My SPAM experiment

[fermicat]

Our government has enacted the CAN-SPAM Act to deal with the problem of unsolicited email. I decided to try an experiment to see if this can actually help me reduce the amount of crap I get via email. Two of the rules that spammers are supposed to follow are the inclusion of a real physical address for their business, and instructions for opting out of their email offers.

I am going through my bulk mail folder where most spam ends up and actually opening the messages. I look to see if there is an address listed and then I follow the instructions for unsubscribing to future offers. If there is no addy but there are instructions for opting out, I still try to opt out. If there are no opt-out instructions, or if those instructions do not work, then I forward to email to the FTC: UCE@FTC.GOV.

I am skeptical that any of this will help reduce the amount of BS that gets delivered to my email account each day, but I will give it a shot and will also let my senators and state reps know how it turns out after a few weeks or months of this.

[stellar]

If they're not in this country then they can pretty much get away with anything.

I say we (1) track them down and identify the country that is harboring these spammers; (2) demand that the country turn them over; and (3) invade that country if they refuse. Now that would have a clear benefit to the American people.

[kechara420]

stellar, you're a genius!! sounds like a plan to me!!

[fermicat]

Is it too late for Stellar to jump into the presidential race with "sack the spammers and their little countries, too" as his major campaign promise?

[zap]

Fermi, from what I understand, when you open a piece of spam and the respond to it in anyway, all that does is tell the spammer that the email account is valid and working, therefore getting MORE spam dumped in yer email box. Catch-22 for sure

[stellar]

I think it is too late. I'll have to settle for the vice presidency.

[redvenus]

at least not with an email address you are using on a regular basis and which you want to keep using.

My impression is that the "spam community" is just laughing about that last attempt of the law to regulate them.

It is still the same, if you reply to unsubscribe it is only a confirmation for them that this is a valid email address.

A unsuspecting co-worker of mine was doing trying to unsubscribe, he is now receiving about a 600 spams a day. Once you on one of those lists there is just no way to get of them. And they get sold and resold, with the result that you get a lot more spam.

I used to forward all spam to that email address at the ftc, but I read that they get so much now, they are not even able to look at anymore. All they did so far is to put it onto a huge database and analyse trends. Last I heard the database grew so fast they couldn't handle it anymore.

Writing your congress man is still a good thing so.

The only real help would be if ISP would look at how many emails users are sending and as soon as it exceeds a reasonable amount, they should just check whether it is spam and then cut those users off. No regular privat user can reasonable claim to be sending 10000 emails a day. For some reason this doesn't seem to be something the ISP are willing to do.

Redvenus

[fermicat]

I know that there is the possibility that the unsubscribe instructions could make it worse, but how can I complain to my representatives that their new law didn't work for me unless I try in good faith to use it as intended? It is an experiment (and I do have a spam filter, so if I get more spam there will just be more messages that get deleted when I empty it).

[LadyCrais]

Originally posted by fermicat
(and I do have a spam filter, so if I get more spam there will just be more messages that get deleted when I empty it).

What are you using for a spam filter, Fermi? I'm looking into them before I become totally unhinged by all the crap that gets dumped in email, but according to some article I read none of them work very well. Not to mention it gripes me to no end to continually have to spend money on products to protect my computer from viruses, trojans, out of control advertising, and now spammers just because the world is so insistent on taking what once were positive, useful toos (internet & email)l and turning them into a garbage heap or means of attack.

[mgraylorn]

Its too late now fermicat, but If I were going to do something like you have done I would get an account different from my normal e-mail account and use that one to respond to spammers. I'm afraid you will find your spam increasing exponentially as your address will be sold to other spammers as a valid address. With a separate account, after you get done with your project, you could just close the account.

Let us know what happens.

[redvenus]

I am using "Spamnet" from Cloudmark.com on my PC. There is a free version available and works pretty good. The emails it misses can be blocked manually and then it learns and improves itself.

Once in a while they bug you about upgrading to a paid version, but you really don't have to.

I am, just as pissed as you, that we "common folks" have to pay money to protect us from stuff like spam and virus attacks.

Oh and since we are at it. I use another great tool to eliminate spy software and the related pop-up barrage. It is called "spybot" and you can download it from downloads.com for free. Just search for spybot and you'll find it. It works like a charm! It looks and eliminates over 12000 spy software pieces.

Redvenus

[NYPinTA]

We just downloaded Spybot and Ad-Aware on all our computers at work. So far... no pop ups. (yea!)

I am not as bothered by Spam as I am by telemarketing. Spam I can just delete. Phone calls during dinner.... thats just annoying.

[eta_carinae]

Are you on "the list"? We put ourselves on the national one and now we don't get the telemarketer calls anymore. At least not when we are at home anyway...

[fermicat]

Originally posted by LadyCrais
What are you using for a spam filter, Fermi? I'm looking into them before I become totally unhinged by all the crap that gets dumped in email, but according to some article I read none of them work very well. Not to mention it gripes me to no end to continually have to spend money on products to protect my computer from viruses, trojans, out of control advertising, and now spammers just because the world is so insistent on taking what once were positive, useful toos (internet & email)l and turning them into a garbage heap or means of attack.

It is my yahoo mail account and they have something built in. It isn't perfect. About 5% of the time it either sends spam to my inbox or delivers real mail to the bulk box.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by mgraylorn
Its too late now fermicat, but If I were going to do something like you have done I would get an account different from my normal e-mail account and use that one to respond to spammers. I'm afraid you will find your spam increasing exponentially as your address will be sold to other spammers as a valid address. With a separate account, after you get done with your project, you could just close the account.

Let us know what happens.

Most of the opt-out options are via a web page, not a reply email. If my account goes to hell, I will just make up a new one.

[fermicat]

Originally posted by eta_carinae
Are you on "the list"? We put ourselves on the national one and now we don't get the telemarketer calls anymore. At least not when we are at home anyway...

"The List" has worked great for me too. The telemarketing calls I receive quickly dropped to ZERO!!

[fermicat]

Today's update:

When I logged on to check my mail today, I had 8 messages in my Inbox and only 3 in my Bulk folder! Although I didn't expect results so soon (the opt out screens mostly said it would take up to 72 hours for my address to be purged), I was pleased at this ratio. It is usually the other way around.

My pleasure was short lived, however. The 8 messages in my inbox were spam from two different companies that the filter failed to catch. I'm not sure why the filter didn't work -- the spam messages were so obviously spam that a deaf, dumb, and blind person would have recognized them. But not a computer program designed to discriminate between real messages and crapola, apparently. [It could be that the crap messages came from one of Yahoo's "marketing partners" and that Yahoo failed to weed it out accidentally-on-purpose, even though I have clearly set my mail preferences to not get unsoliticed junk from them or anyone else.]

[Kurt_eh]

Originally posted by stellar
If they're not in this country then they can pretty much get away with anything.

I say we (1) track them down and identify the country that is harboring these spammers; (2) demand that the country turn them over; and (3) invade that country if they refuse. Now that would have a clear benefit to the American people.

So they'd be searching for Methods of Spam Distribution?

[stellar]

Exactly... we could get a bunch of countries to help us... we'll call it the Coalition of the Afraid-They're-Next.

[Kurt_eh]

Edited to get the context right:

And those MSD countries would be the Axis of Email!

[stellar]

It's all falling into place. :)

[Aura]

i thought this thread was something to do withh the processed meat product!

[Kurt_eh]

http://www.detritus.org/sounds/real/spam-skit.ra


from: http://www.detritus.org/spam/skit.html