Wouldn't a redirection service like tinyurl.com be equally or even more interesting for a spammer to abuse in the same manner?

if you get more than 5 spam in a month.
you don't know what your doing.
its hard to believe people still, in 2008, get viruses and spam.

here are some other helpfull hints.

1. switch to Gmail they have an excellantr spam filter. i dont think i have ever got more than 7 spams in the 2 yrs i have had it.
2. switch from IE7 (internet explorer7) to firefox.
then go to 'mozzila addons' and install adblocker plus,and 'customize google'
3. switch from windows (or apple) to ubuntu.
its free, and surprisingly easy to use.
they even had a disk that you can run so you can check it out without causing harm to your system.

Nothings safe anymore, may as well live in a cave.....cell phone spam and mail spam you can't be left alone

It's simple people, do not click on emails that you do not know the sender!
Spammers rely on spelling inconsistencies because normal reading allows you to miss these inconsistencies, Check the spelling of the sender if its not some one you know trash it!

c note's right!
"if you get more than 5 spam in a month.
you don't know what your doing."

Get off the interweb! ;)

I use Verizon as my ISP and have yet to get any spam email and before that Time Warner. It is were you visit and put your email address that gets you spam. If there is an unsubscribe link do it.

c note, I switched away from gmail because of spam... Just check your spam folder occasionally on gmail (you have to because occasionally it catches real mail as spam).. A lot of spam originates on gmail, and the worst part is you can't (to my memory) see original internet message headers on spam (or other messages) in gmail, so you can't trace it back to its source.

GMail also sells your personal gmail information, to advertisers and potentially to other third parties, so forget about seriously conducting business on it.

Also, IE7 is much more secure than Firefox in my experience. Firefox just gives a lot of headaches with compatibility. Actually I recently did an analysis of traffic on my personal website, here's the results:
In 2008 (so far):
42,000 visitors ran intenret explorer 7
3,000 ran internet explorer 6
And
2,400 ran firefox 2

As someone with a web site, I'm wondering, should I focus my development on supporting the 42-45 thousand people running internet explorer, or the 2 thousand running firefox? I think I'm not the only one who sees these types of numbers.

It's not all like that..."I'm a corporate IT Administrator for a small transportation company, and I have my associates in CIS." I know what I'm doing online, and I still get 5 or more spam e-mails a month, exactly like the ones described above. Why? Not user inadequacy, it's the fact, somewhere, one of my games, or online sites I use to shop at, released my e-mail into a 3rd party chain, and voila. Yeah, you can block most, etc...but some things you have no control over, and when your not giving the option to opt out...You must do what I do, and run reverse IPs, and use whois, to track the bastards down. Then you go to their house, and scare them by showing up, and asking them if the e-mail they sent you, is theirs. =)

The other thing - STOP BUYINH STUFF from companies that spam. If the advertising is ineffective, then they will not use it.

I mean come on here - do you really need to encourage people who misspell penis in order to get past a filter? That is just plain stupid. . . .

@ c note:

The bottom line is Ubuntu (or any form of Linux) is not easy to use for the average Joe. Even as it is now 2008, wireless internet is still a pain to get set up on Linux. If you say otherwise, you are kidding yourself. Don't give me any crap about how its easy to tweak on the command line either because the average computer user doesn't know what a command line is much less how to use it! Also, your average Joe doesn't know or care what Firefox is. To them, the big blue E means internet. IE 7 does just fine for the majority of computer users. I do agree with your comment about Gmail. Gmail is excellent, and if you use Apple Mail in Leopard or Microsoft Outlook 2007 you can easily set up access to your Gmail account by entering just your email and password. The spam filter in Gmail combined with the spam filter in Apple Mail or Outlook 2007 will virtually eliminate all spam. The best advice you can give to an average computer user is the following:
1) Keep your computer and antivirus software up to date. Set it to automatically install updates if possible.
2) Ignore any and all emails asking you to verify your account information with a bank or other service.
3) Don't visit sleazy websites and most definitely do not install anything from any website that you don't feel comfortable installing stuff from. If you didn't request the download, click CANCEL.

Sorry C-Note, The only reason you feel cozy right now is because your flying under the radar of the hackers and SPAM artists. 95+ percent of the web users out there are using IE. That makes it profitable for the bad guys to focus on that market because that's where the payoff is. Your not protected because your software is superior. You simply just haven't been noticed. Let the percentages change and you too will feel the pinch. No software OS or email product can replace good old common sense and a little sound education. If you don't know who it's from, if it asks for money, if it sounds too good to be true, if it's full of poor english or mispellings, or if it just doesn't smell just right . . . . . DON'T OPEN IT!

