Spammers also use their 'botnets' for much more nefarious reasons than trying
to sell you pharmaceuticals and "hot stock tips". The spam you get might be
more than just a sales opportunity, it could hide a trojan virus as an added
bonus or send you to a site with one, making your PC part of its botnet.
Then your PC is just another soldier in their army, that they can use for
sending more spam, or to get your bank account info so they can steal or
launder money, or to perform denial-of-service attacks on website of their
choosing.
The best way to avoid all of this, next to never using your email account, is
not giving it out when you register for a username, purchase something online,
post in online forums, etc.
Sometimes a secondary account can be used for stuff such as this. For
example, paid-for email accounts or ones you receive from your ISP usually
allow you to create a certain number of additional email accounts. You can
choose an alias which you can create and then delete after your done with it.
Sounds like alot of extra work I know, let alone starting over with new email
account, but it's probably the only way that's guaranteed.
PJ
> Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2007 18:34:10 -0800> From: shannah@pobox.com> Subject: RE:
Computer Question -- Spoofed e-mails> To: mark@sccaprepared.com;
pj_mcgarvey@hotmail.com> CC: shop-talk@autox.team.net> > Actually, the vast
majority of your spam> comes from people who are incredibly stupid.> They hear
these tales of how much money they> are going to make, and jump for it.> >
There are people making money spamming. They> are the ones getting others to
spam for them.> > In rare cases there are spammers making money> on people
dumb enough to buy their products,> but that is more rare.> > As long as there
are lazy and stupid people,> there will be spam of some sort. It's the same>
deal with telemarketers: as long as people are> dumb enough to buy from
telemarketers, there> will be telemarketers.> > Shannah>
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