RemoveYou.com and spam

[Alexander Bogomolny]

Hello, everyone.

I am desperate. My email lately has been about 90% spam. Looking for ways to lock the spammers out I ran into RemoveYou.com. Hence my question.

Has anybody had any experience with the service they promote. Although, at the current spam rate, it probably would not make any difference if I shared my email address with RemoveYou.com, I am still apprehensive.

I would be grateful for any information on the subject.

Thank[nbsp][nbsp]you,
Alexander Bogomolny

[sheila]

I put my e-mail address on either that site, or a similar one, recently. I haven't noticed much drop-off in spam. But I don't even get 10% spam.

I've seen similar services discussed on the spamcop.net newsgroups, and it seemed that the general consensus is that those sites don't appear to do any good.

Sorry the news isn't more hopeful...

[Alexander Bogomolny]

Sheila, many thanks.

Your reply was quite helpful. I was more worried about getting more spam after registering my email with RemoveYou.com. For all I know, this establishment might be a bait for gullible web denizens to give away their email address. As your 10% spam was probably not in reaction to your leaving email with a couple of those companies, your reply has assuaged my apprehensions. I shall try.

Thank you,
Alexander Bogomolny

[janderk]

Watch out!

I read somewhere that the removeyou web site was just set-up by spammers to collect email addresses and send you even more spam.

To fight spam join www.spamcop.net (http://www.spamcop.net) and report them. It helps.

Jan Derk

[chrisheng]

Somehow I feel that if anyone is unscrupulous enough to want to
spam others, they're not going to bother checking out any
third party exclusion list like removeyou.com (and all the others).

If you really want to test out that service, one way is to
get one of those free email addresses and submit that.
If you don't give out that email address (or publish it) anywhere,
and you still receive spam there, well, you've got your answer. :)

Chris.

[janderk]

Somehow I feel that if anyone is unscrupulous enough to want to
spam others, they're not going to bother checking out any
third party exclusion list like removeyou.com (and all the others).
Its worse. The list contains 100% valid email addresses and spammers love those. Here's a newsgroup thread about removeyou being an email collecting service for spammers.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&ic=1&th=74880c60fa92b845&seekd=91260125 4#91260125-4

If you really want to test out that service, one way is to
get one of those free email addresses and submit that.
If you don't give out that email address (or publish it) anywhere,
and you still receive spam there, well, you've got your answer.
Someone in the thread above already provided an virgin email address to removeyou and received spam within 12 hours.

Moral of this story: Never thrust a spam removal service! It will never work because spammers always lie and will use these services only to get more email addresses. Just join spamcop.net to fight back.

Jan Derk

[dank]

If you don't give out that email address (or publish it) anywhere, and you still receive spam there, well, you've got your answer. I don't think that's true.[nbsp][nbsp]There seems to be ways of sending spam that does not require knowing a specific "to:" address.[nbsp][nbsp]I have an address that I have *never* posted anywhere that gets a few dozen spams a week and had roughly 70 before I ever logged onto it.

I have a rocketmail (yahoo mail) account that is listed everywhere imaginable, and I get hardly any spam there.[nbsp][nbsp]I also have a hotmail account that I've used/listed very seldomly, and I typically have 800 spam messages (and exactly zero real ones) to delete every time I log on.[nbsp][nbsp]Seems to depend largely on the filtering, and very little on if and how much you get that address out there.

Dan

[chrisheng]

Dan said:

"I don't think that's true.[nbsp][nbsp]There seems to be ways of sending spam that does not require knowing a specific "to:" address.[nbsp][nbsp]I have an address
that I have *never* posted anywhere that gets a few dozen spams a week and had roughly 70 before I ever logged onto it."

Interesting. I wonder if it's because they have somehow tapped
into that email providers' internal lists. I know that at one time,
spammers seem to have managed to direct their spam through
my ISP's announcement mailing list address, thus reaching
every subscriber on that list.

By the way, Dan, how did you manage to Quote a post that
way? I can't seem to find a QUOTE button like in vBulletin.

Chris.

[dank]

Enter whatever text you want to quote between [ quote ] [/ quote ] tags (without the spaces).

Dan

[chrisheng]

Enter whatever text you want to quote between [ quote ] [/ quote ] tags (without the spaces).

Ah, thanks. :)

Chris.

[dank]

Well done, grasshopper.[nbsp][nbsp]:)

Dharma

[cybercrone]

The best solution I've found so far is a shareware program called Spamkiller.[nbsp][nbsp]It kills spam before you download it to your computer by means a a long list of filters.[nbsp][nbsp]You always have a chance to retrieve emails that have been killed by mistake because it shows you what it's killed in a window accessible through your task tray.[nbsp][nbsp]You get a chance to correct a filter (add a particular address as a 'friend') before it's scotched forever.[nbsp][nbsp]You can add your own kill filters as well, and remove any of theirs you don't like.[nbsp][nbsp]The only drawback I've found so far is that it sometimes kills emails I want and I have to keep an eye on it.[nbsp][nbsp]Eventually, though, you'll get everything finessed the way you want it.[nbsp][nbsp]There's a free trial period and then it's $30.[nbsp][nbsp]I thinnk it's well worth it.[nbsp][nbsp]I have to check the kill file every day but other than that it's no trouble at all.[nbsp][nbsp]You got to turn off the automatic download in your email program and let everything filter through Spamkiller.
Toni

[Justin]

In an effort to stay awake, I'll share a story that happened very recently. In fact, it went on while I was typing my last post a few minutes ago.

I received an email, stating that I have been subscribed to some Yahoo Group mailing list. This is apparently a free service Yahoo is offering.

This service has several flaws:

1) I did not ask, nor was I asked, to join this list. No confirmation was required/requested, I was simply, all of a sudden, a member.

2) No effort was required on my part to subscribe; however, to UNsubscribe, I am required to set up a POP box in Outlook so I can send an unsubscribe request from the proper address. Simply replying returns a "You are not subscribed to this list" error message. There is no "Click Here to unsubscribe" that, for example, contains the email address to unsubscribe. The only other option is to do so via Yahoo Groups, which means I have to register with Yahoo and with that email address which I do not use.

Anyway, I hate spam, and even moreso I am annoyed by irresponsible list owners. And even more, Yahoo, a company from whom we should expect better, makes it very easy for someone (intentionally or not) to cause all sorts of problems. Confirming a subscription request should always be required, on any mailing list, but especially from Yahoo...

*sigh*

PS - I have of course emailed my thoughts to Yahoo's abuse department, though I doubt any good will come of it.

------------------
Justin Nelson
SFE Software (http://www.sfesoftware.com)
[This message has been edited by Justin (edited 04-09-01@11:50 am)]

[sheila]

Justin,

When I was a list owner at Topica.com, a complaint to the abuse department, that someone had subscribed you to a list without your permission, would usually get your list closed down.

I don't know if it is the same at Yahoo, but I'd hope so!