I am an ASP.NET developer by trade and have been developing Internet/ Intranet applications since there has been an Internet and I'm telling you that if they want you . . . they will get you. Software does not take the place of common sense and knowledge.

GMail is spam free? Not for me. My GMail account had 30 pieces of spam in the first week I had it, and it now receives 6-10 pieces of spam per day. That's one reason I stopped using it.

It won't stop you from being spammed by a compromised legitimate address book. Yes, if SOMEONE else's computer gets hacked, you get emails because you're in that poor fools address book. It happened to me last week. A college professor friend of mine. They hit all of his family and friends, and worse, fellow researchers and business contacts.

Y-O-U-R means "belongs to you".
Y-O-U [apostrophe] R-E means "you are".
That is one of my biggest blog peeves.

To imply that the volume of spam is directly proportional to the intelligence of the user, is quite ignorant, as well as arrogant.

My 9 year old Yahoo! account gets no more spam than my 1 year old GMail account. (1-2 per week)

My work email gets 10+ spam per day.

Spam filters or not, the best way to avoid spam is to choose an email address that is almost nonsense. Your name @ [domain] is too easily targeted by bots.

Work email, by it's nature, must allow more unknown addresses through, and should be a name easily associated with you and your business. This opens it up to spam.

None of this matters if you post your email address on every questionable site that you visit. If that is the case, you deserve whatever spam you get.

Yeah right...
If you get more than 5-mails a month it means your email is used a lot on the web. It however doesnt mean it makes it to your inbox.

No need to switch this or that. Stick with Outlook or your current service provider e-mail. They typically have security in place you just might have to "turn" it on.

Secondly, IE7 is more secure than Firefox. Had too many people get stuff through firefox than IE7. Dont do it unless you ultimatly like it better. Its not any safer.

@Dan T of TX

Dan, if you unsubscribe from spam, you're just telling them that your email address is valid. Spammers sell validated spam lists for even more money, and you get on more lists.

So no, that's very bad advice Dan. Don't use the unsubscribe link.

Our government should do more to protect the american people and the people of the world against these smart hackers. I can't blame the hackers, give them the means and they will do it to you, so it's a matter of prevention. Maybe if Bill Gates really want to help the world, why not work on this problem.

I have experienced untold problems since the 2nd, and all I did was respond to a job posting.

It has taken 4 evenings to clear out the mess. Buyware malware ect.

Set up disposable email addresses. I have 3 yahoo email addresses which i use to order stuff online with. I don't care if they get spam, since they are only used for the occassional online order.

My gmail account is spam free, since I never use it for anything but emailing friends and family.

My ISP email(Comcast) doesn't get any spam at all, since the only ones who have that email address are Comcast itself, Verizon(for phone bills) and my power company. So If i get spam into it, I know its only 3 places it could have come from, and all three say they do not sell info, and in 5 yrs, I have never had spam in that email box at all.

did a search once on bronchitis and got hits like

"get the latest bronchitis on EBay"

It is greed and capitalism!

I can't believe it, but I JUST (1-2 minutes before I read this) got my first piece of spam on an account I have been using for YEARS.
I used to handle over 50,000 e-mail users for a major US company, and I can say that most spam can be avoided with a little care, but once you are polluted, it is usually too late.
First, use the account you want to remain spam-free for business use only, or if it is for personal use, ask your friends to never give it to anyone, or to use it on ANY site, like e-greeting card sites, etc. NEVER order anything with this address, or give it to any vendor for a support case, etc.
Second, most spam comes from when you order things, so make a hotmail, gmail, or yahoo account that you use when ordering things. This can, and will, fill up with spam over time, but since you only check it when you are checking on an order you just placed, it really doesn't matter, and you can delete it and use a new account for new orders any time.
Third, NEVER post your e-mail out on a web page. IF you absolutely must post an e-mail address on a web page, do it using ASCII encoding. You can look this up on the Internet or ask your web developer. This prevents "spiders" from harvesting your address off a site. This chart shows the encoding: http://www.freelancedesigners.com/tools/ascii_html_encoding.cfm so the word "Help" would be rendered in HTML as Help but look exactly as it would if you just typed it, thus making it hard for a spider to extract your address from a web page.
Fourth, I have another address still that I give to people or sites that demand an address, like this one in fact. I use that address and give it to people I never ever want to hear from. You NEVER have to check this address. It is a pure throw-away address.

