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I know how the service I'm using, SpamCop, makes money.

There's a service (of which I'm a satisfied customer) called SpamCop, that parses spam headers (including addresses hidden in JavaScript, decimal IP's, etc.) for you and makes it painless to report spam. Sites hosted by legitimate ISP's referred to in a spam to me have a life expectancy measurable in minutes from the time I receive the spam. There are both metered subscriptions and a free (with a 4 second JavaScript countdown nag) one available.

<humor>BTW, spamrecycle.com has an anti-spam petition . I hope it doesn't involve forwarding the petition to ten friends, who will forward it to ten more, and . . . </humor>

This company does not prosecute your spam, they only send it to your state representative. They also have an extensive list of spam that they want to to sign up to receive!!!

A (major, I'm guessing) partner in this is Choose Your Mail . com, which let you decide what spam to get. Yeah right...

This company does not prosecute your spam, they only send it to your state representative. They also have an extensive list of spam that they want to to sign up to receive!!!

A (major, I'm guessing) partner in this is Choose Your Mail . com, which let you decide what spam to get. Yeah right...

This company does not prosecute your spam, they only send it to your state representative. They also have an extensive list of spam that they want to to sign up to receive!!!

A (major, I'm guessing) partner in this is Choose Your Mail . com, which let you decide what spam to get. Yeah right...

First I forward it to Spam Recycle, then send a copy to my ISP, then delete it.

SpamRecycle collects spam, determines the true address (if possible) and notifies the ISP of the spamer, it also distributes lists of known spam addresses to ISPs so they can be blocked. SpamRecycle also testified before Congress about spam. My ISP is prety good about keeping spam from reaching their customers, and usually act when customers forward spam to them. I never reply to spam, not even to opt out, that would only verify that they have a valid address, and I would get more spam.

Sounds plausible... a little too plausible for me to accept it without a credited source. Where did you hear this?

Right here on /. Unfortunately, a topic search for spam brings up only 2 articles.

...

Ah-ha! I found the thread. It's called the Spam Recycling Center.

Check out comment #141 by SkurfGod (sorry, I'd link directly to the comment, but it comes up blank. Also, #213 by an AC, and #562 by synaptic.

Now, |DaBuzz|, in comment #596, posted a response that he got after e-mailing 'em:

We do not sell email addresses nor are we a "front" for email gathering.

Yes we are majority owned by IBL Inc. IBL is a database marketing company that builds large scale databases for many Fortune 500 companies. IBL deals mostly with business data, not consumer, and has absolutely no data sharing with ChooseYourMail.com. We are two separate companies and we share office space and data center facilities in their Chicago headquarters.

I can see how this could raise an eyebrow. If we did what you acuse, ISP associations, anti-spam groups, even the FTC, wouldn't support us.

If you'd like to talk, please give me a call at your convenience.

That's about all of the useful info, though. Draw your own conclusions. I know that I have. :) This is enough to make me suspicious of anybody in this business!

The article discussed using a HTTP request for a gif to send your email address to the web server. Then the server would set a cookie on your system. With Outlook in the "Restricted' zone, cookies are disabled (unless you messed with the settings) and thus, a cookie would not be set(unless there's another bug somewhere I don't know about). When you later visit the site that spammed you, there is no cookie because outlook didn't save it.

I send all my spam to spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com; which is inherently a huge mistake, but I hope they're doing something constructive with the info...