Spam Redux

The spam problem of Tuesday righted itself by noon and the owner of the website even sent me a letter of apology; apparently a response was sent to the entire mailing list, not the one person it was supposed to go to.

Earthlink has a gadget called "Spaminator" that is supposed to cut down on spam. I've always wondered exactly how well it works because there are times when I have deleted up to 25 spam messages a day.

Well, now they have a feature where you can actually see what the Spaminator has trapped. Spam sent to you stays in a file for 10 days before deletion so, if you choose, you can redirect any message back to your e-mail box.

What a smorgasbord was in our box! Expected was the usual porn crap, credit card solicitations, debt consolidation offers, sales of nearly everything (even radiation prevention!), and of course the ubiquitous offers to sell you a mailing list so you too can annoy people. Also, I found about 15 other of the mistaken messages from Tuesday; the Spaminator had evidently cut in after fifty of them. My favorite message said: "This is not spam." Uh-huh. And my grandmother was a Ford Thunderbird.

The most amusing subject line: "Get paid real money to drive your car." Um, do you think I'd drive 60 miles a day if I wasn't getting paid real money?

So how much spam did the Spaminator actually "head off at the pass"? 504 messages in ten days. To quote Andrew McNair, "Sweeeeet Jesus."

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:42:00 AM

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