On 10 Jan 2005 at 6:33, dhbailey wrote:

> A-NO-NE Music wrote:
> 
> > At how the email currently is being, dealing with SPAM is wasting
> > time for me.  When I get "confirmation request" from a list member,
> > I simply add that to my SPAM list.  I will never see it again :-)
> > 
> > I receive over 500 SPAM a day throughout 13 mail accounts I have.
> > SPAMSieve does a pretty good job putting them into trash can.
> 
> Wow, I have 3 e-mail addresses, have had them for about 3 years now,
> and I average about 5 to 10 spam messages a day.  I wonder if my hosts
> (I have one that hosts my web-site and another which is my ISP,
> Comcast) have already filtered them out before they reach my mailbox.

If you've never posted the email addresses on a web page or Usenet 
(or in any mailing list that archives on the web with unmunged email 
addresses), then your address has probably not been harvested by 
spammers.

Because my email addresses were on the web in clear text back in 1996 
and frequently posted on Usenet from 1994 on, I ended up on every 
spammer's list. Once your address is on the list, you can't take it 
off -- you can only abandon the address (which is what I'm 
transitioning into doing).

If I had changed email addresses in the last 4 years or so, I 
probably wouldn't be experiencing spam (that's when I started munging 
my email address on Usenet and obscuring it with character encoding 
on my web pages), but an email address is something that it's hard to 
give up, like a long-used telephone number, so I've put up with the 
spam. Back when I got 100 a day (a year ago) it wasn't that bad. Now 
that I'm getting 200, it's unbearable.

> In any event, when I get a challenge-response message, even from
> someone I am legitimately trying to contact, I simply put it in the
> trash, build a filter and never try to contact that person again.

That is bloody stupid behavior. There are good reasons for someone to 
want to vette their incoming email, and you're breaking the system. 
Of course, you're really only harming yourself, isoloating yourself 
from those who are trying to avoid the spam onslaught.

> I find such services disgusting and unnecessary -- it's like having to
> send a letter to everybody who is sending me a letter to ask them if
> they are really sending me a letter.  The Postal Service would
> probably welcome all the extra income that such stuff would generate
> but it wouldn't stop the junk-mail from coming into my mailbox.

The Postal Service already filters your email and doesn't send you 
mail that isn't legit (like mail that's addressed to a different 
person, but at your address).

In any event, the comparison is spurious, because the sender bears 
the expense with postal nunk mail, while the recipient bears the 
expense with junk email.

> I find clicking on the delete key to be just as easy as going through
> all the bother to set up a whitelist service that I know will piss off
> some of my correspondents and that I will lose the facility which is
> the main benefit of e-mail.

When you're receiving 5 or 10 spam messages a day, that's certainly 
probably true. If you ever end up receiving 100 or more, you will no 
doubt think differently.

> I wish all of you who have built yourselves nice armored fortresses of
> e-mail whitelist services all the best, but you won't get individual
> e-mails from me.
> 
> Not that will be any great loss to any of you, I'm sure.

The loss will be to *you*.

-- 
David W. Fenton                        http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
David Fenton Associates                http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

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