You know, I've always wondered about the mechanisms for dissemination both spam and viruses use. I think I kind of understand viruses (I've never had any on my Macs though) but I thought spam was disseminated by programs crawling around the web picking up email addresses.
Developing address lists and sending the actual spam are two different, but interrelated, processes.
Spammers utilize three basic types of mailing lists - purchased, dictionary, and spidered. Purchased lists come in several "grades"; the higher the quality the more expensive. Dictionary lists are basically common words and names and their spelling variants (obtained from dictionaries and phone book listings) attached to various domain names. Spidered lists contain email addresses harvested from the web, USENET, and other sources.
Once spam is sent, using the above lists, the spammer evaluates the "success" of their mailing. They refine their mailing lists and resell them to other spammers.
Emailed viruses, OTOH, mostly just take advantage of Outlook's poor design. You receive the virus, trigger it, and it forwards itself to every address in your address book.
I have Yahoo, Hotmail, an ISP-account and a university email account that I juggle. Hotmail is for old, old friends, yahoo is more workaday, the ISP-account is for personal interest listservs (like this one) and the university one is for university work. The worst was always the Hotmail but then I didn't check it for a month, it lapsed and I had to reactivate it. Since reactivation I get absolutely no spam on it. I never get spam on my Yahoo and have maybe received 3-4 on my university account. I check my ISP-account via Mail and it seems to be filtering pretty well.
I've always assumed that I'm not found that much by spammers because I don't spread my email around that publicly. I figured that Hotmail got so much spam because it was hotmail (although I've never had the problem with yahoo).
For every piece of spam you recieve (or not), your service provider probably blocked at least a dozen, perhaps a hundred. Hotmail and Yahoo, in particular, have invested millions in spam handling software and labour.
- Dan.
-- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
