A Junk Mail Experiment

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Author	Topic: A Junk Mail Experiment
Robert Espy Member	posted 03-16-2004 09:01 AM My e-mail address is all but worthless to me because of junk mail. I’ve had it for a couple of years and I hate to change it but I don’t feel as if I have any choice. It is a personal account that I have only used for personal communication with family, flesh friends, and a few companies with whom I do e-mail business. I started getting junk mail about six months after I created it. Just a few pieces every few days. Six months or so later I was getting about ten per day. That number has increased fairly quickly. When I opened my account this morning I had over one hundred pieces of mail. Only three were from people I knew. The rest were from people that wanted me to have a larger/harder penis, bigger/firmer breasts, higher/cheaper debt, etc. My other accounts, one of which I used when joining this forum, are not nearly as flooded. I would have suspected just the opposite. So anyway, while I was creating a new personal account, I went ahead and created two additional accounts, each differing only by a single letter buried in the middle between two ‘_’ characters. My intention is to use each of the two accounts only once. With one, I will ‘volunteer’ my services to the Kerry election campaign. With the other, I will ‘volunteer’ my services to the Bush election campaign. Both campaign sites have privacy policies that more or less promise not to mis-use or abuse personal data. Kerry even boasts, “Our server is located in a locked, secure environment, with a guard posted 24 hours a day.” One hopes it is not always the same guard. Which address do you think will get the most non-campaign-related junk mail? Before I start this, do any of you have any suggestions as to how I might make this little experiment more interesting. IP: Logged
Barney Member	posted 03-16-2004 09:41 AM I suspect there won't be a difference. I think most email addresses are obtained by random fishing, with some mechanism to then check to see if the address exists or not (eg a return from a mail provider saying "address not known" let's them know that other emails to that provider have presumably hit a real address). I have a private email address with a very big email provider that has remained completely junk-mail free for over 3 years. I use it for a lot of mail with commercial companies; all I ever get are repeat offers from those companies. Its name is based on my initials. I have a company email address that now gets several viagra-mails a day - but it took them 2 years to find it. It is based on my first and last names, both of which are relatively common, and thus guessable. Unless you have a good reason to suspect either party of selling email addresses (or passing them everywhere), I'd be surprised at a difference. IP: Logged
LaneH Member	posted 03-16-2004 10:02 AM I agree with Barney, most mail addresses are botted for spam first and then sold by the 'bots owners. There are good programs out there that will allow you to rapidly pre-screen your mail and add friends and blacklisted parties. ------------------ lane h. can be reached at laneman@erols.com "Never let your mind remain so open that your brain falls out." IP: Logged
jessho Member	posted 03-16-2004 10:13 AM If you get any other e-mail other than political solicitations, categorize the types from the seperate accounts. I think that would be interesting. BTW, I had very little junk mail until I started blocking addresses. Apparantly that was the wrong thing to do. IP: Logged
Robert Espy Member	posted 03-16-2004 10:26 AM quote: Originally posted by Barney: Unless you have a good reason to suspect either party of selling email addresses (or passing them everywhere), I'd be surprised at a difference. I picked the two test cases precisely because I know almost to the point of certainty that both cases will share my data with third parties (who will no doubt share as well). Also, in the process of 'volunteering' I'll be asked to provide a great deal of useful (read valuable) demographic background that 'will be viewed' as very reliably accurate. Additionally, fact that I'm volunteering for political campaigns colors that demographic data considerable. IP: Logged
Robert Espy Member	posted 03-16-2004 10:34 AM quote: Originally posted by jessho: If you get any other e-mail other than political solicitations, categorize the types from the seperate accounts. I think that would be interesting. I think that's a darn good idea and I can do that after-the-fact. Have you any suggestions required before-the-act? quote: BTW, I had very little junk mail until I started blocking addresses. Apparantly that was the wrong thing to do. I think that may be where I messed up as well. I seem to remember 'opting out' of a couple of my very first junk-mails with that account. That act proved that I at least opened those mails. IP: Logged
