Spam

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G

Guest

Can someone tell me more about spam? I'm using Yahoo! and saw a few spam
messages in the bulk folder. All I know is that it's garbage, but how did it
find out my email address?
 
Can someone tell me more about spam? I'm using Yahoo! and saw a few spam
messages in the bulk folder. All I know is that it's garbage, but how did it
find out my email address?
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Dan,

In no particular order:
1) One of your friends, who has an infected computer, provided your email
address to the spammer.
2) You posted your email address somewhere, or maybe provided your email
address in a contest.
3) The spammer sent his crap to thousands of unlucky folk with email address
similar to yours. It's called a dictionary attack, costs the spammer nothing,
and gets him hundreds of new victims.
4) One of the newest scams is a "Birthday Reminder", where you are asked to add
your email address and birthday, and those of your friends, to an online
birthday database. You then get a reminder when your friends birthday is coming
up. Plus you give some more detail to an identity thief.

Whatever you do, don't try to "Unsubscribe". The best you would do is send
unwanted email to the person whose email address was forged by the spammer as
sending the crap. Worse, you would confirm to the spammer that your address is
live, he will sell your address as confirmed, and you will get more email from a
whole additional bunch of spammers.

--
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck sonic net.
 
Try getting some spyware and adware blocking software (which is how some of
these places get the information). You can find some good free versions on
www.download.com or www.tucows.com.

They also have anti-spam (spam blocking) tools that you might give a try -
just check it out on those sites. Some ISPs have SPAM filters included with
their service, so you want to make sure yours has it turned on for you (if
it offers it). There's no real way to turn all this stuff off - it's just
the way things are. The more you use your email address, the more you're
going to receive (it's just one of those sad truths).
 
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