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Opting Out Increases Spam?

Posted by timothy on from the damned-either-way dept.

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?"

5 of 481 comments (clear)

  1. A better question by HunterZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A better Ask Slashdot question would have been: "how can I forge bounce messages so that they think my email address is invalid?"

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    Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
    1. Re:A better question by Pie+Pan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Greylisting.

      http://www.greylisting.org/

      My mail server uses that along with a trained CRM114 spam filter, and I get virtually no spam. Since most spam is sent from zombie machines, it will reject e-mail from unknown servers with a "try again later" response. Valid MTA's will re-send the message, but infected machines sending spam usually won't or can't re-send the message. Servers that DO re-send get 'greylisted' and their messages get through first time after that.

      It's a little annoying having up to an hour or two delay on some e-mails, but if there's something I need urgently, I'll just get it sent to Gmail.

  2. Re:DUH? by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

    Have you *lost* your bandwidth or mail server resources? I'm not trying to justify spam, but let's not use incendiary terms when there exists a perfectly valid alternative: bandwidth-and-mail-server-infringement. Resource sharing is the future; the ultimate goal of cloud computing. Instead of trying to stamp out spam, people need to change their reading models. It's not our job to support obsolete reading models, and it's arrogant to expect us to.

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  3. Re:Well... by azav · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What if someone has forged the BofA email headers? Or the Yahoo headers. I've seen this all too often.

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    - Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
  4. Look at the bright side ... by oldspewey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... now you can take up scambaiting as a sport.

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    If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?