On 23 April 2012 06:18, Stefan Magdalinski <[email protected]> wrote: > > The clue is in the name? > > Stef
Plus it's not unknown (although tends to afflict 'Yahoo! groups types of lists more than others) for spammers to sign up to a list and harvest addresses that way. The added advantage to them there is that they know that the addresses are active now (not 2 years ago) and by harvesting from the From:, To: and CC: headers they know the addresses are clean and not munged. I'm with Barry, spam filters are the way to go. I see very little spam to my personal address these days. What I tend to see more of is Grey Mail, email from companies I've done business with in the past trying to sell me further services. I do see a lot of spam at my work email address (indeed what spam I see at my personal address tends to be stuff that's been sent to my work address and triggered a 'Forward to home' email rule) which tends to be down to the situation Barry describes, to colleagues passing my contact details to cold callers (because either they think I really am the person to contact for whatever the cold caller is selling or they think by giving someone else's contact details they'll get the person to stop calling them) or to a list sold by Experian (the credit reference agency) who had me listed as the owner of Birmingham Air Conditioning Ltd but with my correct work email address (which even the most cursory glance would show is not Birmingham Air Conditioning). I've corrected my details at Experian but the list is still doing the rounds (presumably at least one of the people they sold it to the sold it on). It's pretty much impossible to prevent any email address you use in any sort of business transaction getting into the hands of Experian (or Equifax). Even if you never use eCommerce at all, if you give it as you contact address to your bank, mobile phone company, TV Licensing, insurance company, book shop, supermarket loyalty card scheme, on a Guarantee/Warranty card or anything like that then it will find it's way onto to your credit record and will be sold. Stephen -- It's better to ask a silly question than to make a silly assumption. http://stephensorablog.blogspot.com/ | http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenboothuk | Skype: stephenbooth_uk Apparently I'm a "Eierlegende Woll-Milch-Sau", I think it was meant as a compliment. _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
