, but worth it in the end!</STRONG>

    Well,

    I really like my e-mail address. It's easy for people to remember because its my whole name. Yeah, I know I'm lucky not to have alexca345392@hotmail.com

    I might have to do it though, or just suck it up and stop complaining.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    yeah, one of my email addresses is andy@SPAMamlabs.co.uk (forget the SPAM!), and spammers sent stuff to andy@something.com and ended up spamming me and everyone else with andy@something as their email address...bastards!!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Don't post your email address on forums either...some (desperate) companies use bots to scan forums etc. for them <IMG SRC="frown.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    Blocking the addresses doesn't help, Hotmail only lets you block 500 addresses, and as I found out, that limit it no where near enough <IMG SRC="frown.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    There was an amusing way I heard about to get revenge on spam mailing bots, but it requires a little hacking <IMG SRC="wink.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    [ 24-05-2002: Message edited by: Kiezo ]
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Kiezo:
    <STRONG>Don't post your email address on forums either...some (desperate) companies use bots to scan forums etc. for them <IMG SRC="frown.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    Blocking the addresses doesn't help, Hotmail only lets you block 500 addresses, and as I found out, that limit it no where near enough <IMG SRC="frown.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    There was an amusing way I heard about to get revenge on spam mailing bots, but it requires a little hacking <IMG SRC="wink.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    [ 24-05-2002: Message edited by: Kiezo ]</STRONG>

    That's the bloody word...bots!
    Tell me about the hacking <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by mr turbo head:
    <STRONG>

    Tell me about the hacking <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon"></STRONG>

    Basically the idea is to hack into the account of a bot that's mailed you, and send an email saying you're interested in whatever product to another account that's mailed you. Both bots will 'think' the other is interested in their product/service, so will send emails bouncing back and forth to one another. This only stops when one of the bots or the mail account crashes <IMG SRC="biggrin.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    I've never tried it though. Don't quite fancy facing the wrath of a multi-billion dollar porn company lol.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    hack, hack, hack...mmm <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
    can you program/script in PHP, by any chance?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Ever heard of the honeypot trap for spam? That's quite good

    Oh, and Alessandro, that's what you derserve for having a Hotmail account <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by Alistair:
    <STRONG>Ever heard of the honeypot trap for spam? That's quite good

    Oh, and Alessandro, that's what you derserve for having a Hotmail account <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon"></STRONG>

    Yeah, well <IMG SRC="tongue.gif" border="0" ALT="icon"> to you too. <IMG SRC="biggrin.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    Good to see you're still around. Thought you left with the mass exodus of Ubers a week ago.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    never reply to a junk message.
    A lot of e-mails are sent to "unknown recipients" and you will usually only get an e-mail from a specific place once or twice before it stops, as it will assume the address doesn't exist or isn't used anymore.
    If you reply, or attempt to unsubscribe then you will confirm your existence and make the problem a thousand times worse.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I have similar problem, the way i did it was, created another Hotmail account, and everytime my e-mail address got a spam mail i replied to it with my new address, from then on my new account which i dont use that often gets spammed a hell of a lot and my actual account gets around 25 junk mail messages a week, and even then they go straight to my junk mail box.

    If you do this, you need to copy all the info they sent one address, and paste it into the compose of the new account and send it! It worked with me, and a couple of my friends who did it. I think it must confuse the automailer systems or something, into thinking they are getting their mail re-directed, so they just send it direct to the account they recieved it from.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I used to reply to them all and to the unsubscribe function, but apparently this makes it worse as then they know you use your email address. And most of the time when you mail them saying UNSUBSCRIBE you just get a mail back saying the address doesn't exist! Aaargh!! I hate junk mail. Yahoo have some tips on getting rid of junk mail, try www.yahoo.com
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    It's no good if you use web-based mail rather than using Outlook or Outlook Express, but I really do rate Mail Washer very highly.

    Mail Washer is freeware, and it is easy to use to filter incoming mails very thouroughly. What makes it different though is that it allows you to 'bounce' unwanted mails exactly as if your email address didn't work. Even the worst spammers have to clean out the dead accounts fairly often, so tis is the surest way to get deleted from the spammers' databases.

    http://www.mailwasher.net/

    Oh, the good news is that tey plan to support Hotmail and AOL webmail accounts in a couple of months too.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    first of all...set your filter to exclusive. dont worry about people not being able to get through to you when you forget them in your addie book or they suddenly change addresses...make sure that about once a week or more have a quick peek in at your junk mail to make sure its all junk.

    secondly...ever seen the bit of a junk mail message that says "click here to remove yourself from our mailing lists"???? well i know for a fact that as soon as you click that link you are proving that you are a real person (a lot of the junk mail people send emails to random addresses in the hope a few of them are actual addresses) and that the email account they sent the message to is used. this will get you a lot more junk mail, even though it might not be from the same one you "unsubscribed" to; they will have several different addresses that can be put to work assaulting your email account with a barrage of crap emails trying to sell you anything from houses to lawn treatments.

    and last but not least...when signing up for something like a free host or a community, make sure you read the little tick boxes.
    some of them say "tick this box to receive amazing offers from other companies!!!" and when you leave a few of them un-ticked there are often ones below them that say "click here if you DO NOT want to recieve amazing offers from...."

    blocking also helps to an extent...although im sure everyone has noticed that when they block (for example only) "mike@good-deals-4-u.com", they will recieve another junk email message from "sally@good-deals-4-u.com", when sally is blocked: yep, you guessed it; "stephen@good-deals-4-u.com" sends you one and so on and so forth.

    sorry its so long winded...i havent had a chance to write lately so its come back with a vengeance:)
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If the main problem is that your junk mail folder is filling up and using your allotted webspace the nset it so that it deletes the junkmails as soon as they enter the folder, I am sure this can be done on Hotmail as I had to do it. I opened my Hotmail account at work on the Friday, then checked it on the Monday and had over 900 email messages, it was rediculous, it was froze so I could not even delete them.
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