Why is SPAM sent? Are enough people ignorant or lonely that they'll open it? If you open it, what could happen? I've heard that there was to be legislation that the messages had to be ID'd as advertising in the subject line, but don't know what became of that.

I had a laugh this morning when I had four messages, with women's names in the From line, all titled "My Husband is Out of Town for the Weekend". I'm also the one who gets all the "enlargement" messages, although it's obvious from my email address that I'm the woman in the family.

Spam is making millions of dollars per year for unscrupulous webmasters. There are software programs that can be purchased and set up and once launched, they can send a continuous stream of emails to millions of users, every day! They change the email 'from' address constantly and just by sheer odds they hit enough people who are willing to buy whatever the product is, that they are profitable engines to own and operate. Very unethical, but money makers all the same. The are 'search spiders' that spend all day going to websites and harvesting email addresses from them, compiling an email list for their sister spam engine. That is why this site has members only profile access and also why we do not allow members to post personal email addresses on the open boards.

When you hook a search spider up to a spam generator engine, you have two very profitable 'employees'. It is doubtful that spam will ever be totally irradicated but maybe someday we can go 24 hours without seeing a 'sale on valium' email or 'enlargement offers'.

I briefly heard on the news one day about somehow making spam illegal, but I didn't quite hear it all. Did anyone else hear this. Somehow my email address are spreading fast because I get more and more each day. Today, I had 73 when I came on, plus every 5 or 10 minutes I get more.

Well I'll look at the positive side...good exercise for my finger.

I know how you feel, honilov and Cindycat. What makes me so angry is the number of pornographic Spams that are sent out, considering the fact that young kids use email, too. My private email address (not the one I use on this site) has been getting so badly spammed that I just recently created a new private email address with a name that isn't easy to guess, which I vow NEVER to give to any site or anybody except close friends. Hopefully that will work. If I am careful, is it possible to avoid spam altogether? I can't figure out how they could possibly get my email address if I never post it anywhere or give it to anyone except close friends...

One of the fastest ways people get on these lists is this. We all have an Aunt who likes to send us cute or inspirational emails that goad you to send it to even more people via a forward ("Send this to ten people if you love Jesus", you have seen them). At some point one of these addresses is a harvester or is caught by a hack and all the addresses on the list are hit with a virus that does nothing except report your address book contents to the 'mother site' so to speak. And these also send out emails while you are not 'looking' to everyone on your email list. This has a snowball effect and pretty soon anyone who reads these kinds of emails or talks to others who do, gets on a spam list of some kind.

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Originally posted by Hugh:
One of the fastest ways people get on these lists is this. We all have an Aunt who likes to send us cute or inspirational emails that goad you to send it to even more people via a forward ("Send this to ten people if you love Jesus", you have seen them).

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Does anyone have any suggestions for a polite way to request that people not send those to my new, hopefully spam-free address? I really have no need to read them!

Before I had these websites I just told people "I am afraid of virus' and don't read those emails." Some people will still send them and you may have to get firm aout it, but after the first time you get hit with a formatting event virus, and realize that the digital pictures from you best friends wedding or your six year olds birthday party, are forever gone, you will have less trouble telling people not to send that stuff to you. It is hard, because I would never do anything to discourage anyone from using the internet since I know how many doors it can open for people and how much fun it can be while very educational as well. But I just can't risk getting shut down so I don't ever read those (Unless my wife copied the text and sends it only to me, so I know it is not carrying a virus, we are different PC systems)She has a firewall out the kazoo, Norton Macaffee, AOL and MSN virus protected system and in spite of the mass of junk emails her friends send her she has yet to get hit with anything. Virus detecting software protection can't be touted too highly.