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On Philosophy and Unsolicited Emails

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Mickey Richaud

Mickey Richaud

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OK - posing the question here:

It is generally recommended not to respond to unsolicited emails, right? Then what to do when you receive one with the offer to unsuscribe by sending a blank email to "unsuscribe @ gobble-de-goop.com"?

One of modern life's conundrum's...
 
I send them to the junk pile, unless it is from a reputable company. If you respond you just told them you have a valid email. They will then sell your email to others.
 
/bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/iagree.gifI have trash can therefore I am! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/wink.gif
 
Mickey Richaud wrote "It is generally recommended not to respond to unsolicited emails, right?"

RIGHT

"Then what to do when you receive one with the offer to unsuscribe by sending a blank email to "unsuscribe @ gobble-de-goop.com"?"

Ignore it (if you are not a member/subscriber) otherwise your "unsubscribe" will subscribe you to multiple unsolicited emails. That is a fishing expedition to find valid email addresses to sell to the spam crowd.
 
Sneaky devils, aren't they?
 
Isn't there a government address to which you can forward them before opening - some sort of spam notice place?
 
tony barnhill said:
Isn't there a government address to which you can forward them before opening - some sort of spam notice place?
Click to expand...
tony, i just searched it out and found many programs/sevices to check out/filter spam email but ive not found one associated with the govmt.yet
 
anthony7777 said:
tony barnhill said:
Isn't there a government address to which you can forward them before opening - some sort of spam notice place?
Click to expand...
tony, i just searched it out and found many programs/sevices to check out/filter spam email but ive not found one associated with the govmt.yet
Click to expand...

I usually don't like the gov't. getting involved with stuff (they generally have a bad track record), but I have to admit, that the National Do Not Call Registry has cut my telemarketer calls to zero. If they could do the same thing for e-mails, it would be great.
 
Usually if you get any unwanted email, and your email program has a setting for BOUNCE/DELETE, it will return a message to them that their message is undeliverable. Usually after three or four of these bounce backs, they'll drop you. A good anti Spam program will help also. You just have to register the site address in your program and it will block it from your system. Bottom line. NEVER OPEN AN UNKNOWN EMAIL! If you don't know what to do with it, just delete it. PJ
 
It's the same when I receive unsolicited faxes at the office. Responding to their delete number to remove my fax number from their list only gets me more opportunities to invest or relax in the sun. I have resorted to turning the machine off.
 
The problem with any of the email-bouncers is the vast majority of the spam has faked headers and uses either hijacked or nonexistent email addresses. Having been a "hijackee" I can attest that people do try to write and complain when they get spam, and people do try to bounce fake "undeliverable" messages - but they did absolutely nothing except make me delete thousands of extra emails and make a lot of people think I was a spammer.

Here are some notes for some of you that don't know how some (not all) of the spammers work: Malicious spammers, the ones that are trying to sell you fake watches, drugs, stocks, etc, usually get your email address from a list of millions of email addresses. Their software grabs an address from the list, fakes the message "header" so that their emails look like they were sent from that address, then sends the spam to the rest of the list - conveniently hijacking people's email addresses in the process. When people get the spam they or their email systems are often fooled by the faked headers. Replying to the spam does nothing more than send email to some poor guy that had nothing to do with the spam in the first place.
The spammer's software rotates through the addresses, repeating the process.

Often the "to unsubscribe, send email to:" is just directing the email to one of the hijacked addresses or to a nonexistent one. Other "unsubscribe" links just create another way for the spammer's list of email addresses to get larger or more accurate. I think the new laws require that they have a method of unsubscribing you from their spam, it doesn't say they can't sell your (now verified) email address to another spammer, or put it on a list for another spam campaign later. Credit card, insurance, and reputable vendors are places that will honor your unsubscribe request and will usually not sell your address.
 
Here is what I do.
I have several Yahoo email accounts.
The reason is, I use them for SPECIFIC puropses.
I.E. One for friends, One for family, One for buissness. and One for ALL other purposes. {advertising on the net and such} The one I use to give as a net refrence I use the yahoo filters on {I find it to be very effective} You can filter keywords in the header, subject and body.

Filter Name
If all of the following rules are true...
From header: {keyword here} match case
To/Cc header: {keyword here} match case
Subject: {keyword here} match case
Body: {keyword here} match case
Then...

Move the message to: TRASH

It takes a while to develop the necessary filters but well worth the time.
AND yahoo mail has the option to mark any email as spam {you will NEVER see mail from that addressee again!}

I do occasionaly get spam in my buissness, friends and family emails, but NOTHING compared to what I get in my net refrence email. And when I do get spam in my b, F & F email I just mark as spam.

I QUIT using I.E. and O.E. for browsing and email altogether!
I found them to be BAD NEWS when it came to privacy and security!
In fact, On my WIN 98 SE machine {The one I primarily use for surfing and email} I even went as far as to DELETE the I.E. and O.E. folders AND I removed the reg refrences from the registry Via REGCLEANER. {I did this so NO ONE else using this machine can inadvertintly Use them.
YES I HATE SPAM as much as anyone on the planet!
B.T.W. DON`T try and delete the I.E. or O.E. folders from XP you won`t like the results! {Don`t ask me how I know :p} You can however KILL the .exe`s on them. {so No one can use them} B.T.W. if you decide to disable I.E. or O.E. Download another browser first.
One last thing sence I have rid my P.C. of I.E. and O.E. my viri, trojan, worm problems have virtually dissapered {at least on the win 98 machine} Two of my XP machines have encountered viri, trojan, worm problems recently.
The reason: My wife and kids insist on using I.E. and O.E. *SIGH*
 
everyone...Great stuff to know...I usually just ignore them...but that doesn't make them go away....

what happended to the days when the only gobble-de-goop we had to avoid were the one's selling it door-to-door?
 
I have to ignore them because I don't want to stop using my email address - everybody who needs to knows it!
 
I've several accounts, most are either "remote host" like Yahoo or forwarded to it. My main account is the "dump" account for the mail server so I get all mis-addressed or "WAG" recipient junk to the domain... filters help but it still gets 80 or so scrap missives every four hours. Like Scott I've had my addy 'spoofed' and had HUNDREDS of peeps send me nasty-grams because of it. Just delete it if you don't know the sender. Mail clients now have some better filtering capabilities so you can mark the sender and the originating IP for blocking in a lot of instances... but that can be just as frustrating if a lot of what you WANT to get goes thru those servers. And the spammers are ever more inventive at circumventing the barriers.

Scum sucking dogs, th' lot of 'em. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif
 
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