Anti Pro, my regular Yahoo! email account has a “spamguard” on it that diverts bulk mail to a special folder. It doesn’t show up in the inbox. It seems to work. I’ve had a few things show up in there. I don’t get much spam though. Lucky I guess.
So, try some other email accounts, they are trying hard to stop some of the spam.
Thanks JimB, it’s weird, I don’t get that much Spam either. All three of us use the same service, so I still don’t understand why this has happened to Billy.
“Consider it a challenge…”
How odd: My father uses Hotmail and gets tons of crappy spam. I’ve used it over a year and have gotten less than five the whole time!
I’ll count myself lucky I guess.
Sweet Basil
A suggestion:
If you want to go after the spammers, write down their domain name and go to www.allwhois.com.
Type in their name where it says “check any domain name in the world”. In the OUTPUT window below, you’ll get a whole reel of information. Look for the “Domain servers in listed order”, and you’ll see what company hosts their site.
Forward the spam to the hosting company at abuse@hostingcompany.com. It’s a pain, yes, but the vast majority of hosting companies will not tolerate account holders who spam. Enough complaints, and the hosting company will shut them down.
I have several e-mail accounts and most don’t get any spam. The Yahoo! account gets maybe 2 per month. The only account I ever had a problem with was an AOL screen name that I accidently clicked on People Connection and at the time, it just dumped you into a chat room. I immediately got an IM from someone, I saw a message go by that said I’ve got another one for my mailing list. I got out within 2 minutes. From that day on, that account always had every variety of spam.
So, I very don’t know why. I suppose some places have people that hang around just for the purpose of gathering email addresses.
Anti Pro, the reason spammers don’t target their lists is cost. The cost to mail out a kajillion e-mails is very low, while the cost to go through the list and weed out specific names is very high. So, the porn sites are just being cost-conscious.
I know Hotmail has a function to allow you to refuse e-mails containing keywords in the subject line; I’m sure other e-mail providers do the same. I’d look around inside AOL and see what they have.
phouka, I just went to NetAddress and I had an e mail from their support services saying almost the same thing that you just did, with the addition of sending the letters that were offensive. But, I not only erased them, I never read past the come on. It is kind of disgusting to think I’d have to do that to get it stopped, not to mention, they don’t exist now, I’d have to wait for it to happen again, and I’m not really keen on that idea either.
Guy Propski, I understand that the costs are lower with higher numbers of e mail, I mean I figured it was like junk mail, literally. But, it still seems like they must have SOME discerning point, or why wouldn’t I have received a, ‘Hi, remember me???’ except that I’m listed as ‘judy’ and my son, being a male, is listed as ‘billy’.
I’m grateful for the info about not writing the company itself back, NetAddress even said, that would encourage more of the same stuff. They said they would put a block on his account, if I provided proof it happened, well, that’s kind of irritating. I have to prove I’m not lying? Who would go through this aggravation…surely no one needs THAT kind of attention!
I’m just going to cancel his account tomorrow, this is still burning at me though, not just for my son’s sake, but for those other kids whose parents may not be aware of there not being any protection from what I see as a potential danger.
Thanks for the help, and your quick responses, it still tickles me that I’ve heard so much good advice, and I’ve just now heard from the service that we use!
“Consider it a challenge…”
I have to agree with Banks. I know it’s “in” to bash AOL on these boards, but I really like their mail blocking feature. I set mine to only accept emails from addresses I put on my “approved” list. Any emails originating from an address not on my list gets returned to sender with a note that I’m not accepting mail from them. Since I put the mail controls on my account I haven’t had one single spam e-mail in over 2 years!
There are other “Parental Controls” on AOL that allow you to prevent your kids from getting to other areas on the internet, but since I don’t have any children, I’ve never checked out the specifics of that feature.
Since they offer a 30 day free trial, it might be worth just giving it a try for a month. You can have up to 7 different e-mail accounts/screen names on their newest version, and all the controls for each screen name are set through the main account. If you don’t give your son the password to your main account, he can’t go in and undo any of the blocks or controls you’ve set on his.
And I’ll also agree with JimB regarding the free internet accounts. I use Yahoo as well and they’re pretty good about dumping spam e-mail into the “bulk” folder. Doesn’t mean you (or your son) won’t get them from time to time, but at least they’ll be in a separate folder so he can avoid accidentally clicking on one that looks innocent but really isn’t.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
Judy
“Consider it a challenge…”