Spam Mail

[Bllasae]

Do you respond to spam mail? I've had the urge to reply to their many ****** ads by saying "Shut Up!", or something similar, but my questions are:
Do you respond to spam?
Do you respond to spam the same way I would?
And, do you know of a way to permanently get rid of the user's emails? By the way, I'm using Thunderbird.

[stimpack]

Replying would be *very* bad. It confirms your email address is valid and worth more money.

[Bllasae]

Hmm.Yeah I guess. This sucks. I'm tired of their crap. It's so annoying. And it's the same email from like 40 different people!

[Ozor Mox]

There is no point in replying to spam as it originates from forged email addresses, since using email it is so easy to do. If you reply, you will either bounce, or be targetting someone who has nothing to do with the spam mail. Even if the originating email address is correct, the sending of spam is totally automated so you still wouldn't get a response or reach who you wanted to reach. Furthermore, because the system is automated, very often replying to a spam confirms that your address exists and results in yet more spam. The only spams you will get replies from are those 419 Nigeria ones about the dying Prince who will leave you several billion quid if you just hand over your bank details...you know the ones.

Of course, all this means you can't permanently block a spammers address, because it changes with every message. It's also often a real address. I've had bounced emails I've never sent because some spamming program is spamming with my address.

[Bllasae]

Lol, never heard of the Prince ones, but I've had the you know *cough*"enlargement"*cough* ones.

[kyphi]

Some ISPs have such good spam filters that their customers do not receive spam at all .... and this service is provided free of any additional charge.

You can escape some of the annoyance that spam causes by directly accessing your ISPs mail server where you can see the mail held for collection and delete those that you do not want before downloading those that you do want.

There is a programme that will do all that but unfortunately it is only written for Windows.

But ... never, ever reply to spam.

[Bllasae]

Well, I use Windows, so yeah.

[Linuxratty]

Get a yahoo or Google account and let those be your main accounts...Close the e mail account at your isp and ask for a new one and only let close friends you can trust use that e mail.
And no,I don't respond,I send the ones that slip through yahoo's filter here:

reportphishing@antiphishing.org
spoof@paypal.com
spam@uce.gov spam@uce.gov

[jflaker]

Do you respond to spam mail? I've had the urge to reply to their many ****** ads by saying "Shut Up!", or something similar, but my questions are:
Do you respond to spam?
Do you respond to spam the same way I would?
And, do you know of a way to permanently get rid of the user's emails? By the way, I'm using Thunderbird.

Nope
Responses confirm working/valid emails which are sold as VALID and you get MORE


Permanently get rid of spam....not really, you can slow it down significantly, just signup @ spamcop.net. Once you do, you will get a submit email address which you can send the spam email with full headers........

I will get a few a week.........I report all of them, even the 419 scam mails. The ISP's will shut down the senders and the open email proxies...........

By submitting email to spamcop, you are contributing to the blacklists also........

Cheers

[Bllasae]

Well actually, I could permanently get rid of the spam mail by opening my inbox only to people in my address book, and then nobody besides people in my address book could email me.

[popch]

Never respont to spam mails, for the reasons already given.

Also:
If your email client can show images: make sure it does not fetch images from the internet when showing you the mail.

Also:
Do not ever klick on any links in spam mails.

Both the fetching of images and the klicking of links can be used to confirm that you did indeed receive and respond to the spam mail. Also, it exposes you to various malware risks.

[CasPol]

NEVER respond to spam emails !

Mark spam emails as junk in Thunderbird, and delete. If setup correct future spam will be deleted automatically.

Get a Google Mail account !!!! The best spam protection I have heard of. Setup your Thunderbird to retrieve mails from that account, and you should be spam free at a jiffy.

Spam usually starts arriving when you use your personal email address on websites that offer bargains and such.

There are sites that offer free fake e-mail addresses for that purpose. Works a treat, give it a go !

May you have a spamfree 2008.