Allow me to share my experience with Hotmail.
Many moons ago, before Micro$oft moved in (i.e. circa http://web.archive.org/web/19980208125348/http://www.hotmail.com/ and before), the service was free, both literally and in the spam sense. I had never used my email on web sites or shared them w/ anyone I didn't personally know. Additionally, I did not have my hotmail email address on any web pages. I only received emails from people to whom I had either sent my address or an email to. One day, Micro$oft comes along and takes control. At first, no noticeable difference.
Out of the blue, I get a note from "Hotmail" telling me how they're going to implement this whiz-bang new junk mail filter, so I'll never have to worry about those dreaded spams. Gee, I was thinking, I've *never, and without exception* seen any spam on this email address to-date, I wonder why they need this "junk filter". Well, I found out later *that same day*...
Immediately after receiving that email from "Hotmail" the spams came *pouring* in, and haven't stopped to this day. I now have the junk filters for that email address set to block any emails that don't come from those in my address book, which essentially knocks it back to how it was pre-Micro$oft.
I know that Hotmail/Micro$oft had *something* to do w/ the spams starting to pour in. Do I think they sold my address? Highly likely, but I doubt I'll ever have harder evidence than my experience. Are they currently breaking their policy(ies)? Doubtful...but don't forget the other angle of attack for spammers:
good ol' dictionary attacks, and variations thereof.
Simply put, they'll spam out to a list of similar permutations of letter/number combinations:
"[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]"
...knowing that b/c the service is free & well-known this strategy won't go far w/o hitting someone's eyeballs. Just try to sign up for a hotmail address today and you'll soon see that many letter/number permutations are already taken.
And the comments about only having certain types of "targeted" spam are also not relevent to my Hotmail experience...i.e., if you've seen a spam, be it a Ponzi scheme, porn, or larger [brain] size, I'm fairly certain that it's hit my Hotmail address at least once. ;)
Fwiw, the junk controls that come w/ Mozilla 1.3b+ are excellent! Bayesian in it's roots, it does an amazing job @ learning the signatures, so to speak, of the types of spam I receive and does a wonderful job of making my email reading experience much less agitating...
cheers, david
Sam Ewalt wrote:
On Sun, 16 Mar 2003 17:04:52 -0500, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
Did you ever wonder why everybody who signs up for a hotmail or a
yahoo account gets dumped on with tons of spam? Could it be that
hotmail and yahoo sell email addresses to spammers?
Highly doubtful. This would be against the expressed policies of both Hotmail and Yahoo. You are making rash and unwarranted assumptions. Spammers use free accounts to send mail for convenience mostly. They can set up an account, use it for a few hours and then move on.
The more public and spread around your email address is, the more spam you will get. It's as simple as that. There isn't any big conspiracy involving big commercial orgainizations like Hotmail and Yahoo. If you have an account with them it's just easy to harvest your address, that's all.
And I think your assumptions about pornography are also mistaken. I hardly ever get spam promoting porn sites. Mostly it's just Nigerian generals and drug offers. I used to get the free cable tv device offer all the time, but that seems to have disappeared.
Once you get on a certain kind of spam list as being possibly interested in certain kinds of offers then you will get lots of mail that's very much the same kind of thing. It's somewhat targeted that way.
Sam Ewalt Croswell, Michigan, USA
