so far, no spam problem for me at all.

No spam for me (and it's very salty too!)

hnechets, here's something I just noticed. I have an old Hotmail account that I rarely use but never got any spam. As soon as I signed up for MSN Passport and Messenger Service, I notice just now almost every day getting several spams similar to what you state. Do you have either of these services? They could be sweeping the profiles.

Same on AOL. My AOL screen name that I only use for file storage does have an AOL Profile. Under that screen name I get tons of spam. With my PremEx AOL screen name, I have no Profile listed, and get absolutly no spam.

Could it be they are mining Profiles at ISPs?

[This message has been edited by PremEx (edited 10-18-2000).]

On the menu for breakfast today is:

1. Spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam.
2. Spam, bacon, spam, spam, spam, and spam.
3. Spam, eggs, spam, spam, bacon, and spam.

Couldn't resist throwing this into the thread for all of us Monty Python fanatics!

If you have either an Earthlink or Mindspring address, they have a spam eliminator tool that is very effective.

My FT account has had a hotmail address for about 3 months. I have received no spam in that account.

Well, that explains it! In my aol account I normally don't get spam, but in the last few weeks, I've noticed deleted emails from places I don't recognize and wondered how they got through as AOL does try to eliminate spam. But it just takes a click and it's deleted. Hope I didn't delete anything important.

Before this gets too far, I'd like to address two comments above:
BizJet - "I never thought it could come from FT, but you never know."

auh20 - "Yep. FT is responsible for all sorts of spam. Really annoys me that the same company keeps changing the email address of the spam for every email so that you can not block it.
But the question is "Is FT selling the email addresses or is someone just getting them off the board without FT consent?""

My comment is this. We as a company have had publications online since 1987 wit hthe original NewsNet and Compuserve and since 1994 on the WWW. Never in all those years have we even thought of "mining" the data from email addresses, "profiling" the information from those email addresses, "selling" the email addresses or "allowing" anyone access to those email addresses. To safeguard that information, we keep such addressses on our our internal servers which have no outside access. My employees know my feelings on that and I'm comfortable there's no leak there. As some of the more tech minded members of this board know, spammers have very powerful software that can scrape email addresses from anything on the net. They do not need to actually have access to any database. I do find it interesting that while a few of you have raised questions as to where the spammining is coming from and seem to hint at FT's involvement, you seem to overlook a fair number of people who have also posted to this thread that seem to have absolutely no increase or problem with spam. I can only hope that each of you have filters, have no tolerance for spammers and that you have confidence that any spam coming to any of your email addresses is NOT coming from or in any way associated with FlyerTalk on a legal or offical basis. I hope I'm very clear about our policy and thoughts of spam....I'm a victim also and not happy.

[This message has been edited by Randy Petersen (edited 10-18-2000).]

Thank you for the answer and I apologize for even suggesting FT was involved.

Thanks Randy!

I have had this same email adress for 6 years, and send and receive lots of email so it is "out there" big time, but get surpisingly little spam, and have no filters in place of any kind. Certainly no increase in recent times. Got one just now which made me smile .. they go to amazing lengths to get addresses. Why they show these all as "cc" is the mystery.

To: [email protected]
Subject: You can cut your credit card bills by 60%!!!!!
CC: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected]


GET OUT OF DEBT!!! etc, etc.

hnechets,

Many hotmail addresses get lots of spam. I think it's just a problem with hotmail. I've tried hotmail and yahoo and probably got 100 times more spam with hotmail. Yahoo also seems to do a better job of filtering mail to the bulk folder.

I too have been receiving lots of spam lately, from all of my accounts. Hotmail's filters seem to be useless, they just plain don't work.

The surprising one is Earthlink...I never got spam from (5 years) them until lately. I have probably forwarded 100 spams to them in the last 2 months. I have gotten replies on lots of them (not auto-response) saying they have taken steps to block that source from their system. But as someone said, the spammers just create a new address until they get caught again.

One of the Earthlink spams was an offer to purchase over 10,000,000 e-mail addresses.

PremEx - No, I haven't signed up for those 2 services, but now that you mention it, I have done so at a few others, like at Delta, Northwest, and MSN's The Answer Geek. I think you might be on to something.

neverhome and others - Interesting comments about hotmail accounts seeming to have this problem worse than others.

Randy - I, too, never thought FT was selling our email addresses. I assumed, like others here, that they were being "mined" by spiders and all. I never once thought that FT was involved, but thank you for your comments.

I have many email addresses and have found that yahoo.com does the best job of filtering spam - they go to a special folder called "bulk mail" - with very few exceptions.. I look in there about once a week for anything that may have accidentally been incorrectly identified as "junk" - The only real cure is to block all but those email addresses you have defined as 'allowed'.. which is a pain because you may forget to put someone there and they can't get email to you... I find AOL far and away the absolute worst! Hotmail is a close second, and the first email address I ever had where I was learning to surf and left my email address all over the web continues to be a depository for junk.