SPAM SUCKS!

The spam bots are still working overtime. The volume is down a bit, but, all of my accounts are now getting spammed. The Yahoo account is the one that gets most of the crap (4,800 spams so far this year). My GMAIL and Sympatico are getting spammed. Fortunately the Sympatico is only one or two spam messages a month, but, it is still a pain. Fortunately I have an option to let Sympatico know it is spam if I read it using the web interface. The GMAIL so far has detected all spam messages correctly and all I do is empty the spam folder every several days.

I know that there are laws in the U.S . and other countries that purports to minimize spamming, but, how about the various government LEAs look at who is buying the spammers services and go after them rather than the spammers themselves as a start. FOLLOW the money people and nail the ones using the services and spam may drop to tolerable levels. SPAM will never go away, but, will go down to a level where 80% of my email is legit rather than 80% spam as it now stands.

A good number of messages now are for stock promotions. For a while I forwarded them to the SEC, but, most of them now are repeats of the same companies so I have stopped for a while. When I find something new I pass it on.

For everyone who are using Windows (or Linux or Mac OS for some of the below):

• Are you using a firewall?
• Are you using an anti-virus canner package?
• Are you using a spyware scanner package?
• Are you keeping your software up-to-date?
• Are you keeping Windows up-to-date using Windows update?

If you do the above you can help by making sure that your machine has not been taken over and made into a 'bot' that spammers can use for routing the mail or DDOS attacks or to steal your personal information. We also have to do our part in securing our machines and networks too. Patching and scanning does take time, but, you can schedule it when you are not using the machine and help do your part.