By the way, to the corporate IT guy above, you can look at the IP a spam came from, but it will do you no good. Since virtually all spam is sent through a virus-infected computer somewhere, you are getting the IP of the infected computer, not the spammer.
There is only one way to really track down a spammer: Follow the money. You have to want to catch them badly, buy something with a credit card, get the merchant info from your credit card company, and then hope they are stupid enough to have done it from inside the US. If they are outside the US, good luck to you.

I avoid most spam by using plus addressing and never give my real e-mail to any website. I use disposable e-mail addresses for most web surfing and plus addressing of my normal address for personal business. Google "plus addressing wikipedia" and you'll get an article explaining how to use it (note that some providers simply do not support it and some websites refuse to validate such an address). An advantage of plus addressing is that you can find out very easily who disclosed your e-mail address to a spammer or is spamming you directly based on the naming convention that you use. i.e. if you conduct business with Citibank, use something like: youremail+citibank@yourdomain.com

I typically use plus addressing for friends/family so that I can easily block mail if I start getting too much spam.

Damn people, lighten up on cnote already. Ya try to help and look what ya get. Also I like anonymous's suggestion about using reverse IPs and whois to "track the bastards down". That has a nice ring to it.

MLB, is it the fact we in the U.S.A. have stopped wanting to think, or is it we have been so accustomed to ease of use that we have stopped? how many people do you think are able to install windows from scratch? it's not ease of use that is the problem, its people in general.

I Just want to disagree with Dan T about the use of "Unsubscribe" links.

DON'T EVER click ANY links in a suspicious email.

By clicking that link, you're simply verifying that your email address is real and actively used.

(Unless you think that spammers are really kind-hearted souls who would never try to trick anybody)

@c-note, Sorry everyone is say crap to you, because you choose a better computer life. Fire fox dominates and has long as I have been a web designer I have never had to tweak a website to be compatible with it. Unlike IE6 and 7. But if the majority of you guys want to live in the crap world of MS, then please do, but don't give someone else a hard time about it.

Um, am I or moron, or is the DELETE key not working in anyones' e-mail anymore? If I don't know the sender I hit 'delete', or, if I'm paying attention, the 'junk' icon (I use 'Mozilla Thunderbird'). It's really not that big of a deal...just slightly annoying to have 10 e-mails rather than 4 or 5 every day. Some of them are actually amusing.

You know tracking who's sending spam is and can be difficult because you can originate from anywhere.

But you sure the hell can track back to the company's who actually are profiting from it. I don't know anyone who spams just for the hell of it.

Does anyone know if there is a website that lists known company's employing this marketing tech?

Joe from SC has it right. Think of the math. They send 10 million emails. If just .0001% express even a SMALL interest in the spam, it's considered a success. Most advertising would fail after the first attempt with such low response, but those cost on a per piece sent basis. Spam is a single click on a computer to send it to millions of people for pennies. If a company (I use the term losely) can sell 100 $15.00 bottles of fake viagra they will make money from their $600 spam run.

If people just stop responding positively to the spams (hell, just stop responding altogether) the problem would solve itself. Would you use a an advertising company that got NO results? I wouldn't.

And someone said use the unsubscribe links in these emails. DON'T! That's just confirming your a valid email account. That gets put in the "Sell this one" pile and you end up getting MORE spam. If you want to do something about spam, stop responding completely. Just delete them. Send them to uce@ftc.gov and to your ISPs abuse center.

Why is it that everytime there's a problem with security, The APPLE/UNIX/LINUX and all the others always take Windows down?

Based on my experience in the IT, all these are results of carelessness and people not paying attention, and not knowing what to do when they encounter they don't have a clue. I have fixed thousands of infected pc as a service technician, and I always ask this questions to my customers, How did it happen? Answer: I don't know, I was just browsing, or opening up emails and then my computer starts having problem!

PLEASE LEAVE THE WINDOWS / UNIX / LINUX / APPLE COMPARISON...IT'S US THE USERS AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF THING WE KNOW AND DON'T KNOW!

Thank you.

Maybe we need a serial killer who specializes in taking out the spammers

Still, having a filter that only leaves email in your inbox if it's from somebody in your address book filters out the vast majority of spam. You can have it toss email from others into an "Unknown sender" folder that you can dig through with caution.

Spammers will always find new ways to spam. I don't understand how this is a big deal, if you see pharamacy or any other suspicious word, something should probably click in your mind, and you don't open the e-mail, or delete it if you have. Why would anyone open up links, even if it looks like it goes to google, from a person or source they don't know?

