I allowed my older son who is away at college to open up an e mail address for my younger son who is still at home. They wanted to use it to write to one another. I had no problem with that, but I told them it would be monitored my me from time to time, so I had Billy’s password (the younger son)
and would check in to clear out the junk mail that inevitably comes our way.
DJ (oldest son) has been home for the holidays, so the boys haven’t been writing back and forth. He’s just gone back to school, and I went in to check on the junk again. There were 67 e mails, eleven of which were from either DJ or me. The rest was junk, but an incredible amount were highly sexual in content. And the come ons were disgusting. I don’t understand why companies are allowed to e mail those that it would be against the law for them to visit those sites in the first place. I’ve just complained to the site for it to stop or I’ll cancel Billy’s account. But, that only answers half of what I’d like to know. If it is against the law for someone Billy’s age to get on those sites, why isn’t it against the law for them to get his e mail address and send him these enticements???
If you are on AOL and visit any porn sites, your inbox will get flooded with porn spam mail. Just because it is illegal for him to go there doesn’t mean he can’t do it. Get off AOL! Then you dont get all that crap mail.
If you are not on AOL…I guess I have nothing pertinent to add.
Well, I am just guessing here…but if all your family’s email addresses are with the same ISP (NetAddress) and he is the ONLY one receiving porn mail…
::scratches chin::
Me thinks you should ask little Billy what he is doing in front of the computer when no one else is around.
Or, you can check yourself (depending on how much he’s tried to cover his tracks).
go to your cookies folder (probably under C:/windows) and look at some of the address associated with the cookies there. If you see any suggestive or X-rated sounding sites…well…
and try these 2 if you use internet explorer
Go to your history folder on your browser will show everywhere anyone on that PC has been for 20 days (usually a default setting, assuming this hasn’t been changed)…also assuming he hasn’t cleared the history.
Go to Temporary Internet Files Folder (again, probably in C:/windows) and sort by file type, then look at the .JPG and .GIF files, see if any of them have suggestive names.
You may want to cancel that account and get one from a site like Hotmail or Yahoo. They have “block sender” options and you can set it to filter mail with certain key words in the subject line (i.e. “teen” “blow” “horny” “Viagra” etc.) right into a trash can unread. That still leaves you with the sneaky ones that say “Hi, remember me?” and turn out to be some skanky ho site, but mostly you’re left with mundane telemarketing type stuff for cellphones or credit cards. I’m not sure how the stuff is getting to the younger one if you’re not on AOL. I was under the impression you had to post your e-mail somewhere for it to become available (such as a messageboard like this) so you may want to keep an eye on where he’s visiting or if it’s someplace legitimate, have him use the old address (to register on a site) after you establish the new one. I hope that doesn’t come out too confusing!
Me again. Now that I think about it, Yahoo has a site especially for young kids called “Yahooligans” that you should be able to get an address at. I’m guessing they pre-screen all the mail for you, but I’m not really familiar with it. Worth looking into, I’m sure.
Get him a free email acct at Juno. Juno Email only is not part of the internet. It’s a local nbr you call. We have never got any porno spam that way. You can’t get on the net with juno email from juno.com
Or get an email filtering program to email out porno or any words partaining to it.
But Juno Email only does a perfect job of keeping those possibly horny kids in line.
mouthbreather, DJ told me he’s gotten some of the same kinds of things, and erases them. I think what sent me over on this is Billy’s chronological age IS 15 but he is really emotionally/mentally about 10. He’s easily embarrassed, and doesn’t ‘get’ the overtures, his remark was ‘How can I remember someone I haven’t met?’ to one of the comeons. Thanks voguevixen for telling me what THAT was a link to, I didn’t know myself, just assumed it was gross and that was enough.
So there isn’t any porn sites listed, no surprise. But, if NetAddress doesn’t or maybe, can’t, put a block on his account, or any young teen’s account for that matter. Then I appreciate the extra information to go to either Yahooligans or Juno. Thanks handy, voguevixen and mouthbreather, hope I don’t sound like Ms. Overthetop mom of the year!
I have a hotmail account I use exclusively for work-related (professional) contacts.
Last Spring I used it to e-mail ~ 12 people (fellow doctors) in regards to a meeting I was planning. Since then, I get approximately 50 spam messages a week (2-3 desired ones).
These spam messages include porn sites, free ISP sites, Viagra/diet/etc sales, investment, sports betting, stay-on-line programs, etc.
Judy, your son did not have to go anywhere he shouldn’t have to get this crap. If he e-mailed one person besides his brother his account name could easily be out there on somebody’s list. If his brother ever forwarded anything to him & and multiple other users, anyone could have gotten his e-mail address & sold it to spammers.
