Adware/Spyware... Helpful or harmful?

Hey, ya'all. Okay. I'm hoping to get some advice about Adware or spyware... whichever it's called, I'm not sure. Anyhow, I have an email address that I've kept private and only used to send mail to my friends. I've used an alternative email address whenever I make online purchases and I've even installed Mailwasher to bounce unwanted mail from my primary email address and yet, I still get spammed. I think that some blasted web-trafficing-monitoring-thingy found my email address when I was surfing, captured it, and began emailing me a bunch of junk mail. My uncle suggested that I download Adware or some sort of spyware which, if I am understanding him correctly, lists the names of companies that spam and blocks their addresses; however, another source told me that it's like a trojan horse and preys on people to download it only to spam their mailboxes with MORE unwanted mail? I was just wanting to get some opinions on this and whether I should download it or if I should look for other methods to reduce the spam. Any suggestions would be helpful. :m: Thank you. :m:

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O.k, first off: Spyware is similar to a trojan horse program that runs in the background gathering details of your websurfing habits to return - by using your connection - to their owner. It therefore uses up your connection speed un-necesseraly, to remove them you have to get a program called Ad-aware or similar available at download.com for a free trail. Spyware or adware are the same thing that i mentioned above.

Spam: unwanted emails gathered from webpages that you have submitted your email to by the use of a crawler program. I dont believe they can gather your email address by you surfing the web, but rather gathering emails from pages you have submitted your email address - example: your profile if youve chosen to make it publically known. Spammers also guess your email address. Some webpages sell databases of emails of clients to these spam companies too. Another way that they know youve got an active email is clicking 'remove from mailing list', once youve done that you will never get rid of the spam, EVER.

Downloading an adaware type program will produce nothing but benefits, even by freeing up some disk space. I recommend it.

Cheers.

 

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Some spammers can get your e-mail address directly from the ISP.
In the case of Freeserve, there was a particular port a person could enter on with TELNET and it would readout every e-mail address in it's database. (Spammers happened to love this).

Spam can occur from "Bots/Spiders" that pick your e-mail from websites, bulletin boards & IRC.

There is also the fact that some of those "I-worms" that can occur that supposedly send to everyone on your list, can be written to harvest e-mail addresses from your Temporary Internet Files, Sometimes cookies store e-mail addresses.

If you want a spam free e-mail account, then what you should do is probably purchase your own domain name for like $5 a month or something, and get the e-mail accounts with it.

Since it's your domain (just make sure you don't put whatever@yourdomain.com on it) it won't get spammed because it's not known about.

 

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I get 200-300 emails a day 95% which is spam! Even with multiple filters some of its still get through. If I could do it legally I would hunt down all spammers and bludgeon their heads in with a rusty axe!

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a thought has just crossed my mind Stryder, maybe you should start a FAQ sticky thread for topics such as spam and adware/spyware because there seems to be an abundance of questions like this thread that could easily explained in a FAQ thread. Ill start one and if you like the idea you can sticky it!

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I second that, Also why not have a sticky on computer advice as well with links to more helpful site or forums on that kind of subject.

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Okay all, consider it done.

What I shall do is compose an FAQ thread on "Spam" (And another on "Computer advice") I will then "Close" the current topics that are on these subjects, an can if need be reference them in the new "concise thread".

It will take me a little while but it would be organised, I thank you both for the idea.

 

Cool. You could use a thread to explain FAQs in general, not sure how you should work it.

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Need some help?

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Anytime you type your email address into a webpage, you're opening yourself up to spam. Also, if the part of your email address before the @ is fairly simple or common, a spammer can get you because they now use software to generate email addresses to try.

e.g. If your email address is bruce@something.com, they'll getcha for sure, for they're gonna send spam to bruce@ every domain possible.

You're also going to get spam if you receive or forward a lot of "chain letter" type emails, as now your email address is attached to an email that's gonna circle the globe.

I've had my primary email address for about three years now (it's just firstname.lastname@shaw.ca) and I have yet to receive a single piece of spam on it. Anytime I have to use an email address to register on a bulletin board (or type it in anywhere on the 'net), I use a hotmail account.

 

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