I NEVER reply to any spam… even the “Remove Me”… true, some may work but most just tell the spammers that your address is active. Then they sell your address and you get more spam than before.
My old account gets around 15-30 a day. My newish account gets none. My boss’s work e-mail gets around 300 a day.
Larry, you need to read the whole post. I already debunked this. Sokay, I forgive. Gives me a chance to emphasize it. As I said earlier, this belief is common but false. It’s possible, but it doesn’t happen at least for me. And I can prove it. You can at least do what Thaumaturge did, but you will see quicker results if you try this.
First, go to http://www.sneakemail.com/ and sign up for an account. It’s free. (Donations accepted.) Sneakemail generates an address which you give out to websites like Amazon, Ebay, Straightdope, etc. When someone sends an email to that address it is forwarded to your main email address with an identifier in the address label. It makes it super easy to filter and to identify spam cheaters.
So, next step. Pick out a real juicy spammer with a legit “removeme” link. BUT DON’T PRESS IT! in case you are right, (I’m not saying what you say isn’t possible.) Instead, look at the address. Right click on the removeme link and copy the address to the clipboard. Go to the root address and find out where you sign up for their junk mail. Now, put in a sneakemail address. I’m serious, this is totally safe with sneakemail. You can delete the sneakemail address later. I have a whole category for these OPTout cheaters to make identification easier. Now the evil spammers are GOING to send you spam, but to the sneakemail address. Sneakemail will then forward the address to you. Once you start getting junk mail through that address click the removeme button and do what it says to remove your sneakemail address from their list. You will still get some junk from them for a few days, but one day, it will all stop cold. No more junk email from them, or through that sneakemail address at all. I have done this countless times and have yet to find a single removeme link that doesn’t actually remove me.
The addresses I have listed on websites (work and some websites I maintain) draw around 300-350 spams per week. Personal accounts I use for communicating with friends get no spam (ISP-supplied addresses) but I never divulge them except to friends and ask them to not send send anything there like attached web pages or “email this to a friend” stuff.
If I register to any free site I create a random hotmail account to get the initial password then abandon the account. If I lose the registration I start over. Same thing to communicate with a stranger, usually.
k2dr75f3ZZZ6la93k@hotmail.com lol.
I’m thinking about creating a web page with dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands? of fake email addresses for the bots to collect, just to dilute their lists the tiniest little bit. Stuff like henry@happy.zen you know. Do you suppose that would have any effect at all on things?
consolid8 YOU have to use sneakemail. What you do is EXACTLY what sneakemail does. Except the potential junk mail will be going to your real email account. REALLY look into it. I really want sneakemail to catch on. It is such a fantastic service and they deserve to get big. The more people who use it, the less likely they are to start charging.
Prisoner yeah I see that. I was just looking at the site. I’ve developed my ‘method’ over the past few years (since 1996 actually) and I didn’t know sneakemail existed.
Yahoo (about 3 y old): a few a week. I am lucky.
I’ve had the same email address for about 9 years now. IT receives well over 100 spams a day – though I only ever see maybe 10 of them the filters don’t catch…
About 10 a day, and most of them are encouraging me to enlarge my penis. Just what are they trying to say exactly?
It used to be well over a hundred. However, I have put a very strict filter on it. This is a pain, but the benefit is worth it.
One a day.
My ISP (the excellent regional Northern California ISP, Sonic.net) has very cool spam filters.
About 60 daily.
Just to see what would happen, I once inserted one of my websites to a service that was to submit it to 100,000 FFA(free for all) websites to list mine.
I knew enough to use a disposal webbased email account. I received more than 1,000 messages in the first twenty four hours. No additional website visitors though.
I use a hotmail account whenever i’m subscribing to things online that i think will result in spam. For example, if i do a free registration at a newspaper home page, or sign up for frequent flyer points. This hotmail account gets heaps of spam, but that’s no porblem as i just go in once a week, clear out the crap, and read the few emails that are of actual interest to me.
My main email account runs through my university’s email system, which seems to have good protection against spam. I use this account for personal emails, school-related stuff, and for certain subscriptions and memberships. My SDMB messages get sent to this address. My spam count at this main address is virtually nil - maybe one message a month.
Saw this thread yesterday about this time and deliberately kept my trash for a 24 hour period: 78 pieces of spam collected by my filters, plus one piece that snuck through (currently sitting in a folder named “filter fodder”).
I have a yahoo account that I use for everything but personal correspondence and financial things…good ol’ spamsarah@yahoo.com 
But surprisingly it gets practically NO spam. Go figure.
I also have two school accounts, one because I’m a student and one because I work in the computer center. One of them, my employee account, I finally had to give up on - it was getting about 20 spams a day, and in pine, that was just too annoying. I use it as a spam account also, but I do check it every once in a while. My other school account gets one every few days or so.
I once heard it was illegal to spam .edu addresses because you’re using bandwidth that is government/non-profit supported rather than privately or commercially owned. I have no idea if this is fact; I can’t find anything to prove it OR disprove it. Monty is the only one on here I caught that also has a school address (but didn’t say how often it was used). I wonder…maybe I could turn the spammers into the Feds
oops. and mhendo. But our system doesn’t have a built-in spam filter (you can set one up for yourself, but it’s tedious).
About one per week.
I have a friend who gets dozens each day. I think the amount of spam received is a combination of several factors:
-
The sites that you visit. Porm is famous for being a spam generator.
-
The internet provided that you use. Miine must be filtering out the spam, as did the last two that I used. Look up the information at your provider’s website.
-
Your demographics. Internet sales persons use a lot of information to create lists of potential customers based on all sorts of factors like age, income, applications for loans, responses to previous spam, and so forth.
-
Or maybe I just don’t interest spammers???
About ten to fifteen daily. They are mostly of two sorts. One sort wants to help with my tax/credit problems(I don’t have any, and the other sort wants to help enlarge my penis(I don’t have one of those either)
On my Netzero account, maybe one a week, and even those aren’t the “satisfy your woman” variety - they tend to be offerings for financial advice, which could be coming from legitimate sources. I’ve got to assume that Netzero has some fairly good spam filtering, since I’ve had the account for several years.
My Hotmail account gets about 3 or 4 a day, and most of them seem to think that my penis is too small, or that I’m drowning in credit card debt (curious, since I haven’t carried a balance on a credit card ever).
At my ISP email I get no spam at all, since I’ve never given the address to anyone but friends or family. My hotmail account that I use to sign up for forums and whatnot gets about 30-40 a day. Doesn’t bother me though.