Slashdot Mirror
Opting Out Increases Spam?
J. L. Tympanum writes "I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out? Is my email address being harvested when I opt out? Has anybody had similar experience?"
It *does* show the spammers that the account is active and you're looking at the email...
Is my email address being harvested when I opt out?
Yes.
You've validated to the spammers that your email address is being actively read, and that you actually READ spam. You have confirmed to them that you are an excellent use of their resources.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
It has always been my understanding that hitting those opting out links only verifies that your email address is valid.
Thus increasing the amount of spam because a valid email address is worth so much more...
Opting out lets them know that someone actually reviews mail coming in to that address. You say 'shut up and leave me alone', they hear the sound of registers cashing out.
Dir Sir, allow me to introduce my self.
I used to avoid water but recently I have been using the shower. Now I get more wet than ever, especially of the makes-my-skin-pruny (and related) types. The latter has gone from almost none to one or more a week. Was I a fool for taking a shower? Is my skin being harvested when I shower? Has anybody had a similar experience?
If spammers will not honour our private property rights by stealing our bandwidth and mail server ressources, what makes you think that they will honour requests not to be spammed again?
Worse, "opting" out confirms that the e-mail address the spam has be sent to is valid!!!
You never opt-out of spams, you LART their upstreams until they have no more connectivity.
People still fall for this "opt-out" scam? Really?
I thought this was pretty well known and understood by now, especially by Slashdot types.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Is this guy serious?
I would give him the benefit of the doubt if this was circa 1997. But it's 2009, and even the birds on the trees are singing the tune "who tries to opt-out on spam is a fucking fool and deserves to have his e-mail harvested to hell and back". Or some such tune.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I have had the exact same experience with my hotmail account a few years ago. I would get almost no spam. This was great for years with that account. Then one day I got a few spam. I tried the "opt out" option and almost moments later I saw multiple spams coming in. I have not tried it with my gmail or any other account for fear that my spam will double.
As everyone says, opting out of spam mails just shows the spammer that your email is still active, and that you bother to look at the spam beyond deleting it.
The only opt out links worth following are ones you know the source of; i.e. something you once opted in to, or did not opt out of when you bought something.
e.g. Bought something at newegg and did not uncheck the box about mailing you about specials and deals.
Essentially, opting out only works for non-spam mailing lists. Spammers don't care and just use it to acknowledge a good target.
I've no data on the subject so take with a pinch of salt, but I remember being told a few years ago that responding in any way (even opting out) just confirms that the spam is not only being delivered, but being read, and that this may just lead to more spam being sent to your address. As I said, I don't know how true it is, but it makes sense to me.
Are the editors in some kind of contest to put up the lamest "Ask Slashdot" story? If so, they can end it right now — Timothy has definitely won.
Or maybe not. Somebody might ask "why doesn't my computer work when it's not plugged in?"
Imagine there's a door to door salesman who keeps harassing people on your street and the cops can't catch him. He keeps harassing you too, and so you stop answering the door and the salesman thinks no one is home but he still tries a few times a day. Then you hear that if you were to only tell the salesman (who is breaking the law) to stop then he will stop, so you yell out for him and any salesmen to fuck off, and you keep doing so, and now all the salesmen know you're home and so they all keep knocking on your door.
By letting them know you are home.
Or are you trying to make one of your friends/enemies look dumb?
Do you have ESP?
A better Ask Slashdot question would have been: "how can I forge bounce messages so that they think my email address is invalid?"
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
The trick is to avoid confirming your mailbox is active. Opting out means you saw the spam so they will of course send you more. The second thing is to make sure your mail client doesn't disclose your presence. Ensure it asks before sending a reception confirmation and finally under no circumstances allow your mail client to pull ANYTHING from the network without your permission. Otherwise those cute/porn pictures in all that spam are confirming your presence by the unique urls embedded in each spam.
Democrat delenda est
Has anyone explained why opting out is a bad idea yet?
AT&ROFLMAO
You should really go up to the spammers and demand your electrons back.
Karma: Non-Heinous
How on earth did this make any part of slashdot at all?
I actually did this on my mothers computer.
I looked at each spam message and made a call if I could trust the opt out, and I I went through her whole inbox. Result? Smap mail dropped from 100ish/day to less than 10 on average. And it stayed that way for near a year with a small trickle increase.
how it works is they email 000000000@hotmail.com or w.e then 000000001 ...2 ....3 ...4 ...5....6...7...8...9..a...A...b...B and so on then they get to a real one, and if you click the link, they know they found a real email address... dont click it!!!!
~Pctech37(too lazy to login)
Not just that, but you confirmed to the spammers that you were stupid enough to believe something they said. Consider the advice of the great philosophers Mr. T and Nelson.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
We were left with the only users that would try and opt-out of spam.
Don't worry you're in good company. We have 3 or 4 PhD's/Managers around here that tried it.
It works even better if you include your SSN, DOB, and banking info too.
But if you really want to improve your fortunes, I know this Nigerian Prince that I can put you in contact with.
My project manager thought getting a password reset instruction email with a message "If you did not make this request, simply ignore this email" with a token url, that his account was compromised. I did not even bother explaining.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Let's all take a moment of reverent silence in which we honor well crafted legislation.
But as you said, er, everyone just said it.
Why did this make it here? There's plenty of forums out there that will answer this question. This is pretty basic stuff that can be answered in other places.
Is this the "Dumbing Down of Slashdot" I keep hearing about?
It took me a minute to get the answer to the question on google...by doing a search (shocking right?)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/237275.html
.... ... }
int main (void) {
What this article is saying...I would get ignored for saying...and it IS something I would say.
As someone who does responsible e-mail marketing, please let me make a distinction between that and spamming.
If you are getting notices to enhance your johnson or "Che@p drug$" or whatever, DO NOT use the "opt out" link. It confirms your e-mail address is functional. In fact don't open them at all. Report them as spam and help your ISP improve their filters.
HOWEVER, if you are receiving e-mail marketing you just don't want anymore--like say the daily deal e-mail from Expedia*--please use the opt-out link to cancel your subscription. Deleting them won't stop the flow, and marking them as spam hurts deliverability reputation, making it harder to get them to people who actually want them.
Perhaps I'll get modded down for saying this, but e-mail marketing can be done responsibly and is a big part of many legitimate businesses. I think this sometimes gets lost in the War On Spam.
* I don't work for them, this is just an example of an e-mail marketing that I know I get.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Who in the world allowed such a mindless post on /.??? Only some dope (like my best friend) would be dumb enough to click the opt-out option. And I guarantee he doesn't read or even know of /.'s existence. I'm baffled by seeing such a post on here!... Unless /. Overlord was bored mindless and needed a cheap laugh.
you probably would have been better off sending them your money, then they would have at least made less from that than selling your email address.
Opting out only validates that your email address is valid. It is a sucker bet.
These people are not honest. And even if 19 of them are and 1 is not, guess what he will do? Add your address to a list and sell his list of valid addresses for 49 dollars to all takers.
NEVER opt out.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
> Was I a fool for opting out?
Yes.
> Is my email address being harvested when I opt out?
Yes. That's what it's for.
> Has anybody had similar experience?
I'm certain of it. I suggest you drop that address, create another one somewhere else, and then don't do that again.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I actually did this on my mothers computer.
I looked at each spam message and made a call if I could trust the opt out, and I I went through her whole inbox. Result? Smap mail dropped from 100ish/day to less than 10 on average. And it stayed that way for near a year with a small trickle increase.
That's all well and good, but the submitter was trying to deal with spam, not smap mail.
I find that I get better results with spammers if I send them a personal message, like so:
Dear Kind Spammer,
Please stop sending me your crap.
