Thursday 11 December 2008

Junk Mail

Since having a computer and e-mail I've always received junk mail but lately it's getting ridiculous.
The pic (left) is a small selection of the 200+ junk mails I've had in the last week, I don't know any of the people in the "from" or "to" boxes and if your name is there it probably means your computer is carrying some sort of trojan / mailing worm and you need to run anti-virus.
I hate to think just how much if the internet's bandwidth is being wasted with this amount of junk flying around, surely it's only a matter of time before this and all the annoying advertising on every web site kills the net.
About 5 years ago I could happily surf the web with a 33.6 kb modem connection, now it's not much faster despite a 20 gb broadband connection due to every site having a multitude of flashing adverts and pop-ups.

Reasons for my increase in junk mail over the last couple of months? I've put it down to one or two things (or both).
In this period I joined Facebook, and I used my e-mail address on one of those car insurance comparison sites.

Just in case anyone sending out this shit cares!!
I don't need Viagra or Cialex (I have no problems in that area)
I don't want a replica Rolex (My old Timex works fine)
I don't need a genuine college degree (because it's not genuine is it).

2 comments:

A A Catenaccio said...

Hey,

I hear what you're saying about the spam stuff but it's not "junk mail" per se you're railing against - just the poorly targeted stuff.

If I emailed you something about saving money on your car insurance, about the time you were looking to renew, that'd be better, right?

After all, you've got Google ads on this site... so all the advertising can't be bad! Just go with what AdSense recommends for this page and get a decent spam filter!

Lee said...

Well you've got me banged to rights about Adsense (embarrased looks all round).
I must get rid of that as I haven't earnt a penny from it and as you say it totally compromises my argument.
I have a good spam filter as you can see from the pic, as this was taken from my deleted folder where these all go, it was my choice to not delete immediately as once in a while something non spam (or junk?) goes there and I do a weekly check just in case.

I class spam and junk mail as the same thing, as in all mail I receive that I haven't asked for from people I don't know, I am always careful to tick the right boxes to dany mail when they ask if I'd like to receive mail from "selected organisations".

The recent spate has just been really annoying as 99% of it has been for the 3 subjects mentioned.
Poorly targeted yes, I've received the message so why do I need to receive the same message 200 times a week?