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©2006 Eridani Star System.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
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Don't ask them to take you off their list. They'll ignore you. The unsubscribe link at the bottom claims you've unsubscribed, but it's told the spammer that your address is real, and you read the message. Don't hit "Reply" either. The email will either bounce, or worse, your tirade at the spammer will end up in the inbox of some poor innocent bystander. They won't take kindly to your message, and indeed you're then part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.
Clicking on a link in a email can be dangerous - have you seen links in spam mails which have random junk as part of the URL? If so, the junk is unique to your email address, and when that link is clicked, it shows you're there. The same applies to images, and most emailers will open linked images the moment you open the email. You may not even see it if it's a 1x1 transparent image. (Later versions of Thunderbird are aware of this issue, and don't do this.) This makes your email address even more valuable to spammers - who will also be making money by selling it on at a premium to other spammers. Don't fall for the spammers' pitch either. Even if it's something you want, DON'T buy it from them no matter how good the price. Just one sale could make the spam run profitable to the spammer, and this in turn encourages them to send yet more spam. In short, this torrent of junk is very hard to stop. By refusing to trade with spammers, you're helping making it unprofitable for them to operate.
IMPORTANT: If you got some marketing email from an email list that you did sign up to, e.g. the latest offers from Maplin, do not report them as spammers if you decide you don't want to receive any more. Legitimate senders will happily remove you from their lists upon request, and reporting them for spam is an abuse of their hard-earned good name and reputation. This also sends out the message that people who report spammers are complete idiots who can't differentiate between spam and emails they asked for, and only encourages associated ISPs to ignore such reports.
If you operate a Linux mail server, please check out MailStripper as a possible anti-spam solution for your organisation.
Clicking on a link in a email can be dangerous - have you seen links in spam mails which have random junk as part of the URL? If so, the junk is unique to your email address, and when that link is clicked, it shows you're there. The same applies to images, and most emailers will open linked images the moment you open the email. You may not even see it if it's a 1x1 transparent image. (Later versions of Thunderbird are aware of this issue, and don't do this.) This makes your email address even more valuable to spammers - who will also be making money by selling it on at a premium to other spammers. Don't fall for the spammers' pitch either. Even if it's something you want, DON'T buy it from them no matter how good the price. Just one sale could make the spam run profitable to the spammer, and this in turn encourages them to send yet more spam. In short, this torrent of junk is very hard to stop. By refusing to trade with spammers, you're helping making it unprofitable for them to operate.
IMPORTANT: If you got some marketing email from an email list that you did sign up to, e.g. the latest offers from Maplin, do not report them as spammers if you decide you don't want to receive any more. Legitimate senders will happily remove you from their lists upon request, and reporting them for spam is an abuse of their hard-earned good name and reputation. This also sends out the message that people who report spammers are complete idiots who can't differentiate between spam and emails they asked for, and only encourages associated ISPs to ignore such reports.
If you operate a Linux mail server, please check out MailStripper as a possible anti-spam solution for your organisation.
Stopping Spam
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