Thank you and with best regards,
AC
If an e-mail triggers their content filters, some ISPs will return a "hard bounce" error on an e-mail address that is actually valid and in use. If you're doing e-mail marketing you cannot necessarily trust the SMTP error codes from ISPs. This is one reason why legitimate e-mailer service providers maintain direct relationships with big ISPs.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As a lot of people commented already, opting out from illegal spam (the bulk of it) is just validating your email. Hey, why would someone doing fraud and operating an illegal business would bother to provide a real opt-out mechanism? Because they are cool guys or what?
However, there's a small portion of spam which comes from European countries mainly, that is semi-legal, from telemarketing companies operating on behalf of legal companies. That is, they claim they got your email legally (accidentally otherwise), and provide you with a real opt-out mechanism (that's why make it legal and comply with the law on many countries)... in those cases, opt-out *might* work. In my experience, it has worked some times.
But is it worth it? I managed to opt-out successfully from some spammers... and what I achieved? I receive 5 spam emails less? That's nothing compared to all spam I receive, my Spam folder on GMail has an average of ~15000 emails.
A few years ago I tried it. I created a spammotel account and created several unique addresses which I used to opt out on many sites.
So far I haven't received any spam on those email addresses.
It would be interesting to know where timothy opted out.
Privacy is terrorism.
The urge to sell things is second only to the urge to acquire that which one desires the most. And the distance between those two desires are tremendous.
What ends spam? Basically nothing. Truly, the only thing that might slow things down even a little would be for someone to completely lose their mind and track the people responsible down and murder them in the most gruesome way imaginable. (Honestly, I hope to see that day... my own rage over spam and the people responsible for its constantly escalating assault in system security has turned the entire internet into a battlefield.)
The consequences of spamming are almost none. The costs involved in such operations are nearly nothing especially when one considers that the cost burden is born by those exploited by it directly and indirectly. When criminals are virtually assured of no consequences or penalties, there is no limit to what they are willing to do to the rest of the world. These sociopathic people can not be reformed. Only one thing truly stops them.
marketing from an otherwise legitimate company, opting out will work, but for spammers it just makes things worse. Spammers count on two things, that they just need a tiny percentage to respond to their solicitations, and that the rest of us will ignore it. Once a year I make a point of researching the complete header of spam and reporting them to their ISP and any law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction. They are engaged in fraud in the traditional sense of the term, so are violating existing laws. They are counting on the rest of us to just delete them and not lodge a complaint.
Where does the money come from to make spam a profitable business? Who is so dumb that they click or buy anything in these mails? Does someone here know such a person?
And more importantly, can u stop them? Mayby with silver bullets or a stake through the heart?
...a question of mine, possibly related to spam or scams and much more complicated didn't. A while ago I wanted to know what slashdotters think the explanation is to why someone would place orders on-line with my name and e-mail address without there being any obvious scam attempt. I've received legitimate order confirmations and since they were legit companies, I've e-mailed them to tell them that I haven't placed any orders and they ask how it's possible since they've already been paid for and recommended that I check my credit card use. Since I don't have a credit card, there have obviously not been any suspicious charges on it. In one case I even received a confirmation that the flower delivery had been made despite me having first had e-mail correspondence with them about it. What makes it even stranger is that my name is a typical Finnish name but the addresses have been in Thailand and Singapore (neither of which I've ever visited let alone lived in). So feel free to answer that instead of this question to which there's an obvious answer. I'd appreciate it.
YOU FOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Congressional Law should amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act saying that it's legal for me to trace back spammers to their home base via my own research (partially nipping the flaw), hack their shit, and annihilate them. Imagine if Anonymous was thrown by the wayside, and instead of a bunch of stupid angsty teenagers attacking whatever the fuck they want, it got replaced by some serious hackers that can get into the fucking NSA if they want. And what do they do? Start nuking spammers and closing idiot scam businesses down hard (want a sticker that boosts your DSL modem speed 50%?), just fucking RETRIBUTION.
Sure, the rule of law would fall down a bit; but these are activities beyond the law. When I can create a veil around myself to become a horrible public annoyance and scam peoples' life savings off, and just barely deflect or completely hide from law enforcement, I am now operating in a realm where you need to accept that sometimes serious acts of violence happen just because shit was WRONG and needed to be fixed.
Of course, that's how you get terrorists. So this is a bad idea.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I did this when I first started on the Internet about 12 years ago, and spam got out of controll. I left that account alone for something close to 3 years, now that I have been back to that account, I only get a few a day......It is something that NEVER goes away. On the other hand I have a gmail account and their spam controll is very good!!
Has anyone explained why opting out is a bad idea yet?
You're advocating an
(X) opt-out ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
solution to spam. Here's why I think it will not work:
(X) Spammers are dishonest
( ) et cetera...
The Opt Out "feature" is simply a way spammers can discover if the addresses on their list are active. The spamed can then be moved to a premium "active" list so the email harvester can make more money selling the address again.
CAN-SPAM requires a "global" opt-out method--the ability to remove yourself from ALL the lists from a particular sender. So your first part about the plans is not correct.
However you are correct that CAN-SPAM does not prevent Company A from selling your (now confirmed good) e-mail address to Company B.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
...and trust me, I don't normally use those two words that close together.
I second snowwrestler's comment. It was Seth Godin who pointed out that anyone seriously involved in marketing (as opposed to someone bulk-emailing thousands of people trying to sucker a precious two or three) would absolutely hate hate hate to alienate individuals by annoying them with unwanted messages. Even if they've never bought the product in question before, pissing them off with spam will only drive them away and generate poor word of mouth. Better to back off and preserve what chance you have rather than push harder and poison the well, to coin a mixed metaphor.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Stupidity.
I have the (mis?)fortune of having a first name, last initial gmail account. There are two not too bright (or downright evil) gentlemen out there that share my first name and last initial, who think they have my email address.
I get all kinds of email meant for them, once including rental details for a chalet for a week! I haven't done anything sinister (yet) but I find opting out of their bacn works better at clearing my inbox than marking it spam...
FWIW.
Yes, you are a fool...
Yes, your email has been harvested...
Yes, this happens to us all - UNLESS -
Get an email client like Thunderbird with some good spam filtering. Train the filter for a week or two, and you will only see (maybe) one or two items of spam per day.
I get about 1000 emails a day between work and home, and I get spam like crazy...but I never SEE most of it. I still get one or two emails, as the format of the cailis ads change or the subject line changes, but once or twice through the spam controls in Thunderbird, and I don't see them any more...
If you don't respond, they don't know you exist (this is also why it is a good idea to block links and pictures in your emails, because if the picture is requested at the number they assign to your email, they know your email was opened = your email exists...
I have been toying with the idea of following the idea presented by asterisk, creating a white-list of email groups, services, and individuals that I want to hear from, and everyone else gets the "number disconnected" message...only, in this case, I would send a "fatal error" message back to their mail server...that way, they are under the opinion that I simply don't exist and only those people I want to hear from get through...
IF YOU CAN AVOID IT - JUST UNSUBSCRIBE YOURSELF.
When you do the can-spam opt-out-never-mail-me-again, we're required to keep it on file. We're also required to send this list of email addresses to every agency that markets for us saying they're not allowed to contact you on our behalf.
Now, I want you to read that last paragraph again. They're not allowed to contact you on our behalf, but they can (and almost always will) send other mails to those accounts. This means, through no fault of their own, the place you're opting out from has just given your valid email address to a bunch of other marketing firms.
