SPAM

1
I am getting several spam messages offering search engine advertising via the Skyscript membership list forum - seems someone has been through and collected email addresses - here is the start of the message:

Get your website http://www.skyscript.co.uk/phpBB/bb_memberlist.php into the number one position for a full year. With this new patented internet display advertising system, when your keyword or phrase is entered your page will automatically open up and your competitors site will not!

Ar there no lengths to which these wastes of space will go!

Linda

3
Thanks for letting me know about this accursed problem. I haven?t had the message myself, but noticed some spurious forum activity which looked like someone was trying to access numerous pages simultaneously. I wasn?t sure what was happening but blocked the IP as a security measure, obviously not soon enough.

I wish people would stop to think about how destructive to the internet these spammy messages are. Even if I desperately wanted a product or service I wouldn?t purchase from anyone who sent me unsolicited email. Senders of spam have gone right to the top of my rant-list ? thanks for your info Garry, I might try that out but I really think there should be laws against people sending me unsolicited porn mails or bothering me with information for penis enlargements or requests to dump millions of dollars in my bank account. If its not that, it?s a dozen phone calls a day offering ?courtesy calls? from my bank or some company that wants to be my bank.

The one good piece of news is that new laws have allowed me to stop all junk mail from the fax ? if anyone in the UK still has a problem with that, let me know and I?ll tell you how you can end it permanently for free.

4
Spam is becoming a real problem world wide and I beleive there is some legislation in the USA to stop it. I'm hoping Australia will follow suit. An excellent free download is called Mailwasher - you actually open your mail on your server using this program and can reject, bounce or whatever mail you don;t want. By bouncing, its hoped that they remove you from the list because it looks like the server has bounced it. You never download it. It also picks up viruses and you can have a 'friends list'. This was developed by a guy in NZ and I would highly recommend it. I had it on my last computer which is now Bob's. Of course he doesn't get my email only his own so doesn't have a web presence and never gets spammed. I'll be installing it on this one, when I get to it. You get one download for free but the second one you have to pay a small amount for, which is fair enough. I get about 800 a day with my email all over the pace, and that's after the server has de-spammed! Outlook allows you to make a 'rule' sending emails with certain subjects to your delete folder.
I'm not sure of the address for Mailwasher but a search will find it. The other brilliant one is Ad-Aware also a free download that scans you computer for spyware - these are cookies installed on your computer from things like counters and other things you might put on webpages. I do a scan every two weeks with it and pick up about 80 little spyware gremlins every time. Even if you don't have a webpage, you could still benefit from this as they also looks at what emails you send and collate email addresses that way. I can't recommend these programs too highly.
Cheers
Linda

6
I don?t understand why ? if they can legislate that spammers have to include an opt-out address ? they can?t just do something similar to what they?ve done with faxes. It is now illegal to send promotional faxes to anyone that has indicated they don?t wish to receive them (at least here in the UK). Companies who want to advertise this way are legally obliged to take their lists from a central database and clear them on a monthly basis. If someone has indicated that they don?t want to receive advertising, and then they get it, they can just inform the holders of the list and they will take the company to court. I haven?t received a single junk fax since.

It?s all very well making it so that I can inform people not to send me their rubbish in the future, but I don?t want it in the first place. And I don?t see why it should be legal for anyone to send me pornographic material that opens up in my mailbox whether I want to view it or not. There should be a system in place where people who do that can be called to question. It offends me that as a mother I have to be so careful about what my kids get exposed to.

I have installed that mailwash program today but I?m not quite sure what I?m doing with it yet. Perhaps when I get that set up properly I won?t feel like I want to breathe fire in someone?s face, but that still leaves the problem of the endless ?courtesy calls? and phone surveys. Why are these companies always on my back when I don't want them, but whenever I need a bit of technical support for a product or service I've bought, they are almost impossible to reach. Most customer service departments don't even have direct telephone numbers anymore, they are designed to make you give up in frustration. Grrrrr! :evil:

7
Unwanted telephone solicitations in the US have been curbed. In fact in response to a court decision the US Congress managed to pass anti telemarketing legislation in ONE DAY and the President signed it the same day! They can accomplish things when 60 million angry Americans are howling.

Many of the spammers operate illegally in the first place via trojan horse virus's. Making their activities illegal is not too helpful. Tracing them is the biggest hurdle.

Congress can pass laws that affect US companies, but if the spammers are working out of some banana republic, the realities of the internet make it difficult to control them.

Who buys his junk anyway? Would anyone one on this list look at anything sent by a spammer and then give them a credit card number? Someone must because the spammers stay in business. Maybe H.L. Mencken was right: "No one will ever go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Tom

8
Most often I refuse to talk to anyone on the other end of an unsolicited phone call, but sometimes I get nasty, particularly if they are pushy. I ask for their full name and address - if they ask why, I say because I want to come to your house and drop dog poo on your front steps - just to reciprocate your invasion of my privacy. They usually hang up.

Spamming is a big industry. They get paid to send emails and I beleive some of them earn quite a good living from it. They are the online versions of those guys who walk around shoving stuff in your mailbox - unless you have a no junk mail sticker, then they are obliged not to leave anything by law.

I frankly feel that no amount of legislation will stop this until someone is traced and charged, they use web-based email addresses anyway, its unlikely they will be charged.

I wonder what the astrological profile of a successful spammer is?

Cheers
Linda

9
Who buys his junk anyway? Would anyone one on this list look at anything sent by a spammer and then give them a credit card number? Someone must because the spammers stay in business.
It's a numbers game - you only need 1 in a thousand or 0.01% to respond and you know that if you send out 50,000 of these things you get 50 customers. Email is so cheap to circulate - in the meantime 99.9% of us have to burden the frustration and irritation.
I wonder what the astrological profile of a successful spammer is?
I was wondering how this modern menace might show up in the mundane astrological factors that are supposed to define the character of the age we live in.

10
It's certainly escalated since the Uranus Neptune conjunction. This is 172 years in duration beginning a new cycle with the conjunction in 1993 in Capricorn. I have observed a lot of manifestations coming after that event - chiefly the burgeoning of the Internet. If we look back to the previous cycle, 1821, the collective were deeply engaged with the Industrial Revolution and other revolutions that brought about ( supposedly) freedom for individuals but really only created a 'middle class' proletariat just as locked in as serfs. Now we are experiencing the Communication Revolution. I was interested in the comment about Banana Republics - these spammers are a bit like workers in sweatshops - they are 'working' on a piecemeal method, locked into their own serfdom and dictated to by business interests willing to keep them enslaved on the promise of future wealth. They, nor their masters are paying taxes and the entire thing has built to an industry without regulation, taxation, or social recognition. If I wanted to engage the services of spammers, I would have to decide whether I could claim it as a business expense or simply create some sort of back pocket cash economy that would bypass the 'system. I suspect this is what is happening, or that businesses engaging spammers have found a loophole that allows them to get away with it as a legitimate expense. It's not just a social problem but an economic one too, and getting bigger all the time. It would be interesting to collate a database of the places where the emails originate. How much money is being laundered outside of the country of origin. I get a lot that end in the suffix ur and ar which I think are Russia and Argentina. Just a thought or two - now I gotta get to work......

12
I like the way that they are applying the laws for Virginia on the basis that they affect computers there, even though the man suspects are based in North Carolina. The report says this is the first time a charge of this specific nature has been brought, so it?s potentially earmarking a period of authorities committing themselves to action.

Thanks for your thoughts Linda on that Uranus, Neptune conjunction. I?d say 1993 would be about right in timing the emergence of the problem.