billholt Member	posted 03-16-2004 11:24 AM Robert, I think "opting out" is a primary listing agent along with having your address appear on a web page. For more than a year now, I've been tracking, plotting and analyzing my receipts. By this time next month I'll have crossed the 100,000 pieces of spam count. It's relatively easy for me to do this because my ISP has an excellent spam filtering system which captures nearly all of it but provides me with a daily activity report. One thing I've done during the period is use a number of custom addresses in exactly the way you have. Each was used to sign up at a single site. None has generated any spam at all - none. One interesting thing - the pattern during the year. I should have expected it, but didn't. The rate of spamming seems to follow a seasonal pattern, peaking around Christmas, dropping dramatically and climbing back. Here's the plot of my spam receipts. The 2004 receipts (pink) are tracing the 2003 receipts rather nicely, indicating that the pattern is probably real rather than random. I suspect that there's a degree of saturation that any email address reaches over time, probably driven by its level of exposure on the net, and then a pattern like this one appears. IP: Logged
10SNE1 Moderator	posted 03-16-2004 01:10 PM I keep two nearly identical addresses, one at work and one at home. I do some (I'll deny it if called out on the carpet) recreational surfing from the work address, have made online purchases of various categories and look at public fora - this one included. I get NO spam at the work address, and ~20-25/day at home. Go figger. It's been that way for years. IP: Logged
setnahkt Member	posted 03-16-2004 03:59 PM I very rarely get spam at my work address, but I think we have a pretty good spam filter built in. I'll have to send myself an e-mail message at work with the subject line "buy cheap viagra from hot teens at low interest rates" and see if it gets through. On my home address (which I've had since 1984) I get between 80 and 140 spam a day. I have home-made spam filters in Outlook Express that generally get all but 5 or 6. I never "opt-out" of anything; in fact, if an e-mail has an "opt-out" line in the message it gets trashed automatically. The most annoying part is that if an e-mail has a large amount of text - 20K or so - it takes so long to get through all the filters that my ISP gives up and disconnects. IP: Logged
KGB Moderator	posted 03-19-2004 08:29 PM quote: Originally posted by jessho: BTW, I had very little junk mail until I started blocking addresses. Apparantly that was the wrong thing to do. I had the same experience. IP: Logged
Malcos Member	posted 03-20-2004 03:48 AM Interestingly i get essentially no spam, and haven't for years. I know that my ISP now has spam filters, but that is reasonably recent, say last 2 years. I do make a point of signing up for nothing. At my last job, we had a few people who somehow had their addresses "out there", and getting a fair bit of sapm. A good few did stop when we tried replying to the discontinue address, and for those that didn't stop, it didn't seem to get much worse. Eventually we just setup spam filters at our corporate firewall that eliminated 99% or better. Of course it also once shut out a series of urgent and vital messages from our corporate lawyers that nearly cost us a lot of money. Apparently having 6 attachments was "red flag" for the spam filter, and of course it is all automatic, and they don't advise when they stop spam. We did sort that one in the end. Malcos IP: Logged
KGB Moderator	posted 03-20-2004 12:45 PM quote: Originally posted by Malcos: Of course it also once shut out a series of urgent and vital messages from our corporate lawyers that nearly cost us a lot of money. If it's important, you use the phone, or at least request a return receipt. Even AOL mail allows the latter. Though, having limited experience, I have to ask: Do you still get the return receipt if your mail is filtered as Spam? IP: Logged
Malcos Member	posted 03-20-2004 11:41 PM KGB, it was a long story, but the lawyers were emailing through documents that had to be processed by a certain date and time, and of course email is quick. So nobody worried until a couple hours before the deadline, when they telephoned to check. Just to besure, the lawyers emailed again, still no documents. Is email down, what's broken, panic etc, etc. They faxed a set through and as luck would have it the first fax machine they chose just happened to be tied up with a very long print job (combined print/copy/fax machine), and so it went on. We got them in the end by another fax, about the same time I managed to get our corporate firewall support desk to release a copy from their spam holding pen. I just remember the flap. The email, being MS Exchange based was not of course very reliable, but the support crew had finally managed to get it operating at nearly 98% uptime, then this happened. Such is life. I don't think you get a reply notification, or an arrival notification from most spam detecting mechanisms, but someone else might know for sure. Malcos IP: Logged
