Lots of positive feedback about my spam rant yesterday. Thanks to everyone who wrote in.
A few people wrote in about Hotmail. Apparently, when signing up for a Hotmail account you are given the option of being listed in the “Hotmail Member Directory” and the “Internet White Pages”. If you do not uncheck these you are included; it’s a fair bet that spammers are harvesting this data. Question: But, does this apply to my Hotmail account which I created way back in 1997 or 1998, before Microsoft bought Hotmail? What if I was never given that option?
A reader named Jim reports that he tried the Hotmail test. After signing up for a new Hotmail account and making sure the two options were unchecked, he had “three offers of Viagra, five to earn money, and one to increase your penis size…”
After sleeping on it, I’ve decided to remove the Online Data Privacy Challenge. It simply provides too much potential for identity theft. Apologies to those readers who were having fun researching my life and identity.
The CamRants are back! After a long two-year hiatus, I have finally gotten pissed off about something enough to write about it. Yep, it’s the man everyone loves to hate. The Dave Winer Big Ego Awards. More insight into the way Dave thinks. I should be afraid.
CamWorld feedback for 12/17/2001.
U.S. News: After years of denying a link, the government is tying Lou Gehrig’s disease to Gulf War military service.
Paul Provost recommends the SpamMotel service for fighting spam.
A couple readers have recommended that if you have control over your own domain, you can set up email aliases like amazon@yourdomain.com and lists@yourdomain.com for determining the source of spam. I forgot about this. It’s actually how I know that eBay is allowing their site to be scraped by spambots. I have ebay@ set up for one of my domains.
Michael Fraase: Is spam killing email?
Posted by Cameron Barrett at December 17, 2001 03:17 PM