I keep receiving mails from some U.K national lottery that I have won thousands of pounds,etc.I am also receiving mails from people relating to some China T.V.channel.I know they are fakes and I just report them to spam but my question is how do they manage to get our email ID?This shows that yahoo is not protecting our privacy.What is the solution?I am really fed up with these mails.
2007-03-25 09:35:28 · 6 answers · asked by eskay 3 in Business & Finance ➔ Other - Business & Finance
Bots or spiders troll the internet seeking out email addresses that have been left on mailing address sites as do 'zombies', computers that are hijacked and utilized to spread spam across the net at pretty quick rates. Signing up for a site, enter a contest or draw or a bulletin board, Wordpress site etc. Any number of ways. Once your email is used on the net a bot/spider or zombie has free reign to nab it and use it to send spam for the owner of the harvester(s).
How to stop it...use temporary email addresses, ones that you use to sign up for things, gain access to a site etc. These types of email addresses are available for free, doing a search for temporary email addresses etc will get you a number of options such as Spamgourmet: http://www.spamgourmet.com/. If you need to fill in forms etc and your actual email address is absolutely necessary try entering something such as: your_name_@_email_provider_dot_ com... therefore it would look like this: john_doe_@_yahoo_dot_com. Not all forms will allow this type of email entry however, depends on how they've been set up.
Mail readers such as Outlook Express (especially), Thunderbird etc., are more susceptible to spam than the online emails are. However, I have noticed that Yahoo has indeed been allowing a larger number than normal of spam into our mail boxes. You might wish to sign up to something like Spammato, Mailwasher is supposedly very good and they offer a totally FREE version: http://www.mailwasher.net/, SpamAssassin is also reported to be good, a windows version is available: http://spamassassin.apache.org/.
Finally, one of many articles on Spam and getting rid of it, recommendations, programs etc. http://askbobrankin.com/spam_blocker.html
Good luck, you certainly aren't alone!
2007-03-25 10:01:45 · answer #1 · answered by dustiiart 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The spam industry uses programs that try sending e-mail to all known domain names. Example: a program might start trying to send out e-mails to everyone starting with aaaaa@INVALID.com and continue down to zzzzz@INVALID.com.
2007-03-25 09:39:20 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
signing up for things on the internet (including your email) && Fowarding. dont forward anymore. even if its to ur own friends.
2007-03-25 09:37:49 · answer #3 · answered by Susanna 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They get it because you keep putting it out there. It's not Yahoo's fault.
2007-03-25 09:37:44 · answer #4 · answered by Always Right 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i have no idea. i get those too. i'm also tired of them. my guess is when you send your email to companies, it spreads all over.
2007-03-25 09:52:00 · answer #5 · answered by melissa 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
deal with it. you probably have scattered you email all over the place.
2007-03-25 09:39:14 · answer #6 · answered by just hanging around 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