posted on October 13, 2003 09:54:55 AM new
Here's and interesting situation. I had the same email for about five years. As many of you have experienced, spam has increased to the point beyond annoyance. So I finally decided to start with a new email address. I immediately went to Ebay to change my contact info to correspond with the new address. Actually I created three addresses, one of which I intend to use only with Ebay.
Here's the interesting part. I did win two Ebay auctions from reputable sellers since establishing this email account but have not used or given out the Ebay address other than to replace my old one with this current one in my contact info. I have not listed any auctions myself. I was under the impression that the scam artists got our email address by searching open auction listings. Can they blanket search everyone’s contact info?
I just checked my email for the Ebay address and there are a half dozen of those "Your Ebay account has expired, click here" scam emails. They appear to be from different senders so it appears that if you have the right program you can get anybody’s contact info
What a pain. I'm not even doing auctions and I still get spamed and scammed.
posted on October 13, 2003 10:23:04 AM new
The scammers send emails to every email address they can generate or that is on a list of known email addresses. I got tired of all the spam recently and set a new free email account. The problem is that any email address that starts with a common name or word can be used by an automatic email generator to make possible email addresses.
To help get around the problem you need to select an email address that would probably not be genererated -- something like a combination of numbers and letters. I made up one of these nonsensical addresses and have received no spam whatsoever.
-------------- sig file ----------- *There is no conclusive evidence that life is serious*
posted on October 13, 2003 09:34:27 PM new
If you use AOL, you are automatically installed onto more spam lists than any one person would be willing to count. And they say they have spam control. Yeh, by giving your addresses to all of the spammers. Now that is control.
posted on October 14, 2003 05:52:17 PM new
Ace, Thanks for the thought, I did use an address that would be easy to find on a common word search. I know better than that. I will change it.
Stone, Not on AOL but, I do use Netscape that was bought by AOL and I fear they "talk". I much prefer the way Netscape handles bookmarks/favorites so I stick with it untill AOL ruins it.
