Dealing with spam (was: Micro$oft)

[Michael O'Donnell]

> Never -EVER- click on a link to be "removed" from a spam list.
> All this does is verify your address and then you'll end up on
> more lists..  The best things to do are the following.
>
>- Send a bounce back like your email address doesn't exist
>- Contact the ISP -AND- the upstream provider of the person that
>  sent you the spam


Something that's (sorta) on this topic is the page at

   http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml

which summarizes the results of a 6-month SPAM study
and, although they reveal no paradigm-shattering
surprises, it's worth a look.  One interesting
conclusion they come to is that WWW sites with opt-out
mechanisms do actually appear to honor them.  They
also conclude that the overwhelming majority of
victim addresses are harvested from WWW pages.

They do not, however, offer any conclusions about
whether it's folly to respond to SPAM emails; it
seems obvious that it would be, as Travis warns,
since you're already dealing at the level where the
dirtbags have already revealed themselves as such...