Now, we have agreements in place with all these other firms that market with us, yadda yadda, and we seed them with dummy addresses so we know who has used our list of opt-outs to spam folks - but the reality is that the damage once it is done is done. and once that list goes out once it goes out 1000 times.
So, do yourself a favor, filter your mail, don't use the don't contact me again ever opt-outs, but unsubscribe if you want. It really sucks, but the law actually makes it easier to spam you rather than harder.
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
I found out, many years ago, that opting out doesn't work. Of course not! How stupid could you be?
The _only_ thing that works (yes! actually works!) is if you forcefully whip out your credit card immediately upon receiving a spam and order one (1) of the items they are selling.
This seems to appease them, and they respectfully stop sending more E-mails.
Also, after sampling several hundreds of products, you might notice that your penis has become the second largest gravitational attractor in the solar system.
Good luck, and keep those planets orbiting!
Change your mail address, keep that mail address private!
Whenever signing up anywhere that you don't trust 100% use dump mail addresses (throwaway mail addresses).
www.spamgourmet.com and other websites offer this.
Furthermore I would recommend using a tool to keep track of the logins you created using such mail addresses, for example KeepPassX.
Whenever you dont want to receive mails from a particular source anymore just dump the mail address in question.
Just today a sales lady came to my door, obviously trying to sell something. :D
It was information about changing my gas/elictricity provider. She asked for my mail address and I told her I wouldn't give her my real address,
and that if they want to send me information I would give her a "dump" address. All of a sudden she lost interesst
I should have just given he just the a new dump address but what the heck. The beauty of dump addresses is that you can selectively close each address
from which you receive mail once you do not want to receive them anymore.
Other best recommended practices were mentioned already by others.
Cheers
It's time to change addresses when you get 15k spams a day.
...you certainly write well for a two year old!
In case you were curious about other things:
- Bill Gates will not send you any money for forwarding an email.
- The Nigerian royal family is not interested in giving you money.
- Your penis will grow larger all by itself until you're about 17. No need to respond to those emails either.
It's been years since they were relevant, and they last updated in January 2008. However, they've been featured on Slashdot before and that January 2008 update his close to the mark on this one.
Clueless Mailers is the group that mapped the flow of spam, tracking email addresses as they were sold from one company to another to another until they mapped who fed what.
That "recent" article covers the current problem of (supposedly) reputable companies buying mailing lists from clueless clowns, and the troubles that ensued.
If it's a company you've heard before, and you can verify that the "opt out" will actually go to them, then opt out that way. If you don't see why you got on their list, tell them so, and they may twig onto the fact that their list wasn't all that hot.
If it's a company you've never heard of or there's something in it that smells hinky, just delete it, let it slide, and let them think that the message sailed off into the æther, never to be heard from again.
That third case? If it looks like a reputable company but the opt-out goes someplace apparently unrelated, do not simply opt out. Send a copy of the message to the people at the real company complaining of the deception. And that one's the one to hope for. Because if you can point out to the home office either (a) that someone is using their name poorly or (b) if they are authorized agents, they're getting bogus email addresses from somewhere, then they'll stop buying those discount lists of bulk email addresses and start doing their own damn work.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
to believe anyone reading slashdot would seriously post this. I mean...come on...spammers have been doing this for YEARS.
One sure way to get more spam is to opt-out on email you didn't dbl opt-in to.
But then again, spammers must know that even slashdotters are suckers and that there is no hope to rid the planet of spammer scum.
Does anybody read any other responses before posting??
How many times has the same answer been given ?!?!
The people that profit from spam, credit card companies, also are a powerful lobby group.
In short, spam isn't going away.
Your contribution eating congress critters will make sure of that.
I ignore spam, but unsubscribe from any other advertisement sent my way. I have also embarked on a campaign to reduce my internet footprint by axing nearly everything I can. (It's impossible, but I still try.) I've gone from a hundred spams a day to less than 10--usually two or three.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
To do it mostly properly you need to "bounce" at SMTP time. (Actually, you are refusing to accept the spam.)
So, in simple terms: set up your own email server, install an SMTP spam filter and give that delete button a rest.
In Debian, for example, apt-get install exim4 sa-exim spamassassin.
They want your innocence back.
But really, I've been using the same main email address for 12+ years now and in the first couple of years I did sometimes send the opt-out replies but mostly gave up because I just couldn't be bothered as the SPAM levels were so low, I do recall one time being Joe-jobbed and that was a bitch as I got more bounce messages in a day than SPAMs in a month and some of the emails were from real people simply emailing "opt out".
Nowadays my ISP uses Brightmail for spam filtering so I don't see most of it and the ones that get through are 'Mailwashed' before they have a chance of getting to my email app.
This topic does take me back though, anyone remember the early days of email and the myth of getting a computer virus simply by opening an email? Never happened on my Amiga, but Microsoft turned that myth into reality with Outlook and everyone has been plaged with virus in emails ever since...
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
It's worse when you have a catch-all domain, especially if that domain shares a name with a blockbuster movie about to come out, or is in theaters, or was successful in theaters. It doesn't matter if it's .com, .org, .net, or whatever: spammers will forge under your domain and you'll get the bounce-back, and some of the addresses they spam to will also be spammers. Those spammers will then harvest those addresses and spam them directly, creating a feedback loop that grows so massive that your ISP will disable your server-side filters because they're too busy filtering the incoming spam, forcing you to close your catch-all domain to only those usernames for which you want to receive mail.
And then it will take hours for your ISP to open a new username at that domain instead of the mere seconds to whitelist it yourself, so you might as well register some obscure domain no one would ever want to trademark.
Though you may want to choose a domain that doesn't contain any HTML tag names like "script" or "table" in it. Some sites will strip anything that looks like an HTML tag from your registered e-mail address, leaving you unable to receive your password verification link.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"I used to ignore spam but recently I have been using the opt-out feature. Now I get more spam than ever, especially of the Nigerian scam (and related) types."
Yeah, those come and go. But I get a lot of them.
"The latter has gone from almost none to several a day. Was I a fool for opting out?"
Well, I'm too polite to tell someone they were a fool, but yeah basically. A few spammers follow the law, they're allowed to take 10 days though.. some some are classy about it and shut it off right away, the others turn it off on like day 9. But for anyone that's not, that opt out means you have a *verified* E-Mail address and the spammers sell it for more than an unverified E-Mail list. Oh yeah, some used claim they aren't selling the addresses, they are "renting" them for some reason.
" Is my email address being harvested when I opt out?"
Yeah see the above.
" Has anybody had similar experience?"
I have an E-Mail address going back to like 1994. My original ISP contract included a NSF Network contract that we wouldn't send commercial traffic over the network (UUNet, MCI, etc. had not built backones yet so almost all traffic hit the National Science Foundation's mighty 45mbps T3 backbone. It was T1s (1.5mbits/sec) up to about 1992.
OK back on topic.. my spam on there steadily increased, I started using my own spam filter in like late 1990s. My ISP got one, then much more recently made the spam filtering like a $3 a month extra (after they replaced their custom-massaged in-house spam filter with some commercial setup). I get 200-400 a day typically. spamprobe traps them pretty well after about a week of training, only like 4 or 5 a day get through, some days it's actually 0!
Before I set up my spam filter, I used to file a report with the upstream ISP's abuse contact, sometimes I'd get an automated reply and occasionally a "thanks" or "yes we're shutting down their account now". One the ISP sent me back a note saying the spammer claimed I'd signed up for it. (The spams *did* have a note saying "you signed up from this IP at this date".) I pointed out the whois info showed the IP was bogus, and never heard back. I started getting like 20x more spam right after that though and have ever since. Ubuntu makes this look very different, I use alpine.. on my ubuntu box all the russian, japanese, korean, umm, I Thai?, etc. spam subject lines actually look "right" in alpine (a reimplementation of Pine.) In alpine on my gentoo boxes those spams are all "?? ????? ??"...
