Why do I get so much spam?

[nsane.forums]

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Carol asked why there's so much of it.

Why are there so many unwanted, tricky, manipulative, annoying, dangerous, and often illegal email messages going around? Because unscrupulous people can make a tidy profit mailing Spam. In 2010, Gmail spam expert Brad Taylor told Wired that “It costs $3,000 to rent a botnet and send out 100 million messages. It takes only 30 Viagra orders to pay for that.”

Botnets--illegal networks of infected computers controlled by people other than their legitimate owners--make an important part of the spam equation. Not only do they send out a great deal of spam, but their owners use spam to infect more computers, and thus grow their botnets.

These spammers can get your email address from all sorts of sources. They can search infected PCs for anything that looks like an address. They can read them off of incoming and outgoing email. Hackers can break into e-tailers' databases and steal addresses (and worse).

Posting your email address on a Web site, as I do for this blog, is asking for trouble. I get far more spam addressed to [email protected] than my other five email addresses put together. Luckily, mail to that address goes through two different spam filters before I get it.

So what can you do about it?

Be careful about sharing your email address. If you're uncomfortable with giving a site your address, either don't give it, and create a temporary, disposable one for that purpose.

Filter your email. Virtually all email clients--whether local or in the cloud--have spam filters these days. Use yours, and check it daily for false positives.

Be skeptical. Just because a message appears to come from a friend doesn't mean it has. If there's something odd about the message--if it doesn't read like something they would have written, or seems overly eager to have you click a link--don't trust it.

View: Original Article

[RMD]

The most simple and truthful answer would be: Cause you are an idiot.

[dcs18]

Filter your email. Virtually all email clients--whether local or in the cloud--have spam filters these days. Use yours, and check it daily for false positives.

Well, I use the best e-mail client on planet Earth - The Bat! Professional and it does not ship with a spam filter. Anyways, all those in-built filters lack fine grained modularity and suck big-time.

For my anti-SPAM purposes, I rely on a standalone program, MailWasher Pro - nothing but the very best (makes me lust for SPAM to the extent that I use dozens of e-mail IDs on various fora just as a SPAM bait.)

[Lyon275]

NO Spam here :showoff: :rolleyes: B)

[dcs18]

Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Carol asked why there's so much of it.

Why are there so many unwanted, tricky, manipulative, annoying, dangerous, and often illegal email messages going around? Because unscrupulous people can make a tidy profit mailing Spam. In 2010, Gmail spam expert Brad Taylor told Wired that “It costs $3,000 to rent a botnet and send out 100 million messages. It takes only 30 Viagra orders to pay for that.”

It's a common myth that SPAM is only about profits (and phishing!!!)

The truth is that SPAM includes any e-mail which is unsolicited - it may be from one's friend, wife, family, relative, neighbor, etc., etc. Everybody receives SPAM - very few are aware of the correct definition of SPAM.

[nuthut]

t's a common myth that SPAM is only about profits (and phishing!!!)

The truth is that SPAM includes any e-mail which is unsolicited - it may be from one's friend, wife, family, relative, neighbor, etc., etc. Everybody receives SPAM - very few are aware of the correct definition of SPAM.

SPAM is that pork product that comes in a metal container that the Hawaiians love to death