... or curse matrix spam in 2060, so it´s OT .

But that Viagra one was funny!

Good point though, no sense in encouraging that sort of behavior.

and it means it falls off the board in to obscurity more quickly

unless some one searches for Viagra on Dumpshock

If there was Viagra on DS, then I can think of some posters who would be a bit "larger"

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM WONDERFUL SPAM

Your wife doesn’t find your p0$t cou|\|t as big as it used to be.
Our D|_|mpsh0ck S0f+ Tabs c@n make your postiest dreams come true.

I saw a weirder class of spam on DS the other day- pimping a book about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

if you respond, even telling them to frag off, they know they have a good e-mail address.

Yeah, it's kinda funny if you've got the time and inclination to do a quick experiment.

1) Create an email account somewhere. Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. are good for this

2) Sign up for one BBS somewhere, a Napster-type program, a torrent website, or something similar. BBS's work best because you'll generally just get one or two spams if you pick a popular one that seems above board. Ezboards might be a good choice.

3) Wait for the spam. Don't worry, email accounts and spam are like baseball fields and ghosts. If you create it, they will come.

4) Reply to one of the spams, or click on its "remove me" link.

5) Watch the barrage of new spam come in.

I think gmail does a pretty good job of filtering, though...

I don't know about yahoo, but hotmail also has a good filter system. It's still a pain unless you want to assume that everything that gets filtered really is junk and don't mind losing the emails that will slip through att imes.

GMX stores spam mails in a separate folder for 1-30 days (your choice) so you can look through it and detect those rare non-spam mails in it.

I'd love a gmail address but I need someone who's already got one to recommend me.

Witness, pm me your email address.

Much obliged, Arethusa.

Try picking the name of an obscure historical figure as your email account name. That's what I did on one of my hotmail accounts, and I've never gotten any spam at that address.

EDIT: Make sure your obscure historical figure has a name that no parent in his or her right mind would give to their child these days, like "Alcuin" or "Hildegard" or "Drogo." Medieval texts are good sources for these kinds of names.

Doh... too late!
Well it's kind of an experiment to see how usable and spam-ridden the whole gmail thing is. If it ends up being hopeless I shall do without.

I have two gmail addersses. My personal address is two Latin words strung together. My public address is the title of an obscure song, which is four very common English words strung together. Oddly enough, I get intermittent random spam at the former, presumably from spam that automatically generates addresses@gmail.com.

Witness: I doubt you'll have much trouble. Gmail's spam filter isn't perfect, but it is orders of magnitude better than anything else I've seen.

I´ve been using my gmail account mostly for mail lists and i may get one or two spams in my inbox per week, but i´ve NEVER had non-spam mail in the spam box, which for me is a very good sign that they know what they are filtering. My old filter used to consider lots of friendly mail as spam, including my daily strip of the sinfest webcomic, and that was annoying.