How does Spam work?

Tommy B · 4 Aug 2006 at 23:21

I've had my BT account for 7-8 years now and I've NEVER received one SPAM email. Quite a record you must think. Today I check, and the "junk filter" inbox suddenly has about 50 spam emails.

How exactly does this happen. I considered finding out HOW they got my address, but I haven't registered my email address to anything for the past week.

Tommy B · 4 Aug 2006 at 23:34

And can they not track these servers and disable them?

Tommy B · 5 Aug 2006 at 11:38

I wish BT would just make a filter that destroys all emails with the text "viagra" or any variant, and for the love of God, can't BT identify which specific servers the spam is coming from and just BLOCK all communication?

I hope when the Internet 2 comes into play there are much better security measures. If one agency could control the entire internet there wouldn't be spam, paedo sites, terrorist sites etc etc

Tommy B · 5 Aug 2006 at 12:41

Beansprout said:
I love it when non-techies talk about the Intarweb

You said these e-mails were in your junk filter - BT's doing its job. Where's the issue?

You're right, I am indeed a "non-techie" at this issue so do you mind answering my question?

If they know a specific server that is doing nothing but dashing out spam, why can't they block it off completely and black list it?

A lot of useful stuff goes into Junk, like OCUK's newsletter, and I quite often retreive things. This is difficult when you have 100,000 viagra emails.