Blind cc’s should eliminate that problem.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
If you ever once in your life post a message on usenet, they will follow you till the end of time flooding your mailbox with get-rich-quick and porn spam.
I didn’t mean to imply that your son was visiting improper sites on the sly, I just meant that even if he’s joining a message board about Pokeman or skateboarding or the Boy Scouts he may need to use an e-mail address to register (such as we do for the StraightDope.) The jist of what I was saying was that that was ONE way for outsiders to get his e-mail address and using a separate e-mail account (unused) for that purpose is how a lot of people cut down on their spam. I don’t think you’re being over the top at all, I think you’re being smart and I can understand how frustrated you must be.
Thanks Sue, and everyone for your quick advice and reassurance too.
voquevixen, mouthbreather had instructed me to check my files to see if Billy (or DJ either) had visited or uploaded any porno material, they hadn’t.
I didn’t realize that it was so easy to e mail someone that you hadn’t given your address to. Billy had played a Batman vs. the Penguin on a DC Comic Site, and I was in here with him. Everything seemed fine, well…to him anyway, it was kinda silly to me, but hey, that’s okay, most of those comic people look like bad guys now…but then that comes from someone who loved Mighty Mouse!!
I can’t remember if I had to give my age when I started my own e mail address account. Why isn’t it against the law for those gross sites to contact someone who is underage to visit them anyway?
Email addresses are dime a dozen. If it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle, have Billy use a “public” email address (like hotmail or yahoo) to sign up for things (like at web sites) and give him a “private” email address to actually correspond with people he knows. If the “public” email address gets spam…so what. Just visit it once a month to clean out the spam.
I have an email address with Juno that never, never (so far - it’s been 6 months) gotten porn spam. Juno will send out their own ads, but it’s just innocuous stuff. (That’s part of the price of using Juno.) On the other hand, I have an email address that I was stupid enough to use a few times to sign up for things, and now I get about 10-15 spams a day.
My feeling is, once an email address starts getting that kind of spam, it’s time to pull the plug on it, because the spam isn’t ever going away. Start fresh with a new address, and don’t make the same mistakes…NEVER use it to sign up for anything. Never use it on the newsgroups, or in emails with CC. With some care, you can keep an email address spam-free.
Anti Pro / Judy, as much as I hate receiving junk-mail (of any kind), the companies that send it have no idea of who they’re sending to; they’ll just buy or search around for email addresses and mail to them - there’s no real link for them to guess the age of their ‘target’.
When I register for free email accounts I don’t leave any biographical details (and if the site requires forms to be filled in, I just enter “N/A”, since most can’t validate what you type as long as you type something).
If a site requires you to leave an email address, and you’re sure you really don’t want anyone contacting you on it, either (a) make one up (e.g. notapplicable@notapplicable.com) or do what’s been suggested and keep a separate web-based email account.
yosemitebabe,
Personally, I have three email accounts. One is my work address, which I only ever use for work-related messages or the odd message to a trusted friend. One is my hotmail address (which I use here), which I regularly read but where I don’t worry about the content (e.g. dodgy jokes from friends, feedback from visitors to my website etc).
The last is another web account which I only ever use when registering for sites that want to send me passwords (e.g. job sites) or when I suspect it’ll lead to junk mail turning up. I clear out the inbox every month or so (just deleting things, never reading) and it works fine. I usually get only one junk email a week or fortnight in my hotmail account, which suits me just fine.
The thing with the net is lots of sites ask for your email. You could put in a fake email but they get around that by saying they need to email you your password. sigh.
There are programs that can suck out every email address from a web site, like the Straight Dope all by themselves.
A while ago, I was getting up to 100 daily porn e-mails in an account of mine, and after I deleted it they started coming to another address. Later I found out that a friend (some friend) of mine had been using my e-mail address to access porn sites which you need a valid e-mail address to go to. Maybe someone who knows his address is doing this, or something…?
Wow, LemonGrl, I would have been so ticked at that friend of yours! I hope you got it straightened out finally.
Thanks for all the quick responses, the funny thing is, I’ve still not had any response from NetAddress. I’m pretty certain I’m going to go with the idea about Yahooligans.
mattk, I guess I get that e mail companies have no idea who they are sending things out to, I would still think that something that has age limitations to it, would be more circumspect about who they send things to. On my own account, I’ll get ‘lose weight in ten minutes or less’, ‘lose debt in five minutes or less’ etc. etc. But, never some smut thing. DJ mentioned to me over the phone today, that he checked the box, under eighteen on Billy’s account… I think he is feeling guilty, though he ought not. Billy hasn’t been hurt, because I’ve intercepted all but the ‘Remember me?’ one come on, and Billy didn’t get what it was anyway.
I appreciate all the help I’ve gotten here, and am just going to cancel his account, that is a surefire way of stopping it!