With something like alpine, to filter spam, set up spamprobe, you have your inbox, "spam", "nonspam", "remove" and "spamprobe". Your spam goes into spamprobe, other stuff in inbox. If you have spam in your inbox, you move it to "spam". If you find a message in "spamprobe" that *wasn't* spam put it in "nonspam" (The only false positive I had, my sister wrote me an e-mail about how funny some spam she got was and forwarded it.. so I can see it marking that spam. The spam was in fact funny.) I guess remove removes the mail's words from the spamprobe database entirely.
I guess modern graphical E-Mail clients have spam filters integrated that can be set up, as does GMail.
You know, the reason all the anti-spam folks have been saying not to do this for the last decade or so is that it is an experiment which has been tried with careful controls repeatedly, and consistently produced the same results.
In short, duh.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The opt-out links I've used actually did seem to work - both for legit companies I had prior business with and typical spam. But I haven't dealt with spam in ages. Hotmail filters it out well and gets far less than my Gmail account. I have no need to deal with spam anymore, other than baiting Nigerians.
I get tons of spam at work (and don't filter anything, so I see it all) and I have yet to a "modern" (within the last few years) spam that contains a valid method of contacting people in order to opt out. The majority of crap I see is from bogus addresses with no way to reply back.
Here's one that just came in, from Bakhshian - resonant@drtinker.com :
Sentimental songs which were composed entirely her how i ne
Sex & Ayyurveda (link to some yahoo groups page I dunno)
I told you so, exclaimed jose triumphantly, there by the power of his art,
to restore us to our he rapidly turned over the leaves of this volume few
things about which i want to ask his advice. The liberty to draw the bolt
against chance visitors, and wherever else a place could be found stood
have already explained to our young friend here,.
This message is to inform you that your credit card can be protected for FREE by simply responding with your full name, social security number, credit card number, and the security code.
I mean really, this is obviously a submission that was meant for April 1, but got delayed for some reason (or maybe it's just the obligatory dupe of it, and I missed the original). If not, hand in your computer operator's license immediately (this goes way beyond just handing in your geek card).
Outlook has a cute little bug associated with IMAP folders and using more than one mail client..... Outlook will send a "The email was not read" read receipt if the email is deleted from the imap folder before you've read it in Outlook... even if you tell Outlook not to send read receipts. This is rather annoying if you routinely use an alternative email to delete your spam. The next time you load Outlook it sends out a load of read receipts to the spam merchants, therefore confirming you (my!) email address.
P.S. Check out:
here,
here,
and
here. It's not just me!
return 0; }
Who's there?
It's reality! Sorry I'm late.
wtf, are we tech support for newbs now? Who let this "story" through?!
... now you can take up scambaiting as a sport.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I used to use a program called mailwasher (google it) to help get rid of spam. Instead of opting-out, I'd use mailwasher to bounce back an undeliverable message. Eventually, your "invalid" email address will get purged from any list that's sending you spam. It won't get rid of all your crap, but it can help.
"Opting-out" is playing by the spammers rules, and honestly, who wants to play by their rules? We've tried it in the past (i.e. every spam filter ever created), and it has never worked.
Instead of trying to "opt-out" of their game, force them to "opt-in" to yours, like Facebook and Linkedin. That way you don't have to deal with a junk mail folder. It is a simple solution to a now 31 year problem, spam has a birthday on May 4th.
Tal
CTO
Sendio.com
In other news, the sky is blue.
It's really a shame for legitimate email senders because now everyone's afraid to opt out for fear of getting more spam. So instead they mark emails they no longer want as "SPAM" even if it's something they signed up for. Naturally this makes legitimate senders look like spammers to the Yahoo! and Gmails of the world. So if you signed up for a newsletter or to receive marketing stuff, and you recognize the sender, try to use the opt out.
Adding your number to the no-call database also increases the number of telemarketer calls you receive. Until I signed up for the no-cal list, I have not received a telemarketer call in years, now I get them weekly. It's all a scam.
I used to have a bad spam problem, and tried opting out also, but just got more spam. Now I take the more carefully created spam addresses, and give them to spam-bots, and spammers. It brings a little warmth into my heart.
I hope you've learned from your mistake clicking on that opt-out link. There might be other reasons for the increase in spam, but opting out is likely a major one.
That said I often do opt-out of e-mail newsletters of websites that I've had prior business with. But not with every website *cough*classmates.com*cough*
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Opting out of anything that is even close to being SPAMMY has been a bad idea since the early 90's...where have you been man?!?
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Isn't it typical of the (U.S.) government? They pass a law to reduce the junk mail, and what does it do? Causes a flood of MORE junk mail. And these are the same dunderheads that want to control health care??
The opt out option is a trap, plain and simple. What you are doing is essensially saying "here is my email address" and they have an active account to share with their spammer friends.
Most spammers are doing so outside the law anyways, why would the stop just because you asked them? Unless its a legit newsletter, I say avoid the "opt out" thing.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Apparently if you stick needles in your eyes it hurts.
Sheeeeze!
How could you possibly be so stupid as to trust a spammer?
By the way, I think the only way spam could be addressed is by changing the economic game. Right now the spammers think they are dividing by zero. They think the marginal cost of sending another million spams is zero, so if they find one more sucker who sends them some money, the RoI looks infinite.
We need to change the odds so that sending spam has a much higher probability of negative consequences. The so-called zero must be eliminated. Okay, so we can't send the spammers to Guantanamo, but at least we can nuke their spamvertised websites, cancel their domain registrations, and cut their ISP accounts. If a webhost, registrar, or ISP doesn't want to cooperate, we should put them out of business, too.
I really think Google could do this by implementing a powerful "Good Samaritan" anti-spam system in Gmail. Combine human intelligence to help make sure the correct people get notified quickly--and much quicker than the spammer can find the sucker.
Like the sucker who started this discussion by nicely asking the spammers to cease and desist.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
... if you opted in, it's safe to opt out. If you didn't opt in, opting out just tells the spammer that they have a live person at that address.
I did spam admin for many years back in the 90s, that was even the standard advice then.
If you want to end the spam for a bit, delete the account for a month or two or fake reject messages convincingly.
Shadus
About two years ago I tested this theory and found just the opposite. I had been regularly receiving large volumes of spam in a hotmail account, so I created five fresh hotmail accounts. I then unsubscribed to about 100 spam messages from my main account using each of the new accounts (split into groups of twenty per hotmail account). After two months, I still had received spam on only one of the accounts. I was truly shocked. (I submitted a SlashDot post about this at the time. It was not posted.)
Welcome back from 2001. How was your trip?
Are you kidding me? Did you just get your first email account THIS week? Here's another piece of valuable information: Bill Gates will NOT send you to Disney if you forward this email. Sorry...
Hey slashdot, go steal some real news next time, not this recycled crap!
Really? It has been common knowledge for a LONG time that you shouldn't do this. I know this = troll, but really.... Next article: I opened up an .exe attachment that a friend sent me and got a virus. Should I have done that?
Evolution: love it or leave it
Spam like you call it or unwanted emails i know is unwanted publicity, no? But what publicity is wanted? Very a few. This is a way for us handicapeds who are because of some accident and a familiy to mantain to make honest living beacuse it is being not a large corporation sending 5 or 10 mails a every 15 days for 55$.
So I please ask to let us life dignity and not say we are bad persons, beacuse it is notrue. This can pass to anybody especially here with so many drunk persons driving.
