Subject: Hotmail Shutting Down
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 21:05:44 GMT
Dear Hotmail User,
Because of the sudden rush of people signing up to Hotmail, it has come to our attention that we are vastly running out of resources.
So, within a month’s time, anyone who does not receive this email with the exact subject heading, will be deleted off our server. Please forward this email so that we know you are still using this account.
–
What nonsense.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
That’s the same kind of crap I get on aol. I get emails saying they lost my information, including, big surprise, my credit card number. Then, they give me an address so I can give them my password and credit card number again. They say that if I don’t respond, I will lose my aol service. Guess what–I’ve never responded and have never lost my aol connection. They even direct you to a web site where they have copied and pasted the aol logo.
–Gail
“Predictable, really I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place.” --John Cleese
I think the reason that AOL is so bad is because people who are running these scams expect AOLers to know nothing about the net. Most AOLers seem to be relative newbies, and so, better targets.
You’ve got to be kidding–you don’t get spammed on hotmail? I get at least 4 spams a day! I was forwarding them back to hotmail as directed but nothing happened. Same thing happens to my daughter’s hotmail account–they really push the porn at her and she’s under 18. Complaints to hotmail get nowhere.
I have a yahoo account as well, and rarely get spam.
For all of you AOL haters, try going to a local ISP. The service is often better, and the amount of junk mail is signifigantly less.
Smaller local providers tend to be hard on junk mail and spam because they not only cause problems with mail servers, but also with clients calling and complaining. Unlike AOL, a small ISP doesn’t have 20 million customers and can’t afford to lose very many before the profit and loss statement starts looking grim.
I use a local ISP & get spam of all sorts. But then I use an email filter program, so I can filter most of it out. Also my ISP sued another local ISP that spammed us with offers to join them. We won. haha.
I’d get those “fake” notices about wanting your AOL screenname and password: the ones I got were always some load about “special internet software that speeds up your browser by storing your password and screenname on the internet”. My own solution was to take about three minutes and enter twenty or thirty made-up names and passwords. I figured that if someone’s gotta sit there and try them all, it wastes their time and if they’ve got a program that automatically verifies the names and addresses, sooner or later AOL is gonna wonder about who is constantly trying to get online with incorrect names and passwords. I still kept getting them though, all looking suspiciously similar and all strangely, with at least one misspelling or misspacing, and usually identical to each other. - I stopped using AOL a few weeks back, for other (numerous) reasons. - MC
Here is the source for an e-mail I received (note: I x-ed out some addresses):
He provided a means for me to not receive e-mail from him again if I’m offended. I don’t get much spam at all on Netcom. But “what if” I want to report someone? What exactly do I look for if I want to report this guy?
I’m afraid the xxx’s make it difficult to analyse. It seems to have come legitimately through digivis.com, but it’s difficult to see who sent it to them.
The easiest way to analyse is to download SamSpade from http://www.samspade.org . It’s free and essential for any spamhunter.
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx