Re: Were you at AppleFest 1989 in San Francisco?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Laine observed  (and I >> wrote):

>> For the benefit of those who feel reticent about posting, I'd like
>> to report that I post frequently, with my real email address and
>> without any "countermeasures", and have had very little problem
>> with spam (I get about 2 to 5 per day--about what my non-posting
>> friends report).  As near as I can tell, a modicum of spam is just
>> a fact of life for anyone with an email life.  ;-(
>
>After having to go back to MSN I spent 3 days trying to get email to work.
>Finally in frustration I demanded a new username and password.
>
>A half hour later I successfully logged into the new email account.
>Waiting for me were 23 spam messages.
>I don't worry about posting on news groups. I've settled on filtering.

Many people receive lots of spam, but few people know why they
received it.

The usual inference is that any appearance of their email address
in a public forum is a primary cause.  I regularly post to several
usenet forums and I receive very little spam (as noted above).
As a result, I conclude that my postings do not result in much
spam.

One thing that I do not do is "register" with web sites using my
email address.  I do use a few web merchants, who universally
require submitting my email address.  I always search for, and
usually find, the "opt out" check box for these merchants.

I suspect that many people who use the web provide their email
address to non-merchant websites, or perhaps just lots of merchant
websites.  Given the inevitable percentage of "bad apples", this
is bound to result in getting your email address on some lists.

Further, I'm sure that luck has something to do with it.  Once
your email address has been "harvested" by the wrong list,
it may propagate seemingly endlessly onto other lists for years
to come.

I see that many have very extreme views on spam, and have
apparently found their way onto many spam mailing lists. I would
suggest that people who receive a lot of spam don't really know
_why_ they are receiving it, but that doesn't keep them (being
human) from thinking that they understand why they get it.

I consider myself both cautious (not profligate with my email
address) and lucky, and have found that openly posting my
email address has not added to my spam load.  It also makes
it easy for people who wish to contact me to do so.

For me, it's a practical and effective tradeoff.

-michael

Check out 8-bit Apple sound that will amaze you on my
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/