I'm more bothered by email spam than phone telemarketers

[LynneSin]

Seriously!

When I was answering my home phone I was getting about 2-3 telemarketers a week. And I'm pretty agressive enough to tell them "Sorry Not Interested" by the time they finished trying to pronounce my last name.

But the email spam is just freaking ridiculous. I'm finally starting to switch to a new email account since now my yahoo account is just clogged with spam. It's funny though because I would always give out an old aol address to anyone requiring an email address which wasn't something I needed to receive emails from.

This morning I went to check my yahoo mail - 18 new messages in the inbox, 200 messages in bulk mail (which i just deleted and 10 messages in my Dean inbox (I have a inbox rule that filters all email relating to Howard Dean to it's on inbox so I don't have to bother organizing it later on). There was only 1 message in the inbox that wasn't spam and 4 messages in the Dean box that wasn't spam.

Email Spam wastes more of my time than telemarketers. I don't need to enlarge my peepee by 3 inches and I don't need to have larger breasts. Although I would like to use some weight I'm not interested in any potions, pills, or prescriptions that aren't recommended by my family doctor. My bills are paid and I don't need another loan, home equity loan or credit card for the extra cash. I prefer meeting potential boyfriends the old fashioned way - picking them up in bars and most importantly I'm already a damn good lover and I don't need another pill to improve my performance

Questions?

[Roon]

1. Worse things than spam and telemarketers

How about the garbage that the USPS puts in your mailbox everyday? At least with telemarketers you can hang up, or spam you just click a button and it's gone. But the snailmail garbage is just infuriating! Every day, more and more garbage is deposited at my house and every day I have to sift through and seperate the bills and legit mail. This crap accumulates and I am really getting tired of it.

One of these days I am going to set it up so I can pay all my bills online and I am going to inform any would be letter writers that I am only accepting e-mail. After that, I am going to remove my mailbox from my porch and I will finally be free of this littering that takes place at my house every day. That is going to be sooooo SWEET!

[newyawker99]

16. Congrats Roon!! 900 posts

:toast:

[Larry Gude]

2. Hell yeah THAT!!!

Plus, I already refinanced...twice.

Software to require authentication from senders seems to be on the way from what I read. This will kill most spam because of how they send it...as I understand it.

A bigger weiner though...

LOL

[newyawker99]

17. Hi Larry Gude!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Skittles]

3. THANK YOU. TELEMARKETERS ARE SCAPEGOATS

there are far more things I find intrusive than temarketers.

[pansypoo53219]

4. i don't handly any

spam. unless it is posts from truthout and other dem sites. I blow off telemarketers with immediacy. But going through junk mail for recycling-that takes time.

[Chovexani]

5. I don't get spam.

At least not on my main email. Whenever I encounter a site that requires me to sign up for something with an email address or register one, I give out a dummy yahoo address I created for the sole purpose of diverting spam from my real email. Every month or so I go clean out the yahoo address (easily over 300 messages, on average). It's worked like a charm. I literally didn't get a single piece of spam--and I have an AOL address!

Unfortunately I've just started to get 2 or 3 a week. The account is in my mom's name, since I got it in high school (I have a separate SN), and recently our house was re-assessed. Now all of a sudden I'm getting mortgage spam. What's very creepy about it is that the subj lines usually have my address in it. The ease with which this info was apparently obtained freaks me out. What if I had a stalker or something?

I'm for the DNC and signed up for my state one and the fed one, but I agree that email spam is a much larger problem than telemarketing. My friend gets some extremely vile porno spam on his work account, and a younger friend of mine had his school email privileges revoked because of the same. The spam situation is totally obscene and there's really nothing we can do about it, the gov't HAS to step in, I think.

--C.

[LynneSin]

9. But eventually you will start getting the spam

I did that for years with my Yahoo/AOL combination. I used my old AOL email for sites that asked for an email address but I knew I had no desire to get email from them.

And Yahoo had a pretty good spam filter to keep out what did get through on that account. But now it's just getting out of hand so I'm going to another brand new account.

But it's such a pain to change email addresses. I have to forward my new email to everyone who I want to get email from plus to those groups who send out newsletters I want to update and bills that send reminders to my yahoo address.

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

Could you imagine if you had to change your real address or phone number just to avoid spam!

