I came back from a weeklong vacation, no internet use, and there were only 36 messages in my Hotmail account, mostly spam as usual. That’s only slightly larger than the number of messages (mostly spam) I get on any given day. I was surprised my account wasn’t flooded with hundreds of emails.
I wonder, does email spam happen as a direct result of surfing the Internet? When I visit a site and they somehow harvest my email address, does that email come immediately, and perhaps never again (or not often again) if I don’t visit the site again?
I have found that posting on public message boards coincided with my spam going up about 1000%. I only post on two boards. FWIW, my husband doesn’t post on any boards and gets zero spam. Of course, this is not scientific at all, and probably means nothing.
No. A site cannot harvest your email address. You must give it to them, or someone you give it to must provide it to the spammers. There’s also dictionary and brute force spam attacks, but they’re less common.
Hotmail/msn has obviously done some sort of filtering with regards to spam. I can remember 3 months ago , getting about 40 a day , now its down to about 6 , so that may be why your seeing a reduction in spam.
I just want to chime in with a “me three” regarding a very noticeable reduction in Hotmail spam in the past few weeks. I’m finally getting my money’s worth with this free service.
A web site can harvest your email address if you do something very stupid: You can “customize” your browser and enter “helpful” information like email address. In fact, something that looks like an email address is needed to access anonymous ftp sites. The web site, upon contact, can ask your browser to send along all such info.
So never, ever, fill in such information in your browser. If you need an “email address” to access an ftp site via your browser, use some gibberish name@fakesite.com.
You want spam? Go to usenet - now Google Groups. I have one Email address I post there with. I posted with the wrong account…Flooded with spam. Also Efnet and Undernet bring in unwanted emails, but not in great quantities.
Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves: Usenet is still Usenet, as it has been for over twenty years now. Deja was merely a mirror, as is Google Groups. Neither was ever Usenet.
