Spam Unsubscribe Links
About 6 months ago, I began receiving spam e-mail from “Christian Consumers Inc.” or something of the sort. The e-mails were entitled “Cxzffadds, *”, so it wasn’t something I signed up for.
Today, I saw a story on Slashdot about spam unsubscribe links, which reminded me of the day that I unsubscribed from the spam.
The spam had been going on for months on end and I would receive 3-5 or more e-mails from them per day. At the bottom of each e-mail was an unsubscribe link, which became very tempting after a while. One day, I just gave in and clicked it, not using a proxy or checking for a referrer in the address, which wasn’t very smart.
I proceeded to unsubscribe, yet it didn’t give me an e-mail or anything to confirm or even say that I unsubscribed. It attempted to sign me up with some other company offering a plethora (I mean hundreds of sites) of spam e-mails in one e-mail address typing. Luckily, I quickly noticed and did not go through with that.
Back to the Slashdot article, which reminded me of the day that I unsubscribed. Things have been a little better around my e-mail box lately, as it actually unsubscribed me.
I would still not recommend clicking away at links in you e-mail from spammers. Be careful, only do it if it annoys you to the point of banging your head into your monitor, use a proxy, check for referrers in the link, and (again) don’t be stupid and subscribe to hundreds of spam sites while you are at it.
The reasoning for my clicking on it besides it annoying me was that I really had nothing to lose, as it went to my “other” (otherwise known as “spam”) address ([email protected]).
December 15th, 2004 at 12:14 pm
I used to unsubscribe from those messages. Then, I started noticing an increase in the amount of spam I receive. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that up until I learned something of the fine art of obfuscation I had my email address in plain text on no less than 4500 pages on the library site I master. That was 6 years ago and I still see between 350 to 400 spam messages every day. Thank GOD for heuristic filtering algorythms!
December 15th, 2004 at 4:15 pm
Wow, sounds like I am lucky.
By the way, on average (and just a guestimate), I get probably about 10-20 spam e-mails per day.