90% of all e mail is spam!

[jcarter]

This morning my husband was watching the news and he said they said that 90% of all email was SPAM!

If this is true, is it saturating the email systems?

Is it bogging the net itself down, slowing things up?

What can be done?
Why is spam so prevalent, do people actually RESPOND to all this crap?

I do know that our kids at their university sites, cannot receive any email from anything like adelphia, comcast, or the like, without making a special 'hole' in the filters for one.
So our family has to use .mac or something unique that they have made possible for it to be accepted.

So what is the future for email, if it is abused to this extent.
My husband is firing these questions at me, and I realize that this email spam thing is actually a 'threat' to the net, is it not?
I hope Tacit is around, as he is good at this type of question too.
Jane

Oh, I forgot to say, that the net was not meant for shopping and selling stuff.
But thats a lot of it now, and its good for us consumers.
But isnt the net really about research, education, military, and that stuff.
Jane

[kcourt]

 I know that in the past couple of months that my spam has increased greatly, even though I have the filters on with a high rating. It is probably at about 80-90% of the E-mails that I get.

Why is it that so many good things seem to get ruined by those trying to mess it up for the rest of us.

Kathy

[kbeartx]

The designers of this technology [email, the internet] did not anticipate many aspects of its modern use, hence the technologies are too 'trusting', which allows this kind of abuse.

IMO, if EVERYONE stopped EVER buying anything peddled by spammers, it would stop.

Failing that [which I believe is quite unlikely], I think we will have to develop new or at least revised technologies in the future in order to have useful email survive.

[jcarter]

I agree, thats the real question.  We all use email, its free, its great, it does instantaneously what snail mail cannot do. It does what we want!

So how do we clean the system up, how do we get rid of these spammers.

I know that the do-not-call thing worked well with phones, and the best thing was caller ID, you dont recognize the incoming #, so you let the answering machine pick up.  And most of those perps dont leave a message.
So there has to be an answer, these people have to be thwarted, and email will come back to whom it was intended for.
Hey, Tacit, I am awaiting your answer.  Because you are an expert on this stuff.
Jane

[Gregg]

There really is a sucker born every minute, and thus, one that "matures" to the point of having control of some money just as frequently. The supply will never be exhausted.

[Ken]

Slightly off topic,

I just tripped across this on another forum and thought about the problem some of you are experiencing with Junk/Spam email. I know that a lot of spam is triggered by participation in a site that offers something that you want but requires an email account to get it.  Here's a tool that can be used to satisfy that without risking your "primary" email address.

According to Ten Minute Email: you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any
e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can
read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will
expire after 10 minutes.

Why would you use this? Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that
you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you
don't want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam
lists. This is nice and disposable. And it's free.

If this info has appeared here before, I apologize in advance for the re-posting.  I guess I must admit that I do just scan posts and only read the ones that I relate to.

Here's the link:
http://www.10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html

[jcarter]

Hi Ken,  
Thank you!
This is a great idea, at the moment, my spam is really low, but I sure did bookmark it so that I can come back and use it later on.
Dont worry about posting good information twice, as sometimes we miss something, or like me, I need to be reminded of good stuff.
Thanks,
Jane

[dolphin]

This may be OLD news...but I think it bears repeating

THIS IS A KEEPER - IMPORTANT INFORMATION. PLEASE READ!!

Hi, I am forwarding this note containing tips on forwarding E-Mails that I received from another friend.  Perhaps others can use these tips.  In the future, I will comply with all of the tips below so that I can give your personal information the protection it deserves.
Please, please, please read the following information on how to properly forwarding on any emails that I or any one else may send you.  Many of you who email me or whom I email already do this - for you this is good information to forward on to others.  But some of you who email me or who forward my emails do NOT do the following.  I see the email addresses of people who have forwarded the information to you so assume you do the same with my emails.  And, as a result, I receive a lot of emails from people I don't know and would rather they did not have my email address.  So please read the following and incorporate the guidelines for forwarding on emails.  It is not difficult but oh so important.  
 
Check this out for some great lessons on e-mail, viruses, etc.
Words To Live By.
 
A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system ad ministrator for a corporate system.  It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.  Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.

Do you really know how to forward e-mails?  50% of us do; 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?  Do you hate it?  Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses and names.  As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer.  Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.  That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!  How do you stop it?  Well, there are several easy steps:

 (1)  When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).  That's right, DELETE them.  Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do.  It only takes a second.  You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

 (2)  Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses.  Always use the BCC:(blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses.  This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address.  If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear.  Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy.  When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it.

 (3)  Remove any "FW :" in the subject line.  You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

 (4)  ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading.  < EM>Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it?  By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

 (5)  Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition?  It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book.  The email can be forwarde d on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.  A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.  If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient.  Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition.  (Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports?  And don't believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just ain't so!)  
 Some of the other annoying emails include:
 1. The one that says something like, "Send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen."  Or sometimes they'll just tease you by saying 'something really cute will happen.'  IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN !
2.  I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.  (This could be why I haven't won the lottery.)
 3.  Before you forward an 'Amber Alert', or a 'Virus Alert', or some of the other emails floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!  Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out a Snopes.  Just go to www.snopes.com .  It's really easy to find out if it's real or not.  If it's not, please don't pass it on.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.

[jcarter]

Oh, This is great advice, I already know it, but there are millions of people out there in cyberspace who just keep forwarding this stuff to everybody in their address books!  

I never ever forward any email except something that comes from one of our kids with grandkid pictures or something private like that.

Everything else that is just that old forwarded messages from h*ll, I just delete, just hit that old usefull delete button.

I have voted in petitions, like the Humane Society for evacuation of pets, you know about this one,,,,,I go back to the website and go from there.
Jane

[Gregg]

I took a chance and sent those tips to two aunts and my sister. Only one aunt regularly sends me forwarded messages. I hope they still love me.

[Xairbusdriver]

Sending that info ( again ) assumes two things:
1. The recipient can read and understand what was said.
2. Care enough to figure out how to do what was suggested.

I've given up trying to educate the rest of the world. And frankly, if people want to keep on using buggy, insecure software and stoopid habits, they deserve what they get. :cynic: My SPAM mail is well under control, and I assume theirs is, also. Nor has there ever been a Mac virus problem sent via email, AFAIK.

Most people who do the this kind of forwarding just assume my suggestions are because I'm a Mac bigot. Same for requests that people don't use MS apps that send emails with tnef attachments, if it's not important enough to send so that anyone can read it, it's not important enough for me to bother with.

[Gregg]

Well, my aunt is new to computing, still learning. Maybe I can catch her before it's too late - on two fronts.