LandzDown Forum

Hi folks,
I know this is a strange question.....sometimes I think too much!

Recently when I checked my spam folder for legitimate mail, before deleting the spam, I noticed one of the kind of spam that's really junk mail, but it has the name of someone from your address book in the From field.  So it looks like it comes from someone you know, but it's really spam.  I was pretty sure by the subject line that it was spam, so I never opened it, and instead double-checked with that person.  Turns out, it definitely was spam, and it got me thinking about how the spammer could have gotten the name from my address book.

All my recent scans have come up clean.  I have not had even a tracking cookie for many months.  So I'm not really too worried that I might have some spyware.  But how does the spammer get the name from your address book?

Brynn,

As described by mitch one of the primary causes is the use of the "c.c." field when copying e-mails to friends and colleagues, a practice that ensures that everyone sees the e-mail address of everybody else - fine if "everyone" can be trusted but fatal if the list falls into the hands of a spammer. The use of blind c.c. and personal mail lists helps in this situation. As for other methods, have a look at this page

mailwasher free has one great feature !!!
after the 4 th time of asking someone to BCC and don't just forward to all, well i use mailwasher's "bounce" feature

it will send the e-mail back , BUT it looks like it was returend as no address )))

plan B

most isp's will allow you more than one e-mail address

use one to give out to people


then if they can be trusted you give them your GOOD ONE

NOTE:
i use a program called "Kshowmail" on linux, but there are several free mail preview,announce,notify programs

you set your e-mail program to check mail on startup and disable the "check every XXX min" feature


then you set up the mail notify program to "check mail every XX min"

so now when mail comes in you can sort it out, keep, "delete from server", or usually  "preview in text"

so you are saftly opening the mail to see if any crap is on it
after you have gone through the mail you can have it start the e-mail program and you will be reading only good safe mail !!!

(note again: mailwasher has the preview feature and start e-mail feature)

(note again) if you are on a dialup and size does matter, they show you the size of the e-mail so people that send me a 1 meg mail with the latest pics of their grand kids i can sel the bounce feature

and now you know how i do my mail the easy way