Frank Rietveld enscribed thusly:
> > Do not do this!
> > There are a bunch of spammers out there that use this technique
> > to troll for good addresses! They hit a mailing list with some assinine
> > spam with a "to Remove" message at the bottom. Until they are finally
> > thrown off of their accounts by their provider, they sit back and
> > accumulate real addresses from all the fools you respond to the
> > Remove instructions. In other words, by trying to get yourself removed,
> > you end up adding yourself to E-Mail lists you wouldn't have otherwise
> > been added to.
> Okay, but you're not really smart if you send a remove using your own
> reply address since you're not even on the list.
> And when you ARE on the list, there is no use NOT to send a remove, since
> they already got your address. Or would you say they're using random e-mail
> addresses?
On the contrary... By sending a "remove" you confirm that the
address is valid, receiving mail, and being read! That increases your
address "quality" in that it is now a "qualified valid" address. Remember
that lots of these spammer lists have a high percentage of bad E-Mail
addresses. That can be from addresses that have gone bad (closed accounts,
relocated systems, etc, etc) to deliberately seeded spam chafe. To get
confirmation of a valid E-Mail address by getting a resonse allows the
spammer to flag your address as "confirmed good".
Oh... BTW... The bogus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> does
absolutely no good at all. It's a snap to filter out
*-{nospam,nosend,noemail,antispam-cookie-of-choice} out of the lists
before using them. Let's face it. These *ssholes are not TOTALLY
stupid and none of us are REALLY using something like
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for an E-Mail address. If anything,
it gives them another indicator of an E-Mail address that's probably
a good one... Sigh...
It's also a snap to troll web pages and E-Mail message bodies for
valid addresses, so it also does no good to use a bogus address in the
headers, only to have your real address somewhere in your signature or
on your home page pointed to by your signature...
> Greets,
> Frank
Mike
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(The Mad Wizard) | (770) 925-8248 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
NIC whois: MHW9 | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471 | possible worlds. A pessimist is sure of it!
