[Rifeforum] Off Topic - Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

April 12, 2003

Posted by:

Spam, or unsolicited commercial Emails is becoming an ever increasing problem.

Although spammers will be unable to gain Email addresses from members of the

Rife Forum, as your Email addresses are not shown online or passed on to anyone,

there are plenty of other sources (including Yahoogroups for example) where

Spammers are finding our Email addresses. I personally receive around 30 such

messages a day so I found this report really interesting.

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?
Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Research Six Month Report
Center for Democracy & Technology
March 2003

Summary
Every day, millions of people receive dozens of unsolicited commercial e-mails
(UCE), known popularly as " spam. " Some users see spam as a minor annoyance,
while others are so overwhelmed with spam that they are forced to switch e-mail
addresses. This has led many Internet users to wonder: How did these people get
my e-mail address?

In the summer of 2002, CDT embarked on a project to attempt to determine the
source of spam. To do so, we set up hundreds of different e-mail addresses, used
them for a single purpose, and then waited six months to see what kind of mail
those addresses were receiving. It should come as no surprise to most e-mail
users that many of the addresses CDT created for this study attracted spam, but
it is very interesting to see the different ways that e-mail addresses attracted
spam -- and the different volumes -- depending on where the e-mail addresses
were used.

The results offer Internet users insights about what online behavior results in
the most spam. The results also debunk some of the myths about spam.