How does spam work?

[cgarr]

Not the "Shoulder pork Artificial Meat" but the mail? Some days my spam folder is full of crap and other times I can go days and have nothing in it? And the address on the mail is not even close to mine

[sc_rufctr]

Good question. I wouldn't mind knowing either.

[cstreit]

Law of averages

If .00001% respond or click through, you're happy because you sent it to 500,000,000 people.

[nineball]

yep. and when you forward that joke email that was forwarded to you eventually it will end up in a spammer's inbox and he will have hundreds, if not thousands, of new email addresses to send out more to. the next time you get one take a minute and see how many addresses are on it before you send it out to 10-50 friends.

and i will tell you right now - no matter how many people you forward something too you will never get free stuff or have something magically appear on your screen

[cgarr]

So all those pills I ordered will not make my dick big-er

[M.D. Holloway]

Still waiting for my Russian Bride, Rolex Watches and some sort of berry that will do everything from improve my memory to make me jump higher.

[Tobra]

Could it be, Satan?

Apparently, more than one person in Africa wants to give me $1000 to do some banking for them.

[sc_rufctr]

I work in the IT support field.

A recent statistic... About 75% of emails in circulation are spam. Can you believe that?
Your work place would/should have a filter in place that is updated daily.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by cgarr

And the address on the mail is not even close to mine

I assume that you're familiar with carbon copy addresses in emails. You can send an email to someone(s) and then if you want, you can also cc other folks. Well, you can also bcc folks which is a blind carbon copy. No one that the email was sent to will see that it was sent to the bcc addresses. I think lots of spammers use bcc. You may just see the first address that was in their list.

I think the reason that you get SPAM in waves is that the spammers slack for a bit and then send their mail.

[trekkor]

...But, I don't want any Spam!!


KT

[KevinP73]

Originally Posted by cgarr

Not the "Shoulder pork Artificial Meat" but the mail? Some days my spam folder is full of crap and other times I can go days and have nothing in it? And the address on the mail is not even close to mine

I've always been under the impression it was "Specially Prepared Army Meat". Could just be my Army Brat upbringing.

[A930Rocket]

My laptop outlook email catches 99.9% of the the email, I just have to empty the folder every so often.

Now if I could just get the iPhone to do the same. Are there any spam filters for it?

[Hawkeye's-911T]

nineball
yep. and when you forward that joke email that was forwarded to you eventually it will end up in a spammer's inbox and he will have hundreds, if not thousands, of new email addresses to send out more to.

At the risk of hijacking this thread: Is there an efficient way to eliminate the past history of a joke e-mail so one may pass it on safely to others without leaving an address trail? I use the copy & paste method to insert the joke into a new e-mail to 'cover the tracks' but am I just fooling myself into believing I've protected the folks I passed the joke onto?

Thanks & Cheers
JB

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye's-911T

At the risk of hijacking this thread: Is there an efficient way to eliminate the past history of a joke e-mail so one may pass it on safely to others without leaving an address trail? I use the copy & paste method to insert the joke into a new e-mail to 'cover the tracks' but am I just fooling myself into believing I've protected the folks I passed the joke onto?

Thanks & Cheers
JB

If all you copy is the text of the joke itself, then you're good. As long as you don't reply or forward, you should be good, I'm pretty sure (98%)

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by LubeMaster77

Still waiting for my Russian Bride, Rolex Watches and some sort of berry that will do everything from improve my memory to make me jump higher.

Getting "unmarried first" is a big help here Mike!

[RWebb]

the larger ISPs have pretty decent spam filtering

you can complain to them & tell them you may switch - beyond that, you will need to implement the above

spammers are always trying to get around the filters, and it is an "evolutionary game" - spammers make a 'break-thru' then the filters catch up; cycle repeats

[widebody911]

Most spam is now sent by compromised "zombie" PCs.

[silverc4s]

I use the earthlink SPAM filters and find that it works very well. Dumps obvious SPAM and puts all other mail in two buckets, address in my address list - goes right through, new address, I have to authorize or dump it, one time only.

Pretty easy to avoid most SPAM now, everyone should do so, no costs involved.

[rnln]

The other day, it keep comming forcing me to keep forwarding, because the email said if I don't, bad thing will happen

Originally Posted by nineball

and i will tell you right now - no matter how many people you forward something too you will never get free stuff or have something magically appear on your screen

[89-944NA]

I lost count a long time ago, but I guess had I replied to all those people in Kenya, Botswana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, etc, by now I would have about $234,645,459,734,379,763,652,128,634.31...and I'd be the richest man in the world...poor dumb me, I'll just have to remain a working man for the rest of??????