December 30, 2011

There were 2 posts published on December 30, 2011 (this is page 1 of 1).

Deal with it: spammers already have your email

A postscript to the state park spam snafu: some folks seem to be under the mistaken impression that this incident exposed their email address to spammers. I hate to break it to them, but spammers already have their email addresses. They have yours and mine and everyone else’s. If you’ve ever emailed anyone, anywhere, then your email address is ripe for the picking by spammers.

There’s nothing magical about your email address that keeps it from being easily guessed by spammers, if not outright copied. Why some people still think that by keeping their address “secret” they’ll somehow cut down on spam is beyond me.

State park spam

Over the holiday weekend my inbox filled up with angry messages as the North Carolina State Parks system inadvertently set up an open email list with 47,000 subscribers. One person, apparently having made one too many trips to the eggnog bowl, sent an anti-tax tirade to the entire list, which caused a chain-reaction that lasted for days and days. One after another, subscribers demanded to be removed from the list, which only perpetuated the problem as each fruitless request needlessly clogged the inbox of 47,000 other subscribers.

Having run mailing lists for several years, I know these things can happen. Thus, I was more amused than angry as several dozens of clueless people continued to annoy everyone else with their unsubscription requests. In spite of this week’s snafu, I hope the state continues to use email and other means to tout our beautiful state parks!