Sep 25 2008
As if Spam wasn’t bad enough…
Over all my email accounts, I receive about 100 spam messages a day. While that is annoying, a reasonably effective spam filter manages to trap most of them in a spam file. Of course, there’s the occasional false positive, so I need to check my spam file pretty regularly.
Over the last few days, I’ve noticed a lot of spam is coming with read receipts. OK, so spam’s a part of life – but unnecessary read receipts are just a pain in the proverbial. And, mostly, they are now showing “unsubscribe” links. What’s with that? Some new requirement for spammers? Like I’m sure I’ll magically be off the email list if I click unsubscribe – because spammers are so ethical. Right.
Love to know if CMD, 635 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20001-3753 really exist?
Anyone else getting these?
(p.s. I wrote this yesterday, and I did venture to click on the unsubscribe link today. Predictably I got a “not found” response).
10 Responses to “As if Spam wasn’t bad enough…”
I got one also….
635 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20001-3753 is the address of National Public Radio (NPR).
I went to the site advertised and clcik there contact us button. Sent them a message that I would file a complaint with the FTC on them if they didn’t stop SPAMING me without a unsubscribe link that works.
That address has the Bank of America and National Public Radio (NPR) listed there according to Google maps. I’m not sure whether these two organisations have branched into online pharmaceutical sales though.
Unsubscribe links on spam messages are used to detect ‘live’ or active email addresses, so clicking on these can result in more spam.
I’d be too scared to click on the link because of risks of what could be on that page…
Unless I was at work. Might do it there :p
Fiona’s last blog post..Floriade, Crazy Drivers and the biggest magnet I’ve put on my fridge
I don’t know about American spammers, but AFAIK it is now a legal requirement for Australian organisations using email mailing lists (a.k.a. spam) to have an unsubscribe option. Having said that, i’ve never been game to click on an “unsubscribe” link
Andrew’s last blog post..Peter Leonard
I’ve been getting loads of spam this last few days with the return receipt thing. Pisses me off no end. Death to all the spammers out there!!!!
Ian’s last blog post..Responsible parenting
Ray – Everything you see in a spam email is forged. From the “Sent From” address, through to any business address information.
Sending abusive emails to NPR (Who most certainly had nothing to do with it) might make you feel better – but some poor sod at NPR has to read it and deal with your email.
I’m the unfortunate victim of tens of thousands of spam bounce-backs every month, because some spammer forges emails to appear as though they come from one of my domains. It’s trivially easy for spammers to do, and nigh on impossible to protect against under the current system.
(Really: We’d effectively have to switch to an entirely new email platform which could not recieve emails from the old platform — and you can imagine how popular that would be).
We’re getting these – maybe five a day to various mailboxes. Like you say – just click unsubscribe (if you want to confirm your email address is ripe for more spam
).
Unfortunately I think many unsuspecting peeps will do that, you know, the one’s who openly post their email address on their website… nuff said.
My main email account, which is gmail is pretty good at keeping out spam, so I guess I am one of the lucky ones.
Nicole Price’s last blog post..Hypermiling
Hi Meg –
We can only hope there is an especially fierce fire in Hades reserved for those conscienceless folk that are making us waste millions of man hours all over the net when we ‘deal’ with this junk.
I start thinking vengeful thoughts whenever this subject comes up, but there is no outlet, (other than kicking the cat), so nothing changes.
Rhys’s last blog post..How To Hide Adsense From Social Traffic
My hotmail account has thousands of emails in with about 90% of them being spam.
It is meant to be a legal requirement for them to have an unsubscribe link but the people doing the spamming are unlikely to care about legalities.
John
John Walters’s last blog post..Earth4Energy