Casper Member	posted 04-14-2004 03:48 PM If you ever unsubscribe, you have just verified your email addy. Many unsub pages that you are directed to are data scrapers, and are set up to produce a timely list of good addys for sale to third parties. I have been wondering what would happen if a telemarketer called and you asked for an email address, or at least a website (which will probably have an info mailbox at least)? And then wonder what would happen if you signed up for all kinds of cool free stuff using that email addy? I wonder if spammers actually care if the addy is something like info_admin@mortgages_R_us or if they follow some kind of professional courtesy. I wonder.... [This message has been edited by Casper (edited 04-14-2004).] IP: Logged
jjhlk Member	posted 05-03-2004 06:58 PM Everyday I used to go through the unsubscribe process in spams. I eventually got up to 20 per day. Then I decided to use the blacklist feature of the webmail account instead. Now I get up to 5 per day. Don't know if that is the correct thing to do but it seems to be working and it requires less effort. Afaik my provider doesn't do any automatic filtering. IP: Logged
billholt Member	posted 05-08-2004 12:49 PM Note the dramatic change as shown by the graphic in my 3/16 post. For the first few months of this year, my spam receipts were retracing the receipt rates from last year. Then I stopped making the spam reports, and the spam rates are now dropping dramatically in comparison to last year - by about half. IP: Logged
jjhlk Member	posted 05-13-2004 04:37 PM That must be it. I've recently noticed a couple of mails in my box which are predeleted, but not actually removed (my mailbox acts like the Windows recycle bin, you see, so I have to delete things twice). It turns out that those are my filters being applied -- I thought if the filter rules were followed, that I'd never see the mail (spam) at all; but, I apparantly do. So the spam has never been repeat spam. I have about 800 filter rules in the system which have never been applied once. Now I have to manually remove them all! (I'll hopefully find a quicker way) So, blacklisting is redundant, and I'll just delete from now on. I'll try and remember to report spam rates in the fall and winter. --- I'm still at the end, and I've found something to add, so I'll just edit this. I looked into my filters a little more, and I have lots where the host shows up a lot, but the specific mails were from different accounts. So I guess I have gotten repeat spam. But my filters did little good. (EDIT: which is not to say that they couldn't do good, but for the past year I've used them lousily) [This message has been edited by jjhlk (edited 05-13-2004).] [This message has been edited by jjhlk (edited 05-13-2004).] IP: Logged
billholt Member	posted 06-06-2004 04:56 PM It looks like the pattern may reestablish itself along a downward offset. I haven't a notion of why that appeals to me as likely. IP: Logged
LaneH Member	posted 06-17-2004 08:21 PM POTUS is now spamming. I have received 3 messages thanking me for my support of his campaign, and oh, by the way, come donate some more money. quote: The campaign is in high gear. A tough opponent is running against me; we cannot take him lightly. This is going to be a close election. I appreciate all you have done for my campaign already. I have been able to get my message to the American people because of your generous support. Blah Blah Blah I really dislike political campaigns. No, I have never done anything to sign up for such a mail, and yes it is his site. Pig. ------------------ lane h. can be reached at laneman@erols.com "Never let your mind remain so open that your brain falls out." IP: Logged
billholt Member	posted 06-18-2004 02:00 PM Originally posted by LaneH: quote: POTUS is now spamming. I have received 3 messages thanking me for my support of his campaign, and oh, by the way, come donate some more money. Ditto, but my most recent receipts have had a little glitch in them. The notes are personalized, with "Bill" inserted where appropriate ... except for one location where I'm transformed into "Mindy." Trust me. I don't look like a Mindy. IP: Logged
SPQR Moderator	posted 06-22-2004 03:57 PM Turning the tables on email scammers. IP: Logged
LaneH Member	posted 06-22-2004 05:04 PM quote: Originally posted by SPQR: Turning the tables on email scammers. Shows how far behind the traditional press is. My favorite site is 419 Eaters The pictures are tremendous. Along with the reverse scams that have been pulled off. ------------------ lane h. can be reached at laneman@erols.com "Never let your mind remain so open that your brain falls out." IP: Logged

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