Thank you
successful troll is successful.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
sun predicted to rise tomorrow, completely ignoring the unsubscribe requests of millions in desert regions.
Spammers are not only criminals, they are terrorists.
All that opting out does in those circumstances is prove that your address is an active one, and that makes it loads more valuable, so they'll sell it on to their spammers as a premium "active email address!
Actually, the opt-out "option" also gives the spammers the appearance of being in compliance with the (you)-CAN-SPAM ACT, which requires an opt-out mechanism for all spam. Too bad that as we all know the (you)-CAN-SPAM ACT is utterly worthless, unenforced, and (at best) nebulously defined. The opt-out link allows the spammers and owners of spamvertised sites (none of whom are frequently from this country most of the time, which makes the act even more meaningless) to look like they care about the act while actually enhancing their lists as you mention.
Which is why I usually put other peoples' email addresses into the opt-out. I generally use the email addresses of slashdot employees or the registrants and registrars of the spamvertised domains.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They pass a law to reduce the junk mail, and what does it do? Causes a flood of MORE junk mail.
I think you're missing part of the picture if you really believe that the CAN-SPAM act increases junk mail. After all, only a trivial portion of spam comes from inside the US as advertising for US based companies. If you look at most of your spam you'll find it generally passed through open mail relays on another continent, is advertising for a company on yet another continent, who purchased a domain from a registrar on possibly a third continent outside North America.
So then in how many of those areas do US laws have jurisdiction? You're right, zero.
And these are the same dunderheads that want to control health care??
Actually, no. If you some how have read any of the proposed legislation in the US congress today, you would know that not a single proposed bill was going to control health care as you put it. The closest anyone has gotten so far is to try to help you buy health care from an existing HMO, or perhaps help you buy a health care plan that is currently available to government workers (which is not controlled by the government). You really need to pay more attention to where you are getting your opinions from.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
how can I forge bounce messages so that they think my email address is invalid?
Being as most spam passes through open mail relays (often botnet systems themselves), using forged headers (commonly with your email address in the from field), the bounce message would likely never get to the actual spammer. It would likely do you just as much good to open the spam and hit reply, saying "please kind mister spammer remove me from your list".
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Why the fuck is this on Slashdot?
"Strangers have the best candy" -Me
Please leave me your e-mail address. I'll check that in our database if you're opt-out and I will email you promptly in the next hour.
If you ever wonder why so many spammers couldn't possibly care less about CAN-SPAM, just consider this:
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That is to give the spammers your new address on mail that's forwarded from an Bld and possibly expiring one.
Back in 1998, when I was putting my company on the internet, I received a spam on my regular address. I created a new fake user, and opted out with it. Within a day, it was receiving spam. Over the following week, its level of spam reached that sent to my own. One opt out was the only way anyone in the world except me could possibly have known about the existence of 5l1ckw1lly@kingsystems.com. I tried a few others after that in case the one I chose was a "bad apple". The other usernames were less clever and I don't remember them, but they all got the same result.
Honestly, there were so many duplicates of my experiment (it was 11 years ago - I was probably a duplicator, not an originator) that it's surprising to me to see this question even asked. Spammers know you don't want to hear what they're saying. They try to fool you into reading it, like a tranny trying to fool you into letting it... well, just ask that Anrade idiot. What makes you think anything else they say or do is trustworthy? I wouldn't trust a spammer I saw crossing the street to actually be there when I ran over him.
Don't blame him. He's been trapped inside Geocities for the last 15 years. He's finally been set free and is still learning that there are internets other other than these.
Have you never read about opt-out links and how they very distinctly are responsible for more spam? They only serve to confirm your email address, or other email addresses, and that means you're just going to get more mail. Even loading images in the message body can identify your email as valid and flag you for more spam.
Best rule of thumb? Never interact with spam. If possible, don't open it, and never opt to view the message as HTML. Don't click the links. Don't reply to it. Don't spoof a "delivery failure" message in response. If you know it's spam, mark it as such or simply delete it.
I had a customer who had this done to 'em - someone created a fake page for the web bots to find to harvest emails to create a DOS-type action.
Has anyone considered using the spammers opt-out links to create fake names/IDs to target large corporations in a response to their anti-consumer positions to create even MORE network traffic for them as a reward for their good corporate behavior?
What?
Really?
Would they do that?
HOW COOL.
'Cuz really, in fairness, I don't click 'spam' on it unless it's spam.
They can blacklist yer IP for all I care.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Unless it's something you care about, opt out by blacklisting the sender. You won't get more spam from them then.
Legitimate companies, who you at least on some level opted-in to their list, will offer you a legitimate opt-out function. They have a reputation to uphold, and they may even want your business in the future.
Non-legitimate senders (ie: scammers) don't give a flip about you. They want money, period, and don't care who they hurt in the process. They have everything to gain, and little to lose by giving you a subscription function in place of the opt-out. Only an idiot does anything with these emails, other than sending a notice to their mail service provider.
I have found that just ignoring spam is the best, and for me, most effective policy. If you opt out or communicate in any way, you are just confirming that you are a valid email address, therefore worth $$ to others when they sell your address as a "live" one. Over time, my spam message have reduced to only a few per day, even though I have had the same email address for years.
I'll guarantee you that it's a graphic ad, or malware, or maybe both.
Unless it's originator was just so lame that he failed to include his payload.
There's plenty of that going around.
Why would you _want_ to see his image?
That's ALL the spammer wants, really, just your eyes, just for a second or so...
If you give him that, he wins.
For you to even _want_ to see his image is a psychological victory for him.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
An a priori argument against the accepted knowledge with evidence supporting the opposite conclusion: http://essays.dayah.com/spam-unsubscribe-not-harmful
...the correct answer is no answer at all.
Opting out or responding to spammers in any way other than silence or bouncing is asking for trouble.
Right click the mail and select Bounce. Great for reducing SPAM and ex-boyfriend hate mail.
Without having read any of this and just based on the title alone, I have one thing to say....
Duh!
Heres something that will help, even when you feel the need to confirm that your address is spammable.
http://sneakemail.com
It's basicly email forwarding with unique generated addresses, which means that if you get spam, you turn off the address that was spammed.
If you use a freshly generated address whenever you need to give your email away, you can even tell who is spamming you and who isnt.
I don't. I use Gmail for my main account and Yahoo for my throwaway. Their spam filtering is better than anything you or your ISP can come up with, if only because their training sample is so much larger. If you don't want to leave your email on their site, use their POP/IMAP access to store a local copy.
Seriously, why anyone doesn't use them for personal mail is just beyond me.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I have a 10+ year old email account that was used all over the place, and now has the dubious honor of getting well over 100 spams per day (unfiltered). I've recently applied the zen.spamhaus.org RBL and a short list of blacklisted domains and keywords (sorry, Mr. Hoodia, I won't be getting your emails). Applying a proper SPF record to the domain has drastically cut down on the non-deliverable backscatter. A couple of times a year, my email address was used as the reply-to address for an entire block of spam and in those cases I'd get hundreds of bounce messages in the course of a few hours. Now it's down to a few now and then, usually from hotmail.
As for opt-out, the remaining spam comes from what look like legit marketers. I definitely did NOT opt in to their list, but once one crooked spammer sells his "double opt-in email list", you're on it for good. The legit marketers send their mail from different domains, but if the spam has a good SPF record, and the opt-out notice goes to the marketing company and not the domain of the sender, I click on the opt-out link. Incoming mail that fails SPF is rejected. No SPF record and I don't opt out. And after a few weeks, I see a negligible amount of repeat email from these marketers, and overall the incoming spam has been reduced over 90%.
