SPAM growing exponentially
That throwaway email address I talked about on the 17th of August... It now has 1000 more junk email messages than it had 12 days ago. 15,221 to be exact.
I'm not sure why this thing has suddenly taken off, but it sure has. And all still from a single website sign-up. Amazing...
Wear protection.
Website updates even...
I received an email the other day about beer brewing, asking for a bit of help getting started. I sent her the information she'd need to get started and even referred her to my brewing site... That's when I realized that it was really time to start updating The Dog House.
So I did. I just went through a couple of the brewing pages to fix bad links, grammar and typos. Since I've still not bothered to load a decent HTML editor on the laptop, I just did it the old fashioned way (a text editor and my html cheat sheet). Then I used the godaddy web-based ftp tool to upload the files.
It's not nearly as elegant as doing it with a proper software package, but it will get the job done.
Plus, in recognition of Obama's pick for VP, I went gun shopping today. Joe Biden is a gun-grabber, so I bought an assault rifle. Which means I have no money for software. It's a trade-off I can live with.
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
Damn, has it been that long?
OK... So I'm not much of a blogger. My last post was over two months ago. Why is that? I guess I have a life instead of an overpowering urge to write about my life so that others can read about it. But at the moment, there's nothing pressing on my to-do list and nothing on TV.
So what's been going on?
- Windsurfing has not been happening nearly enough. But then it's been hot as stink around here for too long. I got in a really good session on the 10th of August. I think there was only one other good session between then and my last post. That's just North Texas in the summer time. I'll make up for it in December, January and February when everyone else is dealing with water that is solid.
- Lynne and I celebrated our birthdays with a fancy dinner at The Capital Grille here in Dallas. If I could cook steaks like that, I'd open a stinking restaurant. But when you drop well over two bills, it better be good.
- The week before, we hooked up with Tim and Linda for dinner at Cafe Istanbul. Not quite as fancy as the The Capital Grille, this place is still kind of high class. I'm surprised they'd let the likes of Tim and I in there. But the dinner was quite good and I'd happily go back. I just have to remember to bring "tips" for the belly dancers next time.
- I'm about to keg a batch of Loud Mouth Stout. If it's good, I'll take some to the coast for Thanksgiving... Assuming we go.
- The HVAC system at the house took a dump. And since the A/C system was the old R22, I did the ecologically sound thing and upgraded to a high efficiency R410 system. Damn, that was expensive. But since the A/C hadn't kept up all Summer, it wasn't really a surprise when it happened.
- But before the HVAC went bye-bye, we'd had a radiant barrier sprayed and an extra 6 inches of insulation layed down. It's amazing how much cooler the attic is.
- Lynne gave me an Oregon Scientific wireless weather station for my birthday - the WMR968. It's pretty stinking slick. I'm toying with the idea of setting it for online access... The only problem there is that the douchebags at iWindsurf would pick it up as their own. Maybe I'll password protect it and give it out only to the locals.
- Lynne went to Harvard Business School for a two week class back in June. She had a ball and even learned some stuff. I missed her a lot. Still not exactly sure what it was she learned.
- The new laptop is working nice, but Vista still doesn't play well with others. All the USB connected devices only get hooked up when I need access, lest Vista throw a hissy fit during boot up. And that's kind of a PITA.
- Sprint cellular service sucks. No... I get a good signal. But they've started cold calling me on my cell phone, trying to sell me a new cell phone. How screwed is that? Maybe ATT or Verizon will do better. But I doubt it.
- My step-grandfather died recently. RIP - Francis "Lucky" Jordan.
- My Golden Retriever, Max, celebrated his birthday in August... He's 15 now and has been with me since April 15, 1994. Good Dog. Good Dog.
- It rained a couple of days ago. That' wouldn't be news in a lot of places, but it was here. 1.58 inches (according to my brand new wireless weather station). That may bee the first rain since my last post.
- Mariner has been crazy busy. We've been shipping Hobie parts all over the freaking planet. I've got customers on 6 of the 7 continents. And it's a bit frantic at times. To add injury to insult, we bought out the inventory and equipment of a shuttered sailing store in Florida. What we really wanted was the sailmaking equipment out of their loft (including a plotter/cutter table). But it was a package deal. Unfortunately, the delivered inventory and the listed inventory aren't even remotely related. And the plotter/cutter still ain't running. There was definitely a bunch of 5-finger discounting going on. Not sure if it was the owner, the employees or the people who put the store into storage after it shut down. But there's some brutal dishonesty going on here. As I've researched the old company, I find I'm not surprised. They had a reputation of being a bunch of screw-ups.
I've been thinking about getting Christine running again - that's my 1955 Bel Air. A couple of my windsurfing buds have some nice rods, and I'd kind of like to join them on a run. But to build a rod, you need both time and money. I usually only have one or the other.
- So... I'll probably spend the time and money fixing my daily driver - a '95 325i. The parts are in a pile on the garage - rotors, brake pads, struts, pretty much everything needed to rebuild the suspension. I just need some cool weather... And several days without interruption.
And that's about it for now.
I've been thinking about getting Christine running again - that's my 1955 Bel Air. A couple of my windsurfing buds have some nice rods, and I'd kind of like to join them on a run. But to build a rod, you need both time and money. I usually only have one or the other.