Oracle AppsLab - Latest Comments in Does Spam Still Work?

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

jkuramot — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 01:05:26 -0000

It's pretty much par for the course to have both a real account and a spammy one. Thanks for the tip about inbox.com.

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

jon — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:27:48 -0000

Like others here, I use hotmail & yahoo just for registering etc. and not for friends or genuine email conversations. Both are very bad for letting spam through and are really pretty useless. I use Inbox.com for all my 'proper' email activities. Its also a free service and hardly ever do it let spam through into my inbox. I would recommend it.

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

Jake — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:44:33 -0000

@ChrisRowell/Voyagerfan5761: I'd forgotten spam IMs. I switched to Gaim/Pidgin years ago, and those stopped entirely. I'm not sure the two are related, but maybe.

GMail does a good job trapping spam, but as you say, somehow spam finds that account. I didn't give it to services before 2006, but I still got spam. It's just nicely hidden away in the spam folder.

Yahoo got better, but has backslid recently. No idea why. It's impossible to compare to my work account b/c the policies are different, i.e. the trapped emails rarely make it to me for review.

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

Voyagerfan5761 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:45:35 -0000

@Jake: Yahoo! Mail is pretty bad (I get spam there even though I have never even told anyone I have an account there). Hotmail is really annoying because Microsoft spams you with their own junk and makes it a requirement for service. (I don't use my Yahoo! or Hotmail addresses anyway; They're just there for identity preservation.)

@ChrisRowell: I can't speak for my dad, but my mom is pretty suspicious of anything she gets that doesn't have a name she knows attached to it. She even catches stuff that purports to be from herself. Phishing and spam are both lost on the two of us. My dad has a spam filter in Outlook, but I don't know if he ever reads the messages or if any make it to his Inbox. (The rest of us use webmail services; he's the holdout for desktop applications.)

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

ChrisRowell — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:19:10 -0000

As for non-techies responding to spam, I think they do (clearly someone must). My parents (read: non-techies) simply call me if they receive something they were not expecting and can't figure it out. They are pretty sceptical though.

And as for spam, my Hotmail account was set up as my spam account (you know, I have to give an email address on a website but I really don't want to kind of thing). Recently, the amount of spam I receive went from something like 30 spams a day to 0.5. Not sure what happened, but that was a huge improvement. Now only my Yahoo! account gives me major spam.

The other thing I haven't figured out is how do I get spam IMs? (only happens on my Yahoo)

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

Jake — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 22:11:04 -0000

@Voyagerfan5761: Yeah, I guess you're right. I've been using GMail for nearly 4 years, and the spam rate is pretty low. I'm thinking of Yahoo I guess.

@Carl: That's the one I've seen. I like the pictures they get spammers to take, esp. the one with the loaf of bread on his head.

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

Carl Backstrom — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:36:54 -0000

Great site for scambaiting

http://www.419eater.com/

Re: Does Spam Still Work?

Voyagerfan5761 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:49:22 -0000

Well well well...

Just in response to your last point about webmail not catching spam, Gmail does a great job and has let through about two spam messages over the entire duration of my use, which is about two years. So it's not a "free service" problem, it's a "lazy free service" problem. Read: Microsoft Hotmail.