Spammers are a curse

[Coldicote]

What do other Abers think about spammers? I am grateful that my ISP bins most spam emails, around 400 - 500 most days, and I also have MailWasher that does a good job. In many instances spammers have 'stolen' my identity and emails arrive as if from myself. The point is why does one have to put up with these people? They deserve to be prosecuted for being a pestering nuisance. How can one deal with them?

[Ethel]

The problem is the UK legislative bodies can do nothing if the emails come from outside the UK - and the same applies to every country.

The spammers have not stolen your identity - they simply use your own email address as the chosen name for that email.

I suggest you get a disposable email address such as Googlemail, hotmail or yahoo and use that for registering on websites and so on.

Keep your personal email address for your banking, family and friends and other important contacts.

Use your email filter properly. When you get get a spam email look at the source. See who sent it, and ifi it is an obscure domain such as [email protected] block all mail from @vilespam.com
Of course you can't do that if it is common address :)

[Coldicote]

Thank you Ethel. It's always good to share views about these things. I do indeed keep a 'private' email address for personal things, but I am puzzled as to why spams very often show identical 'From' and 'To'. It appears as though I send the emails to myself. I'll have a closer look at the source and see what I can find. Pity about the lack of legislative power to deal with these people, they really are just a pest and I don't want to give time to checking through so many spams just in case a genuine one has slipped through.

[Ethel]

They do the 'from' the same as the 'to' in the hope you will take more notice.

Never, ever, click the 'unsubscribe' button as this just tells the scammers that email account is active

[fo3nix]

It really doesn't need to be regulated.

It's no worse than those flyers you get in your regular mail. Electronic mail just scales far easier, so the problem is more obvious.

Really, it's a problem with the email system itself. It was never designed to be this popular, or with spammers in mind.

You can use technologies such as GnuPG to be able to prove who you are, and hide your information (right now all your email is public like a postcard). Perhaps one day a new email-like standard will become popular that does this automatically.

For now though, use a good bayesian spam filter. Gmail has the best filter going (and you can route all your mail through Gmail for free); otherwise, things like MailWasher will work.