I learned about it from the list, too (probably from Maggie). I use
that on my Road Runner account. If you are getting the spam from your
own account though - you wouldn't want to bounce the emails back
(might cause some problems for you with your provider). I don't
recommend bouncing the spam you get as more than likely, the from
address is spoofed. The mail bounces back to someone who had no part
of the email. I am sure many of you have received bounce back emails
that you did not send? I simple have the spam marked as blacklisted
and auto delete (on my Road Runner account).
After I did some further research on this newest craze (sending spam
from the owner's email address to their own address), I discovered
that they are not sending the same message to other accounts using my
address. The spammer's hope is that you would not be blocking your own
email address and thus, would get this trash in your inbox.
Fortunately, Gmail is very good at filtering this crap into the spam
folder. My concern is that my address is my full name (I can't stand
seeing my name attached to such crap). I want this to stop - and the
only way to stop it is to close my other account. You folks will all
know who jdecker4art is - but other folks won't know if they receive
future crap. I kept my name as a portion of my address so it would be
easy for you folks to remember it. I use jdecker4art with Yahoo mail,
too. If this practice bothers you too, you can forward the entire
message (including full header) to the FTC - the email address for
that is spam[at]uce.gov
Of course, they do not act on individual complaints (they get upwards
of 300,000 such reports a day). The forwarded emails are saved in a
data base to help law enforcement officials, etc in tracking down
culprits. It doesn't do any good at all to forward without the full
header. If you need help on how to find and copy the full header, ask
your school tech person -- or someone else who uses your same mail
program.
Years ago everybody in the world (literally - my account was
blocked/blacklisted by folks' servers on the World Art Teachers' Yahoo
list) was getting spam and virus emails from my past Yahoo account and
my previous Road Runner account. Both were closed without notice. I
was accused of sending spam and viruses by my provider and lost
Internet service for over a week. I had to prove the emails were not
coming from me in order to get my service back up and running. I had
to open a new Yahoo account - and lost all of the stuff I had saved on
the old one - and of course NEVER posted my new Road Runner account
anywhere. I was spam free only for a short time. Ken Rohrer (from IAD)
used my address on that awful Prank website (Getty list veterans will
remember the troll event a few years ago).
He wanted to "test" it to see if the message would post to Art
Education Yahoo Group. Spam started rolling in right after that -
although not much. Folks, never enter a member's/friend's/relative's
personal home email account online without their permission.
So you see, my actions are not unfounded "paranoia" - I have a real
concern/reason for changing email addresses at this time. I am not
giving up on the list....just taking precautions.
All of us can help stop this practice by being more cautious and not
post other members email addresses for email bots to harvest. If you
only post occasionally, you are not at risk as much as those who make
frequent posts. The Gmail address I had been using for posts the last
several years is in the archives well over 350 times (posted by other
members).
Please do not post this new address to the list to be archived.
Regards,
Judy Decker
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 9:00 AM, Maggie wrote:
Someone on the list recommended MailWasher years ago, and I have
been a fan ever since.
