Registered: Apr 2001
Location: Prison
Posts: 421

eMail Injustice.

It was only 3 years ago my knowledge of computers could not have been LESS. Ok, I'm exaggerating. I knew alot about Macs, but that was it. If someone asked me what my internet service provider was, I would answer "Netscape." (that did happen once... a looonnngg while back.)

When I got Zoomtown, things really changed, and I got my first REAL email account with them. I wasn't planning on ever changing it, since it has become so important.

Well, I also didn't have the caution I do now about subscribing to newsletters. Although I usually only signed up for stuff like Tripod & Listbot mailing lists, I hit the "allow 3rd party members to contact me" button. I'm not sure which one, but one of them led to disaster.

I did end up merging my email to another account, and then eventually to my Mac.com account. Then I shut off my original account in December / January (it used to forward, but the Junkmail was piling in too rapidly.) and added an automatic "reply" saying "Because of junkmail, my account has moved, yada yada yada." At the time, it was all I could do.

Today, I checked, and in a 7 month period, there were almost 2000 messages. (Mind you, half of them were from Zoomtown.com saying that the message could not be sent.) All of them from different email accounts. All of them for stuff like "Increase your Sex power!" and "Fire your boss!" , all from random email addresses.

After doing a search, and perusing as much as I could, I counted 4 personal messages, and only 17 important notices. (I later found out that my first web site got deleted because I was unable to reply to the mandatory email.)

I'm really surprised Zoomtown.com actually put up with this. Not once did they ever send me a warning of my mailbox being too large. (Of course, there really is no size limit.)

---

I really feel that this is ridiculous. What's worse, is that each of them had their own little "we're legal, because you can unsubscribe" bit. Well, because it was all individual, it did no good. The only way to take care of the problem was to report it to the host (Usually Yahoo or Hotmail) , and by the time I took care of it, there would be 4 more new "SPAM" messages in my inbox.

Ok, you've heard my rant.

But,

1) Is there anything I can do to save my original email account? Is there some organization I can report to that can trace the source of these random emails?

2) Has anyone else had a problem that is this severe? How did you deal with it?


Oh yes, before someone goes ahead and reminds me. Yes, "Mail" does have that treasured "bounce" feature, and can sort into folders, organize, and delete mail / not delete mail from certain addresses, all features that would have not made this such a problem.


Well, there it is.

__________________
<b><font size=1 color=teal>"Sorry about the whole thing about losing your life savings, but that Palmpilot is property of Enron, so please give it back"

Registered: May 2000
Location: St. Paul, MN
Posts: 1429

Yup. It was called Juno. I got sick of 1) usign their e-mail client (or the slow web one) 2) I got so much junk. So I closed that account in Novmerber, and now I'm at yahoo! (YEAH!) I have about 20 rules, all my e-mail is filtered BY ME. all FW's are sent to a junk folder, I've gotten a lot of spam to go their too. I don't delete much e-mail.. I keep it all for bragging rights... (I recived xxx amount of e-mails yesterday! ha!) I woiuld just forgoet abotu your old account. IF you like that service provider, just open up a new one. Ever wonder why miradu2000 has 2000? miradu is not a common name - do a serach on google, and you will get like 2 german sites, and a couple o things bout me. thats it. But Juno was crap again.. way back. like 3 years ago. so I made miradu2000. I'm only miradu2000 now. I know it's almsot 2 years old now.. (the 2k part) but I like the ring..

on a side note. I was bored one day in health, so I made a database of how many e-mails I'd recived every day since Dec 25. I than graphed it, and found the regretion for it, and I should be getting 8.5 e-mails a day right now. :-D I'm more likat at 15 now! YEEAH!

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-miradu

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Sydney Australia
Posts: 1883

yup, I know the problem too...
on my hotmail account I got a i get/got a lot of spam.
But since I started their spam filter it is not a problem anymore...

The best thing to do is just ignore and delete it. I you reply to spam it just gets worse since they know the account is still active...

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<IMG WIDTH="200" HEIGHT="50" SRC=http://www.visorcentral.com/images/visorcentral.gif> VisorCentral Discussion Moderator
Do files get embarrassed when they get unzipped?

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 278

This past month either PCMagazine or PCWorld talked about a utility that helps get rid of spam. Get onto their sites and serach their current eddition to find it.

--David