spam e-mails

[x-ray]

I have recently changed my e-mail address to google mail and I am now getting about 70 to 80 spam mail every day.
Although these are filtered into a separate in box I still find it most annoying. Where do they get my address from ?
Are there other google e-mailers experiencing the same problem ?

[ACtheTROLL]

lol

you aren't the only one to get spam
my e-mail sometimes sounds like a metronome as the mails come pouring in.

there are two main sources
1 - websites you register on sell your e-mail to spammers (more widespread than you might think)

2 - they make them up using "bots"

first you hijack an e-mail server
the prog then sends
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
etc
then
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
etc etc
(imagine how fast a computer can do this!!)

pretty soon you've used every possible letter combination up to say 20 letters

and some of them MUST be real addresses.

even better ... some of the idiots (quite a lot!) will click on the unsubscribe link and become confirmed addresses which are sold to even more spammers .... and so it snowballs.

incredibly
of the above mentioned idiots some are stupid enough actually visit and even more incredibly to buy from the spam ... and so it goes on
(it's estimated that about 22% of UK surfers have at some time bought or given money to these parasites - we are officially the most gullible fools on the planet).

you see them here
"I've just visited a porn/pirate/music/film/etc site - and now I've got a window saying I'm infected with 12,000,000,000,000 viruses - despite paying �500 the message is still coming up - what can I do?"

there are lots of other methods as well ... hence the size of the problem.

[Ethel]

From experience I know that if your email address is a proper name, or word, you get more email than if your address is random letters and numbers.

My proper email address is the very registration number of my very first motor vehicle and gets no spam whatsover.

Of course, I don't use it for 'rubbish' sites, I have other email addresses for those.

But Ac is quite correct in saying that bots are used to generate literally millions of emails addresses in the hope they get a few right - after all, email is free.

[fo3nix]

Yea, not much you can do about it.

Gmail uses a very well trained Bayesian filter. It works better than pretty much anything else.

Just something you have to accept with email.

Once a week or every few weeks, do a quick scan of all the spam, and make sure there are no false positives (emails that it thinks are spam, but aren't).