Friday, June 24, 2005

Porn Spam

I hate seeing those two words together. To ruin a pefectly good word and meat-like product by attaching the word "porn" to it is just wrong.
Ok, I commited the cardnial sin of e-mail. I got a porn spam e-mail and at the bottom it said "please respond here to stop receiving these mailings." Now I thought, "I heard the government was forcing these guys to stop sending spam if you tell them you want them to stop". So I replied. Dang, I trusted what I heard from the government.
Well, now I'm getting 10 a day with no end in site. Obviously, I don't respond to have them stop, but it's getting annoying. I keep using my email program to block the porn ones but they keep mounting.
So here are my choices as I see them:
1) Go ahead an become addicted to porn. It's the easy way out.
2) Go ahead and tell my wife I'm actually asking for 300 porn ads a day. She would then kill me in my sleep. Problem solved.
3) Respond to all of them and tell them to stop sending the ads. Which will result in even more porn.
4) Become a pornographer. If you can't beat them join them?
5) Burn my computers. I couldn't blog, not an option.
6) Wait for the government to really handle it. HA HA, just kidding on that one.
7) Ask for advice from all you computer savy experts out there, if you have time between your downloading of porn to help me.

Oh, by the way... if you'd like me to stop this blog please send me an email and I'll begin posting 3 times a day.

4 comments:

James said...

This is easy. Just DON'T reply to any of their emails.

Ha ha, what I just said is funny becase you clearly said that you have already replied to one of them!

SPAM is best solved by your ISP. The best way to fight SPAM is to keep it from being delivered to your mailbox in the first place. i.e. you have already lost the battle if you use up your disk space and network bandwidth if you allow the mail to be DELIVERED. As an "end user" (that's what computer/network guys call a person who actually uses a compuer) you don't have the ability to prevent SPAM, all you can do is delete it (or in your case, reply to it and essentially beg them for more).

One you do get spam, it's helpful if your mail client has local SPAM filters to identify it and put it in a special mailbox (generally called TRASH but sometimes called CAUGHT_SPAM or something). This often works in conjunction with the software your ISP uses. For example, some mail is more easily recognized as SPAM, so for the grey area when your friends are talking about porn in an email, mail can be listed as "probably SPAM", and this can be put in your CAUGHT_SPAM folder for you to check before erasing.

Some mail applications (like the free package Thunderbird from the Mozilla people who brought you the anti-popup browser Firefox) have anti-spam features built in. However, it is best if your ISP is helping your out.

So I would at least recommend using a smarter mail client.

But I really recommend using a smarter mail provider.

Here's my concrete recommendation:

1. sign up for the free email service Gmail from Google. 2200+ Megabytes free and EXCELLENT SPAM GUARDING.

2. FORWARD your existing email account to your gmail account. Your ISP will have instructions on their website or support phone on how to do this.

3. Now all of your mail is being SPAM filtered by the gmail filtering. It's very good.

4. Either read your email on the web from now on (the gmail interface is very nice and you will grow to love the "SEARCH" feature instead of having a lot of email folders).

5. If you don't like web-email, you can POP your mail OFF OF GMAIL just like you probably do from your current ISP.

That will take care of your SPAM problems.

Drop me an email or AIM me if you have any questions about it.

shannoncaroland said...

I have my hotmail account set to where I only receive e-mail from my list of pre-approved addresses (Everyone in my address book).

Barry said...

James, having you as a friend finally paid off.

James said...

Yes, right up until the day that Google turns evil and you will rue the day you ever met me.