[Chovexani]

12. I noticed :(

Eventually you sign up for some list and it gets through...:( What's funny, is besides the mortgage spam, I started getting porno and "make your boobies/penis" larger spam...after I signed up for Jerry Foulwell's email list (I like to keep an eye on those jokers). I know it was him, because all the other lists I'm on are yahoo groups lists. Maybe the spammers know who their customers are. :evilgrin:

It *is* nuts having to change your email address. I've had to do it twice in the last few years due to changing ISPs and it's a real headache directing all your contacts to the new one. I couldn't imagine having to do it because of spam, I'd probably do what that guy in the Snickers commerical did and go find the spammer. :)

[Bossy Monkey]

6. Earthlink actually does an excellent job blocking spam

but unfortunately, I've heard they have new software that's very intrusive, so I'm not sure I can recommend joining Earthlink at this time.

I always tell telemarketers not to call back or they'll be sued. Ya know what? They don't.

[TreasonousBastard]

8. Earthlink's Spaminator catches maybe half my spam...

which is better than nothing, I suppose.

Earthlink let's you opt into that nonsense where anyone sends you an email has to go through some bullshit waiting for you to verify that you want the email. It is entirely optional. Earthlink's software, btw, is not required to use them, like AOL's is.

I won't sign up for it because I get a lot of organizational and business stuff that this would piss off people I want to correspond with.

Anyway, it's a minor annoyance, and I just delete the shit as it comes in.

You wanna complain about time and bandwidth usage-- overblown websites, Flash, mondo graphics, internet phone calls, movie and music downloads, video chat...

(discussion boards?)

[Bossy Monkey]

10. I'm a meganerd, so I forward whatever spam does get through

to [e-mail], which seems to help. Girlfriend is on Mindspring, but signed up for Spaminator after joining and had the same experience you did (ie, I got an automated reply from her saying that I had to verify that I was human before the program would let my mail through).

What I was trying to convey was that Earthlink does well if you happen to have joined 2+ years ago, but that it probably isn't a good idea to join now.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. I think we're talking at...

slightly cross purposes.

I've had my Mindspring account for years, and I keep it mainly because so many people have the email addy.

Spaminator is their Bayseian spam filter that dumps a bunch of stuff off the server, and acts a lot like an automatic Mailwasher.

"Known Spam Blocking" dumps the known spam, but "Suspect Mail Blocking" sends a message to the originator if it doesn't recognize the sender from your inbox. Both are optional, and the suspect mail thing is the one I don't want.

I don't want someone who might want to give me money getting pissed because the email didn't get through on the first try. Potential clients are funny that way.

I don't see having these choices as a reason not to use Earthlink. there may be other reasons, but not their spam blocking. This costs them money, and smaller ISPs often don't give the choice.

I suppose I should send the spam I do get back to them to get it on the list. Right now I just have everything from China and Russia filtered to my trash bin.

(Spam in Chinese. What could be more ridiculous?)

[LynneSin]

13. More Ridiculous? Try spam to help me grow my penis an extra 1-3 inches

Nothing personal- but I don't want one and have no desire to get one either.

[Chovexani]

14. Heh

I had Earthstink for a few years, and signing up for the spam guard literally doubled my spam. I don't know about the Spaminator because that was Windows-only at the time I still had Earthstink DSL and I'm a Mac user.

Of course I had many more problems with the service, I'm not surprised their new software is intrusive. Didn't they just jack their rates up too? I had to cancel my DSL because I got laid off and I just couldn't afford to pay what they wanted.

[arwalden]

7. I Never Check Email Anymore... It's TOTALLY USELESS!!!

My internet provider (Comcast) allows multiple email addresses. So, I recently created a NEW... BRAND SPANKING NEW... NEVER USED email address in anticipation of abandoning my current one.

I never told a soul what the new address was. Nobody knew it... YET... within days of creating it, I started to receive SPAM, SPAM and more SPAM.

Amazing.

I give up!

-- Allen

[Ramsey]

15. I don't know

Before I signed up for the Pennsylvania no-call list, I'd get up to 20 solicitation calls per day. It forced me to get caller id and to not even bother to answer my phone until after 9 pm. Some even have the gall to call at 8 am on Saturday! If I get awakened on a weekend, there is hell to pay, believe me!!! I don't care if the unwitting fool on the other end of the line is just trying to make a living...DON'T FREAKING WAKE ME UP AT 8 AM ON SATURDAY IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE!!! Spam can't wake you up after all :-)

Now I get 2-3 calls a day, much better. I am BIG fan of the no-call list. And remember dear Ms. Sin, you don't even have a real phone!!

Now I use only one email account for signing up for anything online and I have it rigged so that the spam filter sends much of the detritus to the junkmail folder. It only takes me a flick of the wrist to empty that baby out. Then it takes about 60 seconds to clear the inbox of the ones that made it through the filter. I have a private account that I only give to friends and it has never ever gotten one piece of spam.