Why do I keep getting porn email?

[Persephone]

Why is it that every time I come here to the SDMB, I get email with porn site links in it? This is not an occasional thing...it happens every time I come here. Can I make it stop? I get so excited when I hear the little man in my computer tell me I've got mail, and it's such a letdown when it's just another site wanting me to look at their naked people, doing stuff that naked people do. Sigh.

[PunditLisa]

Cristi, I never got porn e-mail until my niece used my AOL account and ventured into a chat room. Within minutes of being in this room, she (aka me) got the first porn e-mail. Ever since then I've been inundated with them. My husband, who never posts messages, gets no XXXXX messages. Or at least he CLAIMS he never gets them. Hmmmm.

[BoBettie]

Cristi,
I have an AOL account which get innundated with porn mail (I use it for chat), but before I ever chatted with it I got loads, too. I have never, ever recieved porn mail at my work address or my yahoo address, leading me to belive that somehow it's much easier for someone to get your AOL account name and put it on lists. I personally (This is my own opinion) think that AOL sells their member names. Even my Mom, who would NEVER EVER chat or go to a porn site closed her account because of all the porn she got. Disgusting.

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Run for the hills, folks! Or you'll be up to your armpits in martians!

[mangeorge]

I use earthlink (internet explorer), and I never get porn. I occasionally get offers on ICQ. Of course I always delete them.
:)
Peace,
mangeorge

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Work like you don't need the money.....
Love like you've never been hurt.....
Dance like nobody's watching! ....(Paraphrased)

Lists of active email accounts are valuable to online companies (porno and otherwise). Presumedly someone is going through this board, copying all the email addresses, and selling the list.

[Nickrz]

I never get porn email. I use the Aol instant messenger and ICQ, but I've never gone near Aohell itself.

If someone is taking email addys from this board, could they please send me some hot spam?

[Harmonious Discord]

I just received prono solicitations twice this week. I never had it before this week. It's for those stupid bimbos that are fighting a zoning law in Florida. Watch us live in a house.

[Persephone]

My name is Cristi, and I am an AOL user.

There. I said it. I like AOL because it's easy, and I'm ignorant.

Now that I'm getting a clue about where the porn is coming from, though...Nickrz, I'll be happy to stop deleting it & just forward it. ;)

[handy]

My email program filters out porno. Plus other crap. Shoot, can even filter out old girlfriends too. Really. Just input their names.

[Qwisp]

Any time you put your e-mail addres in the public domain,(this includes message boards,chat rooms, guest books, etc.)you open yourself up to unscrupulous people who will find your address. They will use it or sell it. Before you know it BOOM your mail box is flowing with XXX Naked Girls R Us

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I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

[Qwisp]

Darn!! Thought I had that UBB thing down. Oh well. It was bound to happen, god only knows I've posted more it the last few days then in the previous month or so.

[Rich Barr]

Yeah, it's an AOL phenomenon rather than this board. I used to be on AOL, and I got tons of junk mail, porn and otherwise. Now that I'm no longer on AOL, I only get junk from the weirdos I correspond with.

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Rich Barr
massivemaple@hotmail.com
AOL Instant Messenger: Hrttannl

[Mazey]

Guess the secret is NOT to post your e-mail address, or, if you feel you must, use Nickrz' (who gets no porn e-mail). As far as AOL and getting spam, you can set your mail filters to receive mail from only set individual addresses.

If all else fails, and you get unsolicited porn e-mail or any other kind of SPAM, simply forward the message to your ISP and advise them you didn't solicit the message and want no more. AOL is...TOSpam@aol.com...I think.
I won't accept ANY e-mail at my aol addie.

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"There will always be somebody who's never read a book who'll know twice what you know." - D.Duchovny

On a similar topic, I get mail on special offers DAILY from cdnow.com
I have tried to stop it; changed my profile to have a different email id, etc. etc. No use.
My everyday ritual now includes checking for mail from cdnow.com and then deleteing it.
Iam NEVER going to shop at cdnow.com
(Not that this going to hurt them, but I hear they are going down anyway, heehee)


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Veera

[AuraSeer]

IIRC, before you go into an AOL chat room, you have to pass through a "lobby" area. That's where many spammers spot you. A lot of them just leave their accounts sitting idle in that area, logging the screen names of everyone who passes through.