That's right, blame the car company for you smashing your car into a brick wall.

nah - I open the stuff that gets into hotmail (which is all I use for email) and then report everything that has a link to a different email - nigerian scams and the like AND add the spammer address right in the reply. Do I CARE about junk in the email inbox? Not a whole lot - it's just extra to delete. The latest seems to be "add me to your messenger" stuff with a hotmail address - which I summarily report to abuse@hotmail.com.

I suspect that a lot of this BS is bot related anyway so notifying the ISP might knock some of them off the net

My experience with spam tells me that the amount of spam you get depends upon the amount of exposure your email address gets.

I have a number of Hotmail and Yahoo accounts I check on a regular basis. For some, 5 spam emails a month would be considered a flood of spam. For others, I'm grateful if I get 10 or fewer spam emails a day.

The accounts with the high spam count tend to be the accounts that have the greatest exposure to the Internet. The operating system and the browser have absolutely no impact on the amount of spam I receive in these accounts.

Up until today I never noticed one of these 'I feel lucky' spams.. But I got my first one _after_ this article was published.. I see this as a major problem with Google's credibility as a search engine, and perhaps they should be flagged as spam providers(?)... On the other hand, if they just disable 'i feel lucky' maybe they'll get themselves out of hot water (does anyone use that feature?)

I disagree with c note on Gmail. I've never had spam issues, personally. Years ago a friend sent me an invite to join Gmail, so I did. I never used the address for anything & I never bothered to check that e-mail. When I finally did, I found hundreds of messages--all spam. I still check it occassionally & I still get hundreds upon hundreds of spam messages. Google has clearly sold my address. Yes, they have a spam filter, but it just puts it all in a different folder. It won't stop spam--it'll increase it 100 fold.

If your Internet security program is lacking features to keep your IE7 clean then switch to Live mail!

Oh my God, just what we need here is to get the Government MORE involved with our Internet. HELLOOOO!!! I just don't get this. . . Blame the government, blame Bill Gates, blame GMail, blame Google, why don't you also, while you are at it, blame Bin Laden or bikers or the Mob?!! Of course you can't blame the hackers, the programmers and those that feast on all of the crap on the net, because they prey on IGNORANCE, and by the looks of it there is an abundance of that. These things only happen because they can. When one takes on the ownership and operation of a computer one needs to also take on the responsibility of maintaining that computer by promoting a clean and safe environment in which that computer will need to run and continue to run. It really does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out and implement. If one can't or won't take on this responsibility and/or at minimum hire a professional to implement their responsibilities, and do it on a regular basis, then maybe the Government SHOULD step in and NOT ALLOW that individual to make that purchase. If everyone that owned a computer would put forth a little bit of self-discipline and make the effort to self-educate or class room educate or however educate themselves about their investment, that alone would contribute volumes in reducing all the crap out there. Those that are NOT doing the aforementioned and also those that practice bad surfing habits; thanks so much for the contribution, YOU are directly contributing to the abuse of those that generate, write the code & program and in fact make a living from
spam/spyware/crapware/malware/grayware/viruses/trojans/hijackers and the like!!! I for one am offended by people that keep pushing for Government intervention in the computer world. Haven't they gotten their say in enough of everything else already?!! If you feel the need for more Government, if you feel that they should take on the responsibilities that you should in fact be taking on, then you probably also need the Feds to wipe your *#*! I'm also fed up and offended with the arrogance/laziness/& ignorance of those that refuse to take responsibility, refuse to believe that they can have things on their computer that they themselves did not intentionally put there, and at the same time have zero/zilch/nada security in place, yet wonder why their always on broadband connection has slowed to a dial-up speed or has altogether disappeared and at the same time wonder why they see smoke coming from the hard drive that is in a computer that they bought just 6 months ago!!! Thanks so much for nurturing and feeding the plague that does exist. Why does this offend me? Because it is this attitude that directly contributes to crapping up MY and everyone else's online experience that have committed themselves to grow up and take on the responsibility and indeed try to contribute to a safer, cleaner, faster Internet. I'm a tech by trade and 80% of my income is generated from owners of computers that are LAZY, complacent and/or ignorant of their responsibilities in owning a computer. Add another 10% to that which is made up of people not educating themselves BEFORE making that investment in a computer & by purchasing from manufacturers that have generously given the new owner many of those baddies I mentioned with the bundled crappy software which the manufacturer is so willing to install and 'GIVE' to the new owner. The remaining 10% are those that KNOW there is a responsibility that they must take on and they need a direction/help/whatever in order to do that. The last 10% I mention, I do not charge a consulting fee, trip fee or any other fee as that is my small contribution to promote that behavior. As with anything that one owns, one must educate themselves about the purchase, about maintaining that purchase that they've spent their hard earned cash on, and should contribute to
and encourage the education of whomever will be using whatever that may be and in general, put forth a the effort towards being responsible. Try buying a vehicle and never put oil in it, try buying a refrigerator and never clean the coils, try buying a knife and never sharpen it. Better yet, call the Feds or Mr. Gates and have them sharpen it for you. When most of my clients deliver their computer to me, oftentimes within two minutes of booting into the operating system (which some times does not happen or oftentimes takes my lunch hour or longer) I'm so thankful that they delivered rather than ask me to make a house call as if they maintained their
home as they do their computer, they would probably need to make a pathway in order for me to find it! I'm with DE from MICH. That post was spot on. We
have no one to blame but our deadbeat selves. DE, I do believe the word you may have been looking for is LAZY!!!??

