>From my own experience and from news items, it seems that there's been a recent spike in spam. It appears that other TIPsters have noticed it as well.
I hate the stuff. Passionately. I especially resent the implication that we're stupid enough to fall for their inane drivel. Unfortunately, there must be one or two in every million messages they send out who do, and that's enough to keep them profitable. I believe that every Internet provider has a service (usually called "abuse") in which you send them the spam and they try to do something about it. My information is vague but I think that two complaints are required, although I don't know if this is at the local or at a higher level. The spam originator is then supposed to be kicked off by the provider (and promptly gets on somewhere else, of course). However, the spam has to be sent to the abuse service with full headers for them to properly identify its source. I have two accounts, one at the university, one not. Both have abuse services, and I faithfully send them as much spam as I have time to send on. It gives me a bit of satisfaction, but not much, because I don't get any feedback concerning the success of my complaints. Perhaps if more people did this, it would be more effective. Does anyone else send spam regularly to their abuse service? I'd be encouraged to hear that other people do. For my account at home, which uses Microsoft Outlook, I filter based on an increasing list of words likely to turn up as spam. The filtered posts go to a delete file, which I check before deleting, because the occasional legitimate message gets accidentally filtered. But a lot of spam still gets through. I've also set the rule that any message that doesn't contain my address in the To: line is spam. Many spam messages arrive with that line filled with "undisclosed.recipient" or other meaningless junk. I think that that rule, which doesn't depend on specified words, traps the most spam of all. But I sure resent having to do all all this. I've heard that about 20% of net traffic is spam, so even if it was perfectly filtered, it still costs us all in clogging Internet communication. We need international legislation to control it. -Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at: http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
