Dog House Ramblings

Is spamming really a problem?

Spam is most certainly a problem. And frequently a huge problem depending upon who you give your email address to. Case in point:

I was doing some research into a neighborhood near where a commercial property was available. Besides things like property values and crime statistics, I wanted to know what the rents were in the surrounding apartments. Rather than contact all the individual apartment complexes while pretending to be a potential renter, I chose to use an online apartment finder.

Now, I am not an idiot. Because I suspected a high SPAM potential, I cranked out a free Yahoo email address to submit to the the apartment locator service. I got my access, did my research and logged out.

Fast forward a couple of months. I'm bored and surfing the net. I remember my one-time apartment hunting email address and log in to see what happened to hit.

HOLY CRAP! The address has become a SPAM magnet like you can't even imagine.

I start scrolling through some of the subject lines and find multiple examples of just about every SPAM/scam under the sun. Free laptops, free computers, online dating, viagra, work-from-home, make money fast, etc... If you've received a SPAM, you can safely bet I had a copy too. And I'm not talking a few SPAMS. I'm talking hundreds and hundreds. All from a single submission of the email address to a commercial website.

18 months later, this has turned into a game for me. I've still never sent out another email or submitted the address anywhere else. I've used it once. One time. To one place. Nothing more. Yet the SPAM continues to roll in. Every couple of weeks, I mark all the email in the Inbox as SPAM (it numbers in the 100's), then move all the SPAM into a folder called Crap. I started saving the SPAM about 6 months after setting up the account.

My Crap folder now has...

[drum roll please]

over 14,000 SPAM messages. Yes, you read right. 14k+. In a 12 month period. That's an average of over 38 per day. The reality is I'm running closer to 80 per day at the moment.

I'd blame Yahoo, but none of the other one-time-use email addresses I've cranked out have ever gathered this kind of SPAM. In fact, most of them are dead quiet. Even worse, my email account with Verizon (the one I pay for and which has never been publicly posted nor has been given to commercial entities) gets more SPAM than all of my Yahoo accounts, save one.

The messages here:

1) The company who you pay for your internet service WILL SPAM YOU. And they WILL SELL your personal information to others.

2) Take advantage of free email services to keep the SPAM out of the email boxes you want available to friends and family.

3) One day, we'll be paying for each email we send. It's just about the only way we'll be able to control the SPAM problem.

Cheers

posted by The Dog @ 2:41 PM