Reminder for all DG'rs about spam. Please read.

Sorry to have to bring this up to all my lovely neighbors, but a few unwelcome .new. neighbors are causing me problems. In the past few days I have been getting unwanted spam that I am tracing back to unscrupulous members here. I reported one who had the nerve to send it directly through here, and Dave revoked his membership.

Others, sorry to say, have sent me messages through DG asking for a trade. When I responded, they got my e-mail address, and have been bombarding me with spam.

This is really annoying, as well as against the Acceptable Use policy agreed to by subscribers. I am able to trace most of my letters, but find the time it takes to be a real intrusion.

I love to hear from my friends and new friends, but if your purpose is to try to sell me something or to do anything other than be a good neighbor, take me off your list.

If anyone else is having problems like this, notify Dave. That is not what this whole site is about.

I am interested in hearing anyone else's problems in this area.

Welcome to all, but not spammers.

Kathy

edited because it sounded trite. Kathy, I'm glad you brought this up, I haven't had trouble yet, but know to watch for it in case.

This message was edited Friday, Jun 7th 12:01 AM

Kathy, I'm sorry you've had these problems. I get my fair share of spam, too although I can't (don't take the time) to track down the source in most cases :( I just delete it and move on because my personal email address has been used for chain mail and forwarded messages by too many people.

But one thing to tag onto your reminder: if you receive an email through DG from someone you've never heard of, and it makes you uneasy, or you think it's spam - DON'T reply. Copy it and paste it into an email to the helpdesk here, and we'll investigate.

By not replying, you protect your personal email address; without a reply, the person sending you the email will never be able to see it.

I do hope we don't find ourselves giving new members the proverbial "cold shoulder" when it's not deserved :) But when it looks like spam, it probably is...

Go_Vols, I had the sad experience with William (whatever his name was) that as soon as I brought up his message, it attempted to penetrate some of my firewalls to get info from my computer. I have the strong suspicion he could easily get a lot of other people this way. Pretty sure he didn't get mine.

When I open my mail from DG, it is immediately identified, using my hotmail software only who the original e-mailer is, as well as all ISP info. I keep track of who and where most of my mail comes from, I have been attacked previously and some of these people send me messages that occupy at least 40% of my inbox capacity. If I get 3-4 at a time, my mailbox is unavailable for real friends.

I appreciate everything you all do to help patrol, I feel badly that I had to bring this subject up here, but I don't want more trouble with spammers.

Maybe someday there will be a good federal law against these jerks, but in the meantime, orgs like yours are doing the job of preventing predators from getting to us against our will. Keep up the good work!

I read my mail every night and today
i had 76 junk mail messages, where
does it all come from.? It does get old!!!

How do you know if you're being spammed from a particular person? I'd like to control it more efficiently that requesting to be removed from the distribution each time I get something unwanted. I'm a Hotmail user, too.

I know this will sound stupid but here goes anyway. what is spam??????

A nasty mixture of odds and ends nobody would accept on their plate if they could see it before it was put into the mix.

It's any mass-mailed e-mail junkmail, like "enlarge your ", "make money from home!" and the like.

Morph - the more you reply to spams and use their supposed "removal" links, the more you get added to spam lists. When you reply, you're just showing the spammer they reached a live address. Better to filter the e-mails into a trash folder with your e-mail program if you get tons of it, or to just delete it manually if not.

Morph, with Hotmail, go into your "Options" area. Select in the "Mail Display Settings" category. In that sub-menu, down at the bottom is the "Message Headers". Check "Advanced". This automatically tells you for each message who is the sender, regardless of where the message comes through. That is how I have found out some of my spammers were originally finding me through DG.

If you really want to try to get rid of them, there are the organizations available who will work with the ISPs (like Hotmail and Yahoo) to prevent the abusers from using their services anymore. I mostly use SpamCop. You can find them with Google, or do a Google search on Spam to find others. Most of them are free, or have a voluntary donation suggestion to keep the services going. All it takes after you sign up, when you get spam, forward it to the organization and they will do follow-up. Even though this alerts the spammers about your e-mail address, they have growing respect about removing people from their address books.

You can also block certain senders from your mailboxes, you can use your junk mail filter, etc.

I know all this is annoying and time consuming. Everyone's level of tolerance for this is different, but when you reach the end of your rope, there is help. People just have to invest their own time in it.

Thanks, Lupine! I didn't realize I could get that information from Hotmail. I'm off to invoke it now. I'm going to research the SpamCop idea, too! There's a choice on Hotmail to really restrict who can send you mail. But, since I don't always know who might be emailing me (especially from DGs), I didn't want to exclude anyone that may genuinely be trying to email me. Thanks!

now i know where all this stuff about sex is coming from on my emails. i wondered how they got there. i always just delete them and never open them. i am going to look into the getting them off too. how do i trace where they came from. anyone know?