Yeah, and you can find out all about spammers, their tacts, and what they do with opt-out and other ways they confirm active addresses. I know this is big and scary for all of you, but you can even find that out all on your own, yes, just by your little lonesome! How, you ask? With Google! It's not even slightly difficult. If you can read Slashdot you can handle a Google search too.
Yay, look everybody, it's YET ANOTHER Ask Slashdot that should have been an Ask Google. Reminds me of the web site justfuckinggoogleit.com. Yes that's a real site, no it's not a trick. I like how it says on there "the popularity of this site just blows my mind" in their information page. Seriously guys, why does almost every Ask Slashdot have to be something obvious? Trying to "pick everyone's brain" makes sense when there can be multiple creative solutions, not when it's a yes/no question that five seconds with Google would answer definitively.
You can mod me flamebait or troll or whatever because you're a pantywaist and can't handle the sarcastic tone I used. But just try to actually disagree with me, I dare you. I'd like to see you try.
Here's a very good spam primer:
http://www.spamprimer.com/
No, they don't. They haven't. This is a spammer lie.
Do I have to name names?
Try Sears. Guns and Ammo Magazine(more likely Petersen Publishing). The Libertarian Party.
Two of these spammers sent opt-out demands before spamming full tilt. The other simply e-pended me without notice. What part of "permission" do you see there?
Yes, it is useless. No, it's not safe. That's what this discussion has turned to.
CAN-SPAM (it's an acronym) has been totally ineffective, and was misguided in concept. The amount of spam in all my inboxes has increased since its enactment.
They DO NOT. I'm simply disputing what you state as a fact. I have proof.
I fail to see the distinction. If you resort to sneaky means to obtain my "permission", you're no better than the guy who makes a dictionary attack against my provider's server(s).
To say that Expedia is a "bad" spammer is to imply that there is such a thing as a "good" spammer. There is not.
If you think there's some sort of game on to "obtain permission", you're missing the point, which is that we don't _want_ you to spam us. Period. Yes, the 85% market is stupid enough to leave the "Sure, I want spam!" box checked if you hide it at all cleverly, but that's different from anybody actually _wanting_ advertising.
If you're an "honest businessman, just trying to make a buck", I suggest you GET THE HELL OUT OF "DIRECT E-MAIL MARKETING"!!! It now belongs to the hawkers of penis enlargement and erectile dysfunction medications (or, more likely, fake medications). Legitimate business needs to avoid it like leprosey. Advertise elsewhere because spam is such a cesspool that you DO NOT want to be associated with it.
I mean it. All you PR guys are _so_sensitive_ to the the public's moods and fads and attitudes and feelings that surely the thermometer has _got_ to be telling you that SPAM IS BAD PR. Spam is _universally_hated_. It's the _worst_possible_PR_ that you can engage in. I will _never_ patronize anyone who advertises to me in email. Just go away.
Well, the law isn't necessarily the end of the argument. Many, many email recipients feel that it's not legitimate unless it's confirmed opt-in, but the "direct e-mail marketing" industry refuses to meet this standard because they know damn well that only the terminally bored, mentally retarded, and criminally insane would ever actually opt in.
Yet they continue to assert that "people want this shite!!!". I'm not believing it.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
you're just letting them know you're a live account.
i've been very happy with using sneakemail.com, an email anonymizer which makes it very convenient to create a new email address every time you register with any given site.
And bears do defecate in the woods.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
I've asked several companies to "spam" me newsletters or special offers. I'm simply disputing what you state as a fact. I have proof.
Like at the bottom of a form? Equating a checkbox sitting right above the submit button with "hiding" it is stupid, and no reputable company I've ever seen has done anything MORE than that in terms of obfuscating the checkbox. If you leave the "Yes, please send me special offers!" checkbox checked, it's not spam. You've just solicited it. And what's more, I find it highly egotistical of you to feel as though you can speak for those "85%" of people who all clearly must have been duped.
Stop talking for other people. If companies are breaking the law, report them to the proper authorities. If your personal hatred for anybody ever mailing you before you go through a five-step sign-up/verification process makes you think you're an expert on what everybody ELSE meant when they left that checkbox checked, I suggest you take a step back and try to mash your ego back down to a more suitable size.
And no: I don't work for any companies that do any kind of e-mail marketing. I just don't act as though I have any special knowledge of what anybody but me is thinking.
Yes, you were a fool.
Everyone with any knowledge whatsoever about spam knows not to reply in any form because the only thing it does is tell the spammer your address is valid, so he can now sell it on as a "verified address" for a higher price.
Uh, why is this on /.? It should be in pretty much every FAQ about spam ever written.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
if it's from a company you originally did business with, and now they're sending you spammy e-mails, opt-out will probably work. If you've ever done business with them, they probably already assume your address is legitimate, so the "opt-out" ("unsubscribe", "email settings", etc) button's only purpose would be to stop the e-mails.
And for the love of fuck, don't be automatically afraid of opt-out buttons. Many people, having heard "opt-out is always a scam to verify your address", automatically click "this is spam" instead of "opt-out" whenever they want to ensure that they're not on a mailing list. Having recently implemented Feed Back Loops on our mailing list at work, the very first "this is spam" report we received was from a booking confirmation. People see an option to unsubscribe from a mailing list (which they five seconds ago had clicked a check box to subscribe to), but are trained "opt out is a scam!", and so click "this is spam" instead.
Of course, if it's a company you've done business with before, and now they're spamming you, a two-hit combo of "opt-out" and "this is spam" is an even better solution. Companies really do pay attention to who unsubscribes after a mailing, and "oh shit, 20% of our list just unsubscribed!" can very easily wake them up and get them to reconsider what they send.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
You use strong words to say that e-mail marketing is bad for legitimate businesses. I disagree though. Email is a quick and cheap way to seduce (potential) customers who already gave their consent to be 'in the loop'.
Remember: a good e-mail newsletter should provide something that is really interesting to its userbase. If not, people will opt-out really quick.
If, however, the company does not obide the opt-in rules: flag 'm as spam. They will have troubles with delivery.
nosig today
then opting out should be fine. If it's the rest of the detritus in your inbox they will just use your opting out as an incentive to spam you more.
I haven't downloaded images for years, that's why I get only a mere 2500 spams a month :)
I opt out of spam regularly, in order to punish just the behaviour that this article talks about. I run my own mail server for myself and friends, and any spam I get is fed into the spam-filters (SpamAssassin and Bogofilter) that feed the entire server. The filters are ham-friendly enough that I can feed most of it straight through without even checking it.
What I could really do with, in fact, is a method for following all the links and loading the images in emails sent to my honeypot account, which gets fed directly into the spamfilters without me needing to look at it.
Sorry, I'm basically hitting into the same wedge about 50 other people have hit here allready, but I can't help it:
The opt-out option is there for spammers to clean up their lists from dead addresses - not to leave you alone. Don't opt out from spam, as you simply can't - otherwise it wouldn't be half the spam it ususally is and spammers would actually be nice people and not the assholes they are in reality.
As with everything else on the Interweb (ads, popups, email-proposals from nigeria, system warnings in your browser looking kinda sorta fake, etc.) basic brain usage is also required for dealing with spam. Don't skip that, ever. And another advice: Suck up the flak you're getting right now, take it with humor and file it under 'lessons learned' ... you idiot. :-)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Opting out, like everyone says, confirms a valid email address. Thats worth a lot to a scammer. But also, you should also disable auto-preview in your emails. I use Outlook and with the preview pane it shows the contents of the email. As HTML email is very popular, the scammer can easily put something in the HTML displayed to query their server with a unique code to identify that you have looked at the email. Turn off previews, dont respond & just delete all scam emails.
