Claudia:
I just read this post of yours and thought I would share a few facts about what you stated. I hope that it helps to understand the way these emails etc work.
...thanks 'nole for thinking about me. every day i have to block, bounce, and delete sexually explicit spam emails that come to our personal email address, and all because he would visit porn sites in the past and he got looped in to so many many many porn sites. at least 1/3 out of every 10 emails are like that. it is so frustrating. and it hurts my heart because it shows me just how much he was looking at porn and i never knew it. but, of course he says that he doesn't open the emails but just deletes them, but then i wonder, if he did that wouldn't they EVENTUALLY stop coming in. i did tell him he needs to block them before he deletes them, but he said that wasn't NECESSARY?
oh well, i will be cancelling that particular email address soon. my husband has his own personal (private...surprise, surprise) email address, and i have just recently set up another email account for myself. i guess that is just one more change that will come about because of the divorce.
thanks again seminole.
love in Him,
claudia
'
...all because he would visit porn sites in the past...' - Claudia, it doesn't work that way. Visiting a site on the 'net does not provide your email address to anybody. If it did, consider how much junk mail you would be receiving from the sites that you go to. There are more ways to collect email addresses than you can probably imagine. Visiting a website is not one of them, unless you have a system that is full of security holes. Even then you don't have to access particular websites. You just have to be online. You'll never know it happened. But if you are using a system that is in that state, this is the least of your worries. In this state your system may be used to send out the spam.
If you set up a new account and never use it. The email address associated with the new account will start receiving the trash you are talking about within days if not hours. Even if you never log into the account, much less use it to surf the 'net.
'
...and it hurts my heart because it shows me just how much he was looking at porn...' - I don't have any knowledge about your husband's 'net activities, But the spam email you are talking about can not provide you with any either.
'
...then i wonder, if he did that wouldn't they EVENTUALLY stop coming in.' - NOPE! Actually, in some cases opening the spam actually sends back data to the entity sending the email validating that this is an actual and valid email address. With that validation in place, the spammer will not ever remove the address from their list. It actually just became more valuable to them. Deleting without opening is the very best response to those emails.
'
...i did tell him he needs to block them before he deletes them, but he said that wasn't NECESSARY?' - If he was to do this... It would not accomplish much of anything. Here's two of many reasons that it wouldn't do anything:
- The email address that you 'block' probably doesn't exist. Never did. The sever part of the address, aka the '@yahoo.com' part, probably doesn't exist either. The information in that part of the email is simply keyed in by the entity sending it. It is never validated. So you are blocking an address that doesn't even exist.
- The spammers you are talking about, practically never use the same 'From:' address twice. They know that many people try to use the blocking idea. Its no big deal to them anyways. They don't want you to reply to their emails. They want you to access their page somewhere. And your opening of the email accomplishes that. Ouch!
- Now, unless you use a free email account like Yahoo, HotMail, or GMail, many of the spam msgs. that you are receiving may not have even been sent to your email address. I receive them all of the time. Many email servers are setup so that the msgs. that have invalid addresses are not dropped, but are given to the account that matches most closely. I've run email servers and list servers, I know from experience.
Yeah... I know I said two reasons, but I got on a roll there... Sorry.
Please understand that I am not trying to support the behavior that you are actually aware of happening. I just wanted to give you a clue as to how this stuff works.
I hope that what you got out of this msg. is that the porn spam you are receiving is no indication of his or anybody else's internet activities. It simply doesn't work that way. The people that do these types of things are very clever and they share their data with each other. Remember, they make money off of this type of thing. That's a great motivator. And it doesn't cost them anything to send out emails to valid, fake, made-up, wrong, etc addresses. They fully expect that 90+% will never be seen, who cares, its free.
If you really want to stop all of this kind of thing, there is only one way to do that. (Besides getting off of the 'net.) Set up your email account to only accept email msgs. from specific addresses you list. But be prepared to miss out on alot of emails this way. And there are ways around this, too.
If you, or anybody else, wants to know more, feel free to ask. Its important to know the truth.
\/\/ard
Author
Topic: the internet (Read 15790 times)