New reason to avoid 'unsubscribe' links
Clicking could turn you into a spammer, too.

Is anyone else starting to think that spam, like junk mail, will always show up in our mailboxes?

Interesting story DG, thanks! I very rarely try those optout links, and only then, when its on a more reputable site, such as Symantec. Now I'll be sure not to at all. I usually Block sender, but since I use Hotmail as my main account, I can only block about 200 domains and addresses, needless to say, I get that many spam emails in less than a week, which is why I was trying to find that older version of Mailwasher awhile back, which allowed you to bounce email back, even from a Hotmail account. I miss that program SO MUCH, LOL.

I do believe spam will be around for at least the next century, in one form or another.

chris

There will always be spam so long as e-mail is an open network.

What needs to happen is that it is a closed and registered network. Everyone will be against this, because of the privacy invasions implicated in that move. However, a registered network is the only way to start to even combat the problem.

I've even heard some mention of a pay-per-email postage program. While, I'm against the commercialization of e-mail, this would be a good way to combat spam.

A simple solution with the current network is a blacklist/whitelist system. Every address should be blacklisted, until it's whitelisted. In first practice, this could cause a ton of problems of dropped e-mail. But, as whitelists would be formed, there would be fewer and fewer problems.

I have both Yahoo and Hotmail boxes.

There is a Filter Option in Yahoo's mail - I've set it up so anything with "From: Marketing" and "free" in the subject heading never gets into my mailbox; eliminates a bunch of it. There are 15 filters available.