Maddenation
Spam
This is a good, scary article from the Weekly Standard about spam. One good thing to do about spam is have two email addresses, one to use for signing up online and receiving things from businesses, and one to keep secret and only give to close friends. That may still be difficult, but while things are still so hairy and murky legally, it kind of works. I’ve noticed that a lot of websites give their email addresses in the form “pat at maddenation dot com” so that automated “spiders” can’t pick them off (a real human being has to come across the address). Hotmail has super Spam protection, but you have to make sure your friends’ addresses are in your address book. Also, Microsoft Outlook on PC is a number one target for virus hackers. Anyway, just some ides from a guy who’s got too many email accounts anyway (and has to get them reined in some how soon). Post here if you have other ideas.
Patrick • Recommendations • 06/10/03 • 2 comments
Comments
Dad • 06/10/03 • 10:28 PM:By the way, you got another one of those letters from the “Domain Registry of America” trying to get you (me) to change the registry on Maddeness.com (and telling us that maddeness.us, .net, .org, .biz, and .info are also available.) As you already pointed out the last time, they must have associated your name with my hotmail ID and gotten my address. Of course, you could almost call that legitimate, given the work they did. However, I consider it a dirty trick, and so do you.
Regarding the spam problem, which IS big, I like to get back to basics and understand why it got that way in the first place. But I don’t have time. So I blame Bill Gates. He was the one who promoted all those commercial connections/interests on the internet in order to sell more software.
One could argue there are only two legitimate uses for the internet, communication and research. Commerce was going along just fine without the internet and could still be going just fine without it today. OK, it’s unreasonable to keep commerce off the net once somebody figures out how to do it and does the legwork and advertising to push consumers over their nature reluctance to do business with total strangers blindly. But hey, humans are only smart if you compare them to baboons. Now we’re over that hump and there’s no turning back.
So we are suffering because of the natural tendancy for humans to lie, cheat, and plunder if they can get away with it. Junk mail invaded the post office, but because it costs money, it now supports home delivery of mail. The real problem with spamming is it’s free and unbelievably fast. There is no reason service providers (and I don’t understand where they came from and why we pay them so much, but that’s another issue) should charge everyone to subsidize spammers. The idea of charging for emails is a good one, and as the article points out, it wouldn’t take much. Frankly, charging for service provided, including research, isn’t a bad idea. Part of the reason people always used to remark about how “unbelievable” the internet is is the fact that it’s essentially free (and of course fast and voluminous). Libraries are free, but slow. But at least you don’t have to wade through porn and snake oil to get to the books.
So charge for mail, charge for instant messanger, charge for time at a useful site; I’m not sure I want it taxed. And of course, don’t buy anything on the internet, ever, under any circumstances. This just gives the spammers a reason to come after you.
Dan • 06/11/03 • 11:47 AM:ah, spam. we have been longtime foes. i remember back in 1998 when i created my first email account, maddogfloyd at hotmail dot com. it was exciting. those where the days when spam was still fake ham (or whatever it is). i have since created 2 other accounts that i’ve used (probably 10 more, but just to lie to online places about sending me stuff), on top of the 3 university email accounts i have. i’ve seen spam rise from infancy to full-blown adulthood (i barely missed its birth). this stuff is insane. my dfmadden at hotmail dot com account, which i used to use for some stuff and i used to have useful emails in it, became so overrun with spam that i stopped checking it because i would have over 100 emails a day, and that was WITH SPAMGUARD (or whatever it’s called). i don’t even recall giving out that address. so hotmail has this policy that if you don’t log into your account within 30 days then you lose EVERYTHING in it and you lose the account. well, that’s what happened. SPAM ruined my email account, and i blame it for me losing a lot of emails i wanted to have. i’m pissed about that.
but i have been victorious with my ND account. only 2 days ago, just 1 day before pat’s posting on Spam, did i receive my first spam email. i was pissed about it, not knowing how the heck a spammer got my email address. and i still don’t know. maybe, since i USED to list my ND account in these COMMENTS, they found it that way. who knows. i do know that most people’s ND accounts are pretty safe from spam. i’ll bet hotmail sells their own email addresses.
AND, what is up with getting spam FROM dfmadden? how do they do that? how is my ID in the subject line or from line? that’s some serious programming effort on the part of spammers. the first couple times they fooled me, like, dfmadden is emailing me? from where? and then you open it up and BAM! crap.
i also wanted my dfmadden account because i was saving the best names of spam emails. my favorite is “Tallulah Belk.” what a name. who is going to believe that? probably nobody, which is the idea. i also got one from “dorkus.” how good is that? i opened that one too, but only because i thought it was from dave.
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