I HATE SPAM, I HATE SPAM, I HATE SPAM!

MONDAY, JULY 7 2003 @ 11:17 AM

I'm sure everybody does, but I didn't realize how much of it I am actually being sent, until now. I've been away from the computer during the weekend, and the levels of spam I just found reach the 60% order! that is without considering the messages from mailing lists.

Believe me, I'm not looking to increase the size of any part of my anatomy, nor I'm interested in becoming a millionaire overnight. Not to talk about the we-want-you-to-keep-this-millions-because-we-trust-you and 'Lotery Winning' scams, that appear to be increasing and diversifying its sources... I just read one of them written in german.

The point is that I just spent 2 hours cleaning my inbox, two hours I could have spent getting some work done. What do we need to get rid of unwanted email? Technical solutions abound, and yet again, none of them is 100% accurate. Everytime a new product hits the market, it won't take more than 2 weeks until spammer find a way around it. Besides, sometimes people end up wasting more time looking for legitimate messages in the spam folder...

If it is true that spam is being generated by about 200 people, why is it so damn hard to find and put them away?!

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LINCOLN

JULY 7 2003 @ 12:02 PM

seems like a lot of buzz is spreading about Knowspam, which may or may not be a fad but worth a shot. I've seen a number of people sign up via word of mouth alone and it seems like a good time to have a look into it. I personally think I'm getting a complex about my, ahem, functionality, as I only get one particular male-focused email. Do spammers cater to females?

RYAN TERRY

JULY 7 2003 @ 01:00 PM

I use www.mailblocks.com to block spam. It can read your pop3, aol, hotmail, yahoo, etc e-mail. The way it works is it will only except e-mail from people in your address book. If someone isn't in your address book it sends them a challenge response e-mail to prove that they're human. It costs around $10 for 3 years of service. Not too shabby. It's worth looking in to.

KRISTIN HENRY

JULY 7 2003 @ 01:16 PM

The problem with "blocking" mail from anyone not in your address book, is that you'll only get mail from folks you already know. Not a great way to interact with potential clients or collaborators...or anyone else.

We can replace mail to links with forms, and keep addresses in a database. But then, when you least expect it, somebody you know will send out an email to everyone in their addressbook without even BCC.

Rights to privacy might help, since Spam is really a subset of general personal information abuse.