No, it's spam. You asked. I never answered. The only answer you got was your own, which I didn't bother to erase.
You are using the fact that people have been conditioned for years with the "next next next next finish" paradigm to click whatever button looks like it will get them to the end, and only bother reading, if it doesn't work. If they did not change the checkbox, they didn't read it. Your question did not get through. So of course they did not answer. They did not accept anything.
Your excuses are just that. Excuses. You are still sending unsolicited spam to them, like all the rest.
Geocities, paid online news and now this? I don't understand, have I woken up in 1996?
You are as bad as RIAA now.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
See subject-line ChrisMP1. You're another useless done nothing of note with your life slashdot loser who offers HIS view of correct writing (as if it is "the only way" & guess what shithead - it's not).
meringuoid you are a loser that couldn't write a "See Dick and Jane run" book for children. Get a job, do something with your life, instead of playing "the writing critic, yet who has no PHD in English to his name", here on this website.
1996 called. They want their insightful story about new spam trends back.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I work for a very large legitimate Email marketing company, we send upwards of 15 to 20 million emails an hour, have an open rate of 31%, and a click rate of 12%. We are whitelisted on Yahoo, Aol, Gmail and a handful of other email providers...meaning, we by pass their spam filters. We are US based, and are fully compliant to Can-Spam.
If you click on one of our opt-out links, your email address is black listed and will never get another email from the company I work for. There's even a page that you put in your email address and it tells you when, where, and how you signed up on our lists.
That's really the point you know.
I was shutting down an email account which got maybe 30 spam a week and the more "requested SPAM" I opted out of, the more spam I got. Several (idg and others) wouldn't even drop me from their mailing lists, or signed me up for OTHER mailing lists when I opted-out. No, not even after their "8-10 days" estimate. By the end it was averaging 20+ spam a day.
Yuck.
8-PP
What the heck were you thinking? No, you just didn't think that action all the way through and now you will pay the price until you trash that email account.
This has to be an April Fools post that got stuck in the Slashdot queue for over three weeks.
It *does* show the spammers that the account is active and you're looking at the email...
Which of course we have all know for years, except the op it seems.
Quick everyone give me your credit card details so I know not to charge them.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Note that CIS Internet's problems aren't over anyhow; most of the spam sent through them has forged headers, which are already illegal by CAN-Spam.
In short, spam is illegal when it consists of forged headers, obscured paths or violates the content rules, but it doesn't appear to ever be considered illegal for "stealing bandwidth". Any counter examples?
Oh, come on ChrisMP1. It was funny.
I hereby nominate this as the most singularly stupid question added to AskSlashdot in the whole time I have been reading ./, and that is a long goddamn while encompassing some pretty dumb-arsed questions.
Short answer, "Did you recently find the internet?" shortly followed up by "what goddamned rock have you been living under?".
Of course verifying your email address with the guys who hope you are desperate enough for a larger wang will result in more wang-enlarging email being sent to that address.
Where the fuck do you think they get these addresses from? Trust me when I tell you the data in those lists is poorly verified. Even in "legitimate" opt-in lists a large percentage have either given something which doesn't even look like an email address and non-existent validation has allowed it in or something which could be an email address but was never double opt-ed in results in up to (in my experience) 30% of companys' mailing lists being non-existant.
So many of the companies in that space have been working in the fax spam business that it is impossible to make them understand the current environment. That said, I'm talking about Australia, in the US you can still pretty much spam with impunity.
Obama, you planning on replacing CAN-SPAM with something with teeth any time soon?
About a month ago I returned to using an email address I'd abandoned a year or so back, and was receiving a number of newsletters that I didn't care about - not spam, more like updates from companies that I'd once ordered from, but didn't really need to hear from (e.g. Thinkgeek, Woot!, Avira, Comodo, Rifftrax). As long as I hadn't even been checking the address, I couldn't care less about getting several unread newsletters a day, but since they were cluttering the inbox, I unsubscribed from them.
These were not what I consider spam, in the sense that most posts in this thread are describing it (in the "how effing stupid would you have to be to ever acknowledge receipt of it at all" meaning of spam).
The thing is, right after that, I suddenly started getting tons of "watch h3r run 0ut 0f the r00m scr3aming in t3rr0r wh3n sh3 s33s ur g1ant n3w d1ck" spam. Not even one of the newsletters I unsubscribed to was even tangentially related to bigger dicks, viagra, or Canadian pharmacies. It was geek stuff. But this is the spam I suddenly started to get flooded with.
I don't even know that there's any connection; I've heard a couple of other online references to a sudden global resurgance in spam recently. I'd thought it might be an unfortunately timed coincidence. But with everyone making fun of the submitter, I thought I should mention that I did unsubscribe from some newsletters (which I usually don't bother to do), right before a ton of spam started reaching me through gmail's filters.
Was I a fool for opting out?
Yes.
Is my email address being harvested when I opt out?
Yes.
Has anybody had similar experience?
I thought it was common knowledge that the only thing opting out to a spam does is confirm to the spammer that they've got a real/valid email address. The end result is that you just encourage them to send you more spam.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Why don't you want to inherit the $10M from unclaimed foreign funds?
-N
Indeed, this phenomena is not unlike some interesting occurancies during the war in vietnam.
During a fire fight it was noted that, if you were shot, and then stood up and waved your arms around and proceeded to tell everyone "I'm hit!, I'm hit!" it would actually invite more shooting, in fact, targetted shooting, rather than random fire.
The war on spam, is a war my friend. Keep your head down. Shut up.
Never, ever, give away your position.
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
I hesitated before not posting this anonymously, but here it goes...
I used to work in the email industry for a large organization known as Naviant, and though I don't email anymore I still have many contacts within the industry. Here are some of my experiences:
On opt-outs:
1) Many firms (Naviant was one of them) want to send advertisements legitamatly and as such DO honor opt outs. Naviant was one such organization.
2) Many other firms (true spammers) took their harvested lists and once CANSPAM came about, started calling their lists 'optin', though they never were.
3) In the modern market, many emailers interpret CANSPAM to say that the opt-out belongs to the advertiser and the campaign, and that they are an ASP (not an agency or an advertiser) and therefore exempt beyond the current campaign. Note that that based on this interpretation that does mean that if you get something from Dish Network and you opt out, you should in theory not receive another email for a Dish campaign if Dish and its advertising agency are following the rules.
Several years ago (before point #3 was discovered in the industry), I actually decided to opt out of every email coming into my yahoo account, provided there was an opt-out link. I actually saw a dramatic drop in the amount of advertising email I received. I went from > 100 to about 5-10, and the ones I received were from spammers with no opt-outs. Gradutally as lists were sold (this was pre-CANSPAM), my inbox was flooded again, but I did have about 2 months of minimal advertising.
On Opt-ins:
Quite often, people can opt in from places that they may not realize they're opting in from. At Naviant, we held several contests where by you agreed to receive email in exchange for an entry into our contests. Upon entry into our system, you were sent an email indicating your subscription request. If you wanted an entry without receiving email, you could opt out immediately from this email. I wrote these systems and as such I can confirm that this worked. For one such contest -- winningkey.com (now owned by somebody else), we gave away a Porsche Boxter every year with your subscription status being irrelevant (I wrote the script to pick winners as well). Our website fully disclosed in the privacy policy that we were going to email you, and in fact we earned the 'TrustE' logo because of it.
