Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Alexander Wilson <alex AT awstudios.net>]

On Mar 22, 2004, at 6:31 PM, Ian Meyer wrote:

> So I guess it boils down to: (a) does Apple just run really good spam 
> filters on the dot mac servers or (b) what else could be the reason 
> for this?

I think it has to do with two things:

1. Companies and individuals online are more careful than they used to 
be because people are more outraged than they used to be. If Amazon 
today sold all its email addresses to a known spammer, the backlash 
would be incredible, even assuming there wouldn't be legal 
repercussions.  And Apple doesn't sell your email address to anybody. I 
don't know for sure that Hotmail does, but it sure seems like they did 
when I had a Hotmail email account. I too have .Mac account and I 
hardly use it for anything and I consequently only receive the mail I 
want from it.

2. Most spammed addresses come from harvested addresses and "best 
guess" addresses. (If I own MYDOMAIN.COM, I'll get emails addressed to 
WEBMASTER AT MYDOMAIN.COM as well as POSTMASTER AT MYDOMAIN.COM and a few 
others even though though those email addresses don't technically 
exist). I get a couple hundred spams a day because my addresses are 
posted on websites (mostly my own, but also versiontracker and a couple 
others). A few companies harvested my addresses and spammed me and then 
sold my addresses to other spammers and now I have to use Apple's junk 
mail feature or email would be totally impractical. If you don't post 
your email address online, and you don't own your domain (as you 
wouldn't with mac.com), then you're going to have a good chance of 
avoiding most of the spam.

Alex.

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