[Temujin]

A good way to stop receiving unwanted porno spam junk e-mail on AOL is to forward all of it to TOSspam@aol.com. After I started doing this, I stopped receiving the unwelcome solicitations.

[Markxxx]

A lot of people use E-Mail generators. That is a computer sends out e-mails to random addresses. I have one e-mail address I have NEVER used and I get email there. I just keep it as it is a cool name and I wanted it before anyone else took it.
But a lot of times you forget where you've been. I went into a usnet group and they were arguing about guns. I clicked on a url and that took me to a hate site. Now I get e-mail from them. Fortunately I asked to be removed and they did.

[DougC]

- - - It really kinda disappoints me - I thought the biggest advantage of monitoring online use was to target advertising. For quite a while a friend and I were having a contest to see who could find the most revolting, depraved (free) site there was. Not one of those ever spammed either of us; all we got was the plain-vanilla stuff. -And lots of it. Nicer-looking-than-average people doing average stuff. Yawn. The net is supposed to be a smorgasbord of undesireable influences - where's the filth, the depravity? Where's the perversion? - MC

[Persephone]

I don't go to chat rooms. I read my email (from the clothed people), play email Scrabble with about 6 different people, and I hang around here. The porn mail only shows up while I'm here. That's what's so weird about it.

Gotta love those subject lines in the email, though..."I missed you last night," "When can I talk to you again?" "Our women with goats are the best women with goats on the Net!"

[Stephen]

I believe the latest rash of AOL spam is being harvested from profile searches. I find it a little tough to believe that this message board is being harvested, because (as far as I can see) you have to click each individual poster's info button to see their email address. Tedious collection methods are rarely popular.

The most annoying phenomenon has begun recently. Some company does a profile search and makes a list of a few hundred email addresses. Then, they spam them by CC'ing everybody on the list. Then, some religeous idiot thinks "Hey, all I have to do is 'Reply to All' and I can tell a few hundred people that God loves them!" Then, one by one, 1/3rd of the bozos on the list 'Reply to All' to say "Please Remove Me!!!" Then, another 1/3rd of the list 'Reply to All' to say "Hey, stop 'Replying to All'!"

GRRRR!

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Stephen
Stephen's Website (http://stephen.fathom.org)
Satellite Hunting 1.1.0 visible satellite pass prediction
shareware available for download at
Satellite Hunting (http://stephen.fathom.org/sathunt.html)

[handy]

Your email address is listed on the board with that little picture icon. People can find it and put you on a list.

Get a free email at Hotmail or yahoo, use that email address instead.

There are programs like Cherry Picker that can scan web sites like this and pick out all the emails just like that. There is another version of it that can pick them from newsgroups.

[PunditLisa]

BTW, you can stop your e-mail address from showing up on these boards. Click "profile", then "submit identification" and click the NO option in the field where it asks whether you want to display your e-mail address.

[NanoByte]

Cristi:

I like AOL because it's easy, and I'm ignorant.

I thought the idea was that, if one used the SDMB, one's ignorance was whisked away.

Qwisp:

I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.

Yes, the truth is that you were wrong more than once: Those 'bold's should've been simply 'b's.

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I don't bother trying to filter spam; I just trash it. Almost none of it is porno; most is just wheeler-dealer stuff -- I think, not from this board, but from some newsgroups and some other Websites. But I don't use AOL or go to chat rooms. The stuff only bugs me when the same ones come in immediate multiple copies. The worst was when Yahoo didn't jump on those who used their domain name. I e-mailed them to do something about it. Thereafter, their autoresponder kept sending me a string of multiple e-mails from them about how they couldn't do anything and whatever. Then I called them and could only get lost in their voice-mail system without ever being able to reach a person, and no one called back. So I called adjacent numbers until I got the phone of an engineer. He said he'd do something about the problem. It all stopped and I never heard again from Yahoo. So, when in doubt, call an engineer.

Ray (ex-engineer. But don't call me; I'll spam you. ;) )

[handy]

I know a lot of people who use Juno for email & never one spam of any sort *except* from the Juno people. lol.

[OpalCat]

IIRC, before you go into an AOL chat room, you have to pass through a "lobby" area.

You do not RC. You only go to a lobby if you have no clue what you are doing.

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>^,,^<
"Cluemobile? You've got a pickup..."
OpalCat's site: http://opalcat.com
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