In today's industry, many such contests still exist. There are a lot of freebees offered in exchange for your email address, because to a list broker an email address is worth quite a bit, so if one contributes $5 to your new iPod or gives you a mop, he'll more than get his money back. He'll even give you a confirmation email which you must click on to sign up for email while receiving that contribution. It all comes down to you can't get something for nothing, and many of these incentives have been done by marketers for years prior to the invention of email. One example is Pubisher's Clearing House. PCH doesn't make most of its money selling magazine subscriptions. It makes its money selling your information from your contest entry, and then gives away an insignificant portion as a $10 million prize.
So the problem comes along because people are too quick to call something 'Spam' if they didn't want that particular piece of advertisement, then throw up their arms when they say "Oh, I didn't sign up for that" even after being presented with their name, address, phone number, email, the IP associated with their computer at both the time of opt-in and confirmation. But the fact is that iPod and that swiffer were free as in beer, but they weren't truly free.
There is also a problem on the side of the industry. There is a lack of trust of the industry, and some of it is rightly placed. If you define Spam by the definition provided by SpamHaus, both Spammers and legitimate emailers exist. The problem is there isn't an easy way for a user to differentiate between the two. Because all emailers (Spammers and legit) must target the inbox,
yea, surely you can see that you've just fallen into another spammers trick, by filling in that form, even clicking the link they know they have a real, used, email address. Just get yourself a good spam filter, personaly swear by gmail, you'll never see spam again, its deleted and delt with for you
You didn't opt-in, so why do you expect to be able to opt-out? These parasitic bastards just use this as a means to verify that your account is active for further abuse. ...) Links to these can contain unique IDs that are used to verify that you email account is active.
Since you are clearly new to email, here are some tips:
* Use an email client that does not load externally referenced content or support javascript (non-cid ref images,
* Never click on any links in a spam message, or respond in any way. Links can also contain reference numbers to verify that you account is active.
* Complain to the ISP from which the spam was sent, the spammer's web host, and their DNS provider (use a service, like the excellent Spamcop, if you don't know how to do this)
* If you can get the spammer's real contact details, publish them, so that the entire world can exact painful vengeance on the scumbag, subscribing them to every piece of deviant junk mail in the world. Also report them to every law enforcement agency.
* If the spammer's website is harvesting bank details for fraud, feel free to make some up to waste the spammer's time. Be careful that you aren't following any links containing a unique ID to do so, or the spammer may have just verified that you email account is active.
* If you have basic web skills, write a simple script to fill the spammer's database with crap.
* If you get the chance to meet a spammer, mark them, as a dog would a street lamp.
I thought this was common knowledge, but then I guess that's really an oxymoron. Yes, clicking those opt out links from anything other than legitimate businesses that you deal with personally will just verify to spammers that your email is valid so you'll then get more spam.
I had a catch all mail address for many years on a couple of my domains. I did exactly what you did: use sellerdomain@mydomain. This quickly became untenable.
There are some bots out there that have all the time in the world and would send spam to aaaaaaa@mydomain, aaaaaab@mydomain, etc. It's a great day when ALL 2 million emails end up in your inbox. Then there would be the 50 to 100 emails/day addressed like this: fo3j3wq32@mydomain with random looking usernames. Don't know what that was all about.
The upside is that I'd get emails to real people at lexicographically nearby domains. I'd usually pretend to be the actual person and make up outlandish responses for fun. I'm sure I got plenty of people in trouble.
You're full of shit.
Like at the bottom of a form? Equating a checkbox sitting right above the submit button with "hiding" it is stupid, and no reputable company I've ever seen has done anything MORE than that in terms of obfuscating the checkbox. If you leave the "Yes, please send me special offers!" checkbox checked, it's not spam. You've just solicited it. And what's more, I find it highly egotistical of you to feel as though you can speak for those "85%" of people who all clearly must have been duped.
I've seen expedia and a few other sites bury the checkbox between pages of text. Three paragraphs, check box, more text. Then the submit button. Also, they didn't just do that for spam, they did it for things that take on extra fees (insurance and other snake oil they sell). You have to be very careful when booking on expedia.
True that they may have to honour regulations and uphold their image, but the hundreds of "affiliates" and "partners" they share your address data with may not be so honest and forthright in their dealings. I've seen more than a few "privacy" policies that explicitly mention that the privacy polices of its affiliates may differ significantly.
I've always assumed that opt-out works something like this:
- Customer receives spam.
- Customer opts-out of future spam.
- Company duly removes customers address from "OK for us to spam list.
- Company adds address to "OK for partners and affiliates to spam" list.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
So, this is universally obvious to every one /.. However, for those not amongst the /. community, i.e. my mom or possibly, your mom, would have no idea of the correlation between opt-out and an increase in spam. I think it is totally justified to mock another /.'er for not knowing this, but recording that obvious knowledge here once and for all can only help educate the general populace. Good one askslashdot!
What this does is tell him *exactly* who has been selling his address. He has actually had several times where sites people would consider "legitimate" would deny that they sell the address but after he explained his system to them they admitted that they did. Another good thing about this is that you can disable an e-mail address if one of them is compromised.
Its a lot more work than just using a single e-mail for everything but it works well.
An engineer is someone who spends 3 hours trying to solve a 2 hour problem in 1 hour - Anonymous
The more you opt out, you make them know you *are actually* reading spam, so, yes, you get more spam to read. But that was obvious in the first place, wasn't it
No, no, no. Opting out that way will not work.
You have to add your email address to the brand new antispam database. Just post your email address in a message in here and one of us will add it to the database for you.
Opt-out is spammer code for "confirm your e-mail address is valid". You should have known or realized that, no excuses in 2009 BITCH!
I have worked in the affiliate marketing industry and know why some spam will increase when you opt out. Affiliates marketers that are trying to obey the can-spam act have to make sure they don't send email to people on opt-out lists. These lists are maintained by large affiliate organizations and the companies trying to sell things. As an affiliate I am given the list of opt-out email addresses and have to scrub my email list so I don't send messages to the wrong people.
Spammers get these lists, because often they are unprotected and available freely online.
that it hurts when I hit you.
If you quit thinking it hurts, you will quit feeling pain.
Yes, they are stealing our bandwidth, including our attention bandwidth. That you have acquired a taste for punishment in no way remedies the clogging of my mailbox, nor the amount of time it takes me to confirm that my heuristics haven't taken any false positives.
That we can't stamp out spam, and that we should change our reading behavior are separate questions. But the technology isn't there yet.
The sub-address alternative helps, but we really need every user to have his or her own domain name to really make it feasible to filter/flag by variation from expected sender. Dynamic filtering isn't quite up to snuff yet, either.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Seriously, why do you think you can trust them?
Not only do they choke out vital ebusiness, but they have powerful botnets at their disposal that they can use to launch DDoS attacks with.
In fact, they did just that when Blue Frog actually managed to put a stop to spam.
So I would even go so far as to call them terrorists.
Even if your friends mod me down.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I am a little surprised to not find any reference to the semi-new "Bacn" (pronounced "bacon") terminology to describe e-mail that "I want to read - just not right now". I have been using a Bacn filter for months on my most used e-mail accounts and it allows me to segregate the stuff that I want to read at some point but don't have time to read right now into a separate folder, keeping my urgent and important stuff (and a few spam messages that weed their way through) into my inbox. When I clear out my inbox, I can then go read my Bacn folder and check out the stuff that may be mildly interesting or useful in some way, but doesn't require immediate attention.
By the way, my Slashdot e-mail is not included in my Bacn filter, because I like to read that as soon as I can get my hands on it - plus, only my Inbox is integrated to my Blackberry, allowing me to read my Slashdot mails in the places where I otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer (you know where that is).
To read more about the Bacon concept, go to:
http://bacn2.com/
And here is an NPR story on it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14032271