Ewwww
While cleaning out the “Info” and “Webmaster” mailboxes this morning at work, I was bombarded with another weekend’s worth of porn spam. These mailboxes were set up during a simpler time, exposed to email marketers and harvesters long before it became my job to check them. Once in a great while, a business-related inquiry is sent to one of those addresses; the rest is garbage, and a lot of that garbage is x-rated.
I remember the first time I got an explicit piece of HTML porn spam in my inbox as a watershed moment, like the first time I heard “asshole” on network TV. Except, of course, that the networks give you ample warning. There is no warning with this junk. It’s just in your face, like it or not.
A few of them made me gasp this morning and made me wonder if the spam isn’t getting worse than ever. The top story on Wired News this morning answered my question: it is. The article takes a brief look at the impact this type of repeated exposure to explicit images of rape, bestiality and child pornography is having on society. The picture isn’t pretty.
September 30th, 2002 at 12:04 pm
Don’t lie, that’s why you come to work, cause you can get away with looking at porn there.
September 30th, 2002 at 12:47 pm
I know what you mean. Lately, I have been getting more spam than ever. The other day I got 30 to my personal address. I love it when it forcebly opens a window with some nasty graphics…
September 30th, 2002 at 1:36 pm
I agree - I used to gloat about the minimal amount of spam I received, and then, in the last six months or so, it’s gotten particularly bad, and then gone from bad to worse. My favorite last week was a piece of spam that sneaked onto a mailing list I’m part of for work - many of the folks on there are not conversant with the difference between reply and reply-to-all, so the list got this message 20 times over as people frantically responded to the porn trying to tell the spammer to stop sending it. Reminding them that responding to spam only gives them a valid e-mail seemed to do little good. Aaah, for the days when my mailbox was virgin territory (no pun intended).
September 30th, 2002 at 9:10 pm
it helps if you don’t subscribe to it.
October 1st, 2002 at 9:50 am
I’m fed up w/ it myself. I get none at work, thank goodness… But I get tons at all 3 e-mail addresses I use regularly.
It doesn’t seem to matter anymore if I make an e-mail address public either. Even the one I never gave out except to my mother gets spam - and I know she’s not responsible. heh.
You start to wonder, though, who’s in on the conspiracy. haha.
I also wonder why these people waste their time. Obviously a lot of people are NOT interested - or there wouldn’t be so many complaining about it.
October 1st, 2002 at 10:02 am
No one is interested thats for sure. My husband runs mail servers and battles spam every day. It takes a spammer 10,000,000 emails sent to retrieve 1 valid email address. Talk about wasted effort.
October 2nd, 2002 at 10:44 pm
allright, mike. i know we were loud and very longislandish… but you must be thinking *somethin’* about last night!
let’s have it!
October 4th, 2002 at 10:14 am
Our company just installed a blocker system to keep us from getting all the spam swirling around out there and sends us notices via e-mail when something has been blocked with a brief description of what they caught… over the last week there have been several things like what you mentioned porn wise that are embarrassing to read even in that context… I can only imagine what the actual mail looked like! I certainly didn’t sign up for nor have I visited any such sight… so how do they get your name to even send it to you in the first place! Makes you feel kinda violated or something! Just wondering if you had some insite into this!
October 6th, 2002 at 6:43 am
You know what? It’s funny how I only started getting porn spam this month after about six years of using the internet…… guess i’m just lucky
….oh and you’re right. EEEEWWWWWWW~~
October 7th, 2002 at 5:13 pm
I have seen bathroom walls that are updated more regularly than this site. And I don’t pee enough to keep myself occupied, so could you get with it?
October 8th, 2002 at 1:08 pm
Referring to the comment by ash - I recently when through over 50 spam messages and “opted-out” of every single one of them. Most of them said it’d take 2-3 days to stop receiving spam - some said up to ten. Tomorro is the tenth day. I’ve been keeping a count on my Tech blog - today, I still got over 40 spam. Since I have a list of all the companies, Tomorro I’m going to go back through them and any company I opted out of that’s still spamming me, I’m going to report to The Commerce Dept. or whoever it is that has the opt-out reg. But like the Wired article said, all regs will do in the long term in increase Spam, as spammers move their servers out of the country.