Re: Re-installing

In article <4k52fjFal76tU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Hugh Watkins <hugh.watkins@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Bob Harris wrote:

In article
<1155335328.476955.141460@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Three Stooges" <erniemac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Jim Carlson wrote:

In article <1155330627.605494.321690@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Three Stooges" <erniemac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


In addition, "nasties" from the internet can easily corrupt your hard
disks.

I'm confused. It was my understanding that there are no Macintosh
viruses -- Apple even says this in their advertising -- and I've read
that there's no Mac spyware, either, so what can a Mac user pick up from
the Internet that can easily corrupt your hard disks?


ALL you need to do is to disagree with SOME posters on ANY BOARD and
you will get "pleasant surprises". Why do you think all the "experts"
do not show their real email address ? Not for discouraging spammers as
they let you have !


No, actually it is because of spammers. My previous email address
was accurate, and I was getting some of the most graphic (sexually
explicit) spam and every pill pushing spam, and I was made offer
after offer to help transfer millions of dollars from an African
country, etc...

This went on for years, but over time the volume got larger and
larger, until my email address made was picked up by the "Swen
Worm". Then I started getting 1GB per day of Swen Worm emails
(that is 1 billion bytes of email per day).

The good news was it was to my work email account. The bad news
was that work had lots of bandwidth but was not prepared store
several gigabytes of email from me over the weekend, or if I went
on vacation.

And for my part I could not delete the email fast enough.

I eventually had to spend several days to learn 'procmail' and
filter out the swen worm. Then I worked on filtering out the
other spam. But over all it was a pain.

And the only place my email address was used publicly was in
theres news groups.

So yes, I now have a new email address, and I obscure it so that
spammers that harvest email addresses from news groups will not be
able to get my email address easily. In addition, the email
address, while real, is one that I can delete and create a new
email address should this one become a spam target.

My email address is also forwarded to a Google gmail account, and
gmail does a really good job of filtering spam.

And I know people can decode my email address because I've receive
a few emails from people that have read something I've posted.

If you personally have not be spammed via your email address, it
might be that your ISP has been filtering your email, or the
spammers have not gotten around to harvesting your email address.

Bob Harris


Ofcourse there are Mac viruses, but Windows is far bigger and causes
most chaos giving sic! greater pleasure !


It is just not worth going here.


picking the right mail server is clearly important
AOL and gmail seem to be better than hotmail for the time being

I shop around for ISP also travelling
but keep the same email addresses

the public ones are exposed on thousands of web pages and usenet posts
and I don't see the volumes of spam you guys claim

Hugh W


True enough, but at the time it was an email address I had
starting in '95 before SPAM was really as much of an issue, and it
was my company email address because I didn't have an ISP, my
company was my ISP at the time (and they didn't object as long as
when I dialed into work at night, I also did some work). I had
been using news groups even earlier but under older email
addresses (in those days if you moved to a different group, you
got a different email address; kind of like moving to a different
house got you a different street address).

So for years I did not have SPAM problems. Only when I did have
SPAM problems (and I call a gigabyte a day a problem :-) ), that
is when I switched to including an email address in my usenet
posts that was not easy to harvest for SPAM.

Besides the original statement I was responding to was:

ALL you need to do is to disagree with SOME posters on ANY BOARD and
you will get "pleasant surprises". Why do you think all the "experts"
do not show their real email address ? Not for discouraging spammers as
they let you have !

And for me, this is just not true. I had real SPAM. And I think
that anyone else putting things like NOSPAM in the posted email
address has either experienced their own SPAM, or they have read
it is a good thing to do, so they did it.

But I am a data point of 1, so anyone else should not assume my
single data point applies to them. And as time moves forward ISPs
change how they filter, and some sites get blocked, etc... So
there are going to be people that do not experience SPAM like I
did. But on the other hand when applying that same data point to
me, I figure I spent enough time and effort getting away from that
SPAM, and if making my posted email address a little cryptic could
stop it, I was all for that.

But I did not do it to hide from anyone in these news groups. My
email address can be decoded easily enough
nospam.News.Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Take out the nospam. and the remove. and you have a working email
address. It is just not something an automated tool would have
difficulty decoding.

Bob Harris
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Re-installing
    ... actually it is because of spammers. ... explicit) spam and every pill pushing spam, ... spammers that harvest email addresses from news groups will not be ... gmail does a really good job of filtering spam. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: increase in spam and what to do about it
    ... because your potential customer is using an ISP that happens to get ... As fast as you can come up with a trechnical solution the spammers will ... doesn't stop spam but is very likely to make the innocent pay for it. ... organization, ie. ISP - include hefty fines in your customer contract, ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Ethics of Deterrence
    ... against spammers' sites. ... community really was involved in a DDoS. ... complain about spam you receive. ... just complain about spam messages reaching us. ...
    (comp.dcom.telecom)
  • Re: increase in spam and what to do about it
    ... RBL at a different place. ... but I can assure you there is no way for spammers ... doesn't stop spam but is very likely to make the innocent pay for it. ... You put serious penalties in the contract. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: all this spam
    ... The spam problem is much worse than it was. ... An ISP I used to be with - carryed News Groups - for a while, ... I often engaged in "News Groups" - as I have in the recent past. ... I've never delved into "complete" filtering - maybe sometime I'll do that. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)