Re: Nasty e-mail

[Ken Umbach <kumbach@UNLIMITED.NET>]

Hi ...

At 11:36 AM 11/4/97 +0000, Monica Kemp wrote:
>My guess is that your commercial service provider does sell your e-mail
>address to solicitors and junk e-mail companies.

Maybe.  But that is not in the interest of the ISP (Internet Service
Provider), as it generates resource-eating mail into their system.
Personally I doubt that most sell the addresses ... and some (such as AOL)
have been vigorously suing the junk e-mailers (with mixed success).  (I
doubt that ANY really legitimate ISP sells the e-mail addresses.  But I
could be wrong.)

>I recieve junk e-mail
>on this account all the time (my commercial provider), but never on my
>school account.

And I will bet you post to LM_NET and other lists from your commercial
provider, but not from your school account.  Any junk-emailer can harvest
e-mail addresses from the posted LM_NET archives.  They cannot harvest what
is not posted.

>I suppose we have to treat this the same way we treat
>junk snail mail, immediately throw it in the recycling.

That may be the least-bad alternative until (eventually, I hope) there is
some real fix for the problem, whether technological, legal, or other.

>BTW, I have
>noticed on many of the junk mail messages that no return address is
>provided.

And if one IS provided, it is phony ... or if it is real and is responded
to, the response (even to a so-called "remove" address) only results in
validation of the respondent's e-mail address, making it more valuable for
resale to yet other spammers (junk e-mailers).

Regards,

Ken Umbach
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Kenneth W. Umbach, Ph.D., Policy Analyst
California Research Bureau, California State Library
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E-mail: kumbach@unlimited.net (or kumbach@library.ca.gov)
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"The Internet: A California Policy Perspective" may be found
   at http://members.unlimited.net/~kumbach/internet/cvr2intr.html
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