Mike Spurgeon wrote:
> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
> 
>> I don't see spam as much of an issue, either in my email or in
>> the newsgroups I read.  If anything, it's on the decline.
>>
>> Maybe it's time to chill out about spam...
> 
> I get a few hundred a day, since I've been online and reading USENET 
> since 1984 or so, and have never tried to hide my email address.

I'm in much the same position since 1999, so that factor can't
be the difference (unless the particular newsgroups matter a *lot*).

> Even at a few hundred a day, it's not MUCH of an inconvenience, however 
> zero would be nice.

Zero would be great, but ideals are seldom achievable.

> A year or so ago, it jumped to about 10,000 a day.  Try that number on 
> for an inconvenience factor.

I've never seen anything worse than 100--perhaps I have AOL's spam
filter (which I have explicitly turned OFF as much as possible) to
thank.  But I get about 1/3 as many spam messages on my unpublicized
email accounts...  Random hits??  Other people typing in my address
by accident?? (BTW, I see this happen about every month!)

> When I had my ISP filter out all but one email address on another of my 
> domains, it dropped back to the mild inconvenience of a few hundred.
> 
> Chill out?
> 
> Never...

Clearly, we have different experiences, and still no clear evidence
about what "attracts" spam to explain the huge differences.

My hypothesis is that certain vendors/web registrations are *much*
more aggressive in distributing email addresses than others.  I use
lots of web sites for e-commerce, and still have low spam levels.
(I do see a few messages a day that I think come from "partners" of
the web merchants I use, but their "opt out" links usually do the
job in a week or two.)

-michael

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