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Spam Collection
Feb. 1st, 2005 10:22 amI did a little experiment in January regarding spam. Basically I didn’t delete any spam from my primary email accounts. The results are mildly interesting.
I was working with three email accounts which I shall refer to as Yahoo, Cox1, and Cox2. Yahoo has become my primary email account. Cox1 used to be my main email account, but I went through a bout when my email software (Eudora) was giving me problems, so I told my friends to start using my Yahoo account. Cox2 is an account tied to my game company from which I also received two mailing lists, Arizona Board Gamers and Board Game Designers. I do not send out mail from either of the Cox accounts, and the only valued mail that I receive are when my Dad sends me email to it after me having repeatedly asked him not to, I’m going to have to go and change his address book so my Cox1 account is no longer there. Once he sent a reply to my Cox1 account when I sent the original from my Yahoo account, I have no idea how he managed that.
Trivial though it may be, here are the results.
Yahoo: 51 spam messages.
Cox1: 504 spam, 20 real.
Cox2: 335 spam, 291 real.
Unfortunately I can’t delete the Cox1 account as it was the account that I initially set up when I got Cox internet access. The Cox2 account will go away in the near future as I’m changing hosting providers for my web sites and will simply delete the account soon. It receives so many real messages because both lists are fairly active.
Like I said, mildly interesting. I’ll probably do a follow-up post on how to help reduce the exposure of your email address to spam harvesters. The number one rule to this is NEVER CLICK AN UNSUBSCRIBE LINK! There are some lists that will respect that, but most will not even though they are required by law to do so. All you’ve done is confirm that this is an address that someone actively monitors, then your address is ripe for selling to other spammers.
There seems to be a critical mass point where you go from your address being used by a handful of spammers to the point where your address is being sold on CDs to any bulk emailer who wants to buy tonnes of addresses in one shot. I have no idea at what point that mass is achieved, but once it happens, be prepared to discard the address.
Some people don’t mind receiving spam and manually deleting it from their inbox. All I can say is ‘to each there own.’ I find it inconvenient and don’t want it. Cox does an excellent job of filtering spam – my Cox2 account had only 3 messages that were spam that their filters did not catch, that’s better than a 99% success rate. Couple that with filters in Eudora or Outlook and you can move all messages in which the subject starts with “—SPAM – “ to a spam filter folder, and you’ve just done a remarkable job of sanitizing your system. Unfortunately I deleted the messages from Cox1 before thinking of this little study.
I do have to confess one thing – I have bought one item from a spammer. No, I did not try to enlarge my breasts and penis, though I’ve often wondered what I’d end up with if I bought both. I bought some software from a spammer. Some of the software spammers are selling gray-market software, it’s copies of the discs that are sold in bulk to computer manufacturers, when the smaller operations go out of business, people buy their inventory. It’s legit software, though you might have problems getting support for it. Youz payz yo money, youz takez yo chancez.
I was working with three email accounts which I shall refer to as Yahoo, Cox1, and Cox2. Yahoo has become my primary email account. Cox1 used to be my main email account, but I went through a bout when my email software (Eudora) was giving me problems, so I told my friends to start using my Yahoo account. Cox2 is an account tied to my game company from which I also received two mailing lists, Arizona Board Gamers and Board Game Designers. I do not send out mail from either of the Cox accounts, and the only valued mail that I receive are when my Dad sends me email to it after me having repeatedly asked him not to, I’m going to have to go and change his address book so my Cox1 account is no longer there. Once he sent a reply to my Cox1 account when I sent the original from my Yahoo account, I have no idea how he managed that.
Trivial though it may be, here are the results.
Yahoo: 51 spam messages.
Cox1: 504 spam, 20 real.
Cox2: 335 spam, 291 real.
Unfortunately I can’t delete the Cox1 account as it was the account that I initially set up when I got Cox internet access. The Cox2 account will go away in the near future as I’m changing hosting providers for my web sites and will simply delete the account soon. It receives so many real messages because both lists are fairly active.
Like I said, mildly interesting. I’ll probably do a follow-up post on how to help reduce the exposure of your email address to spam harvesters. The number one rule to this is NEVER CLICK AN UNSUBSCRIBE LINK! There are some lists that will respect that, but most will not even though they are required by law to do so. All you’ve done is confirm that this is an address that someone actively monitors, then your address is ripe for selling to other spammers.
There seems to be a critical mass point where you go from your address being used by a handful of spammers to the point where your address is being sold on CDs to any bulk emailer who wants to buy tonnes of addresses in one shot. I have no idea at what point that mass is achieved, but once it happens, be prepared to discard the address.
Some people don’t mind receiving spam and manually deleting it from their inbox. All I can say is ‘to each there own.’ I find it inconvenient and don’t want it. Cox does an excellent job of filtering spam – my Cox2 account had only 3 messages that were spam that their filters did not catch, that’s better than a 99% success rate. Couple that with filters in Eudora or Outlook and you can move all messages in which the subject starts with “—SPAM – “ to a spam filter folder, and you’ve just done a remarkable job of sanitizing your system. Unfortunately I deleted the messages from Cox1 before thinking of this little study.
I do have to confess one thing – I have bought one item from a spammer. No, I did not try to enlarge my breasts and penis, though I’ve often wondered what I’d end up with if I bought both. I bought some software from a spammer. Some of the software spammers are selling gray-market software, it’s copies of the discs that are sold in bulk to computer manufacturers, when the smaller operations go out of business, people buy their inventory. It’s legit software, though you might have problems getting support for it. Youz payz yo money, youz takez yo chancez.
