A idle thought on spam

[meghatronic]

An idle thought on spam

I just had a thought - I know I'm shocked too.

Why do people still give their e-mail address as:
1) A non-mailto string with spaces, e.g. "bill @ microsoft . com (remove the spaces )"
2) replace @ with [at], replace dot with [dot] etc... and other such glyphs.
3) The e-mail address as an image.

There are ways round each, and I'm pretty sure spam harverster would include such work arounds... so... what's the point?

Give your email address out and spam is inevitable.

Surely, Shirley?

 

[Clarkey]

because the regex to pick these up is way more complex than just a properly formed address, I'm doubtful if the spammers would bother.

 

[tsinc80697]

the 2 email address I always give out never have spam sent to them, and one of them has a spam trapper on it anyway which works wonders

 

[meghatronic]

the 2 email address I always give out never have spam sent to them, and one of them has a spam trapper on it anyway which works wonders

That's a flawed statement chief.

1) I have two e-mails addreses
2) Neither of them receive spam
3) Spam trapper works wonders.

You can not prove 3, given 2. ?

 

[tsinc80697]

When I say neither receive spam I mean into my mailbox They are always caught and sent to spam[@]tomsinclair.co.uk which I dont have setup on mail.app so it never bothers me

 

[The_KiD]

Spam is a plague man!

Our works spam filter hit a new high yesterday when it reached 17,000 in one day. Of the total email in that was 93%

Tsinc > I think thats what jdickerson is saying. You said neither of the email addresses you give out get spam, but they do it is just filtered well before it hits you. This doesnt mean spam isnt a problem as it slows down the web for everyone.

Adding the spaces, ]'s and whatever else all helps to combat these spammers. Although dont be fooled into thinking the spammers wouldnt spend ages creating those regex's, there's a lot of money in spam.

 

[meghatronic]

Spam is a plague man!

Our works spam filter hit a new high yesterday when it reached 17,000 in one day. Of the total email in that was 93%

Tsinc > I think thats what jdickerson is saying. You said neither of the email addresses you give out get spam, but they do it is just filtered well before it hits you. This doesnt mean spam isnt a problem as it slows down the web for everyone.

Adding the spaces, ]'s and whatever else all helps to combat these spammers. Although dont be fooled into thinking the spammers wouldnt spend ages creating those regex's, there's a lot of money in spam.

17,000 - yikes. Over how many e-mail addresss?

 

[Shoseki]

Personally, I think there should be an anti-spam network.

A consolidated list of spamming emails, that get auto-analysed and blocked, and companies would just sign up to it, almost as a governmental organisation. Then spammers would fear spamming, for fear of getting onto that government list.