I just signed up for Earthlink high-speed access, deciding to exercise this wonderful idea of competition. Overall, I’m pleased with things, but one thing is surprising: the amount of spam I have in my recently-created mailbox.
This account was newly created, not shared with anyone, not posted at any site on the Internet. Details of it never left Earthlink’s network, as far as I can tell. I never even logged into the account to check email. Yet, there are about ten spam messages in my inbox!
It seems the spammers have someone working on the inside, or some other way of detecting accounts as they are created. My old RoadRunner account stayed relatively quiet for the whole time I had it. I’m glad I operate my own mailserver, where I can control what mail gets through…
If your email address is a common firstname, lastname, dictionary word, or combination thereof, you may have gotten hit with dictionary spammers, who send email to every common name from a-z at a host. I see those at SkilTech.
Buncha savages in this town.
One of my reasons for leaving EarthLink was the amount of spam hitting my inbox (that and the fact that EarthLink screwed up my DSL connection and denied all responsibility for the problem). Even their Spaminator service hardly put a dent in it.
I didn’t know that spammers would use such an enormously wasteful brute-force method of spamming. Apparently, they’ve got the resources to waste.
Or more appropriately, they’ve got someone’s resources to waste!
MattFeath
I thought Earthlink (owned by a Scientologist by the way) was advertised as spam-free.
More than likely Earthlink, like AOL, sold you address information to some spammer. Oh yeah they talk tough about stopping spam. However when someone offers them money for a list of all the e-mail addresses they probably didn’t hesitate.
I’ve got a mindspring account that I’m going to be cancelling in the next month. 99% of all the spam I get is from that account. Mindspring is owned by Earthlink by the way. Funny that.
-Weave