Spam level *declines*... to 97 percent of all email

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/137384

Yay! Who is the actual target of a spammer? does anyone ever use these?

[meQal]

Yeah, I never had the urge to increase the size of my my dead relative in Africa from a Somalian diplomat by refinancing the UK lottery I just won.

[ghouck]

Between my ISPs filtering, Thunderbird's filtering, and my 'net security software, I actually see about 1 piece of spam a week, no more. They're pretty much shooting blanks, but, those blanks are free even by the millions. I'm actually seeing a bit of an increase in FAX spam at work lately. weird.

[Jack]

The only spam I get is this nonsense with titles like "M to bicyclesme" which is just a link to "EL Yample".  Get about 1 a day.  I've put about 100 of those on the spam list, but it doesn't seem to do any good.  Still, 1 spam a day isn't bad at all.  I think the best thing to do is just not give out your email address to any websites that might be likely to sell it to spammers.  A buddy of mine gets about 200 spams a day, he's one of those people that enjoys whatever is popular with the general public. 

[ghouck]

I think the best thing to do is just not give out your email address to any websites that might be likely to sell it to spammers. 

If you have the resources, there is a fairly easy way to fight back. If you have your own domain, thus any email address at that domain, any time you sign up at a website, use that website's name@yourdomain as the email address. (Like badmoviesdotorg@yourdomain). This does two things: First, if you all at once start getting spam at the email address websitename@yourdomain, you know what website trafficked your address. Also, website are catching on to this, and not selling addresses that match their site name. What's better is that it's pretty much a disposable address, so you can sometimes set it up to bounce any messages, so you won't even know they're trying, AND, you can let everyone know who is selling your address. 

[Rev. Powell]

I get zero spam on my personal account, due to me never giving out that address unless I know the individual or company very well.  If I'm unsure about the website that's asking for my address I'll give them my yahoo address, which was purposefully set up just for that purpose.  That address gets maybe 10 pieces of spam a day.

Ghouk's idea is clever, but too much trouble for me.  If I was a professional spam hunter, that's the method I'd use.  They used to have a law in Washington (I'm not sure if they still do) that a Washington resident could get a judgement for something like $200 in a civil suit if they could prove someone sent them an unsolicited email.  People actually set up businesses to trick people into mailing them spam so they could collect the bounty.