Two comments on previous posts:

1) Setting your computer to automatically update Windows is NOT a good idea. Sooner or later an update will break some vital program and leave you hanging: The now-dead program's authors, if they are still in business, probably can't/won/t be able to help because the change in Windows is as much a surprise to them as it was to you. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

2) Accepting spam and then deleting it is not an option if you get 50+ spams/day as I do. It would waste too much time. If you use Outlook, Thunderbird, or another program that fetches mail from the ISP's server, the time it would take just to download the junk is unacceptable. If your ISP does not offer a free workable spam filter with your e-mail account, switch to one that does. 99% of my spam never reaches me, I just visit the ISP's site, scan the spam folder looking for non-spam then delete the whole folder with 2 mouse clicks.

For all of you that think you can trust the small guy view this link http://video.knbc.com/player/?id=212629. Lets face it, good customer service is hard to come by.

1) I use Yahoo mail. I receive some 8-10 unfiltered pieces of spam a day on my main account. I also receive some 2-3 pieces of filtered non-spam in my spam box on my professional account. Filters are only as good as those who write them. On my main account, I get somewhere in the range of 80-120 pieces of spam in my spam box daily. I've had this account for over 10 years. Most of the spam that slips through Yahoo's filters is the dictionary attacks. I can look at the to list and see that there are hundreds of people in the list that have addresses similar to mine.
2) When I was really irritated at one spammer who had sent me over 200 pieces of spam back to back with the same offer, I called their office directly. Got information about the owner. I tracked him down. Called his home. Asked him if he wanted to buy any Human Growth Hormone. He got mad at me and screamed at me to not call him at his home again. I told him to stop sending me spam. He said it wasn't spam, but legitimate advertising. There was another batch of e-mails from him the next day offering anything from HGH to smut to enhancements. I called the second line at his house and his daughter answered. I asked her if her daddy worked at company x. She said yes. I asked her if she knew what her daddy did. She called her mom into the room. I read the titles of 30 emails from her husband's company. She screamed his name and hung the phone up. I never got another e-mail from them again.

Yeah. This information seemed a little confusing to me. Why would Google send you emails regarding your searches? Google has never sent me an email, minus confirmation emails regarding the startup of my reader service. Why would I open this, or use a link in it? I received an email from webroot today that freaked me out, because it hit my junk mail.. was I being phished?? No.. (flaw/plus (?) in Hotmail- only exact addresses go to your safe mail)

How low is your spam filter set? (general to all spam hit posters) I have mine set quite high.. I have hotmail, always have- shoot me.. but My junk mail is low, I guess hotmail "learns" to know what you don't want coming in. Its nice...
However my girlfriend has about 1500 or some odd spams in her spambox on her gmail... maybe she doesn't like the delete button..

So, Mr. Defcon. Yes, this is America and you can make a living off of the "bad/irresponsible surfing habits" of my 13 year old daughter. I try to obey traffic laws, which are there, presumably to protect me from myself, but, also from your poor driving habits. I am in favor of regulating business that spam and their dangerous/socially irresponsible/illegal products that they represent [mostly from other countries]. I suggest that you try to find a better way to make a living than hawking over the innocent that simply just want to get honest/clean email from friends/family/and conduct honest business.

In my opinion, a 13 year old child should not be surfing the web..Unless you are attentively watching over their shoulder!
The person from Phoenix has the hubris of a twenty year old! (Or maybe a cranky sixty year old)
Spam happens, people steal, people scam. What is new about this?