[Paddle] how spam works

[Joe Clark]

I second the recommendation for Firefox, or perhaps Opera.  IE has too  
many security holes - for well over a year I've only been running it when  
a site that I _had_ to use would _not_ work without IE.  And I have  
complained lustily to the site's webmonkey when that happened.  Use  
something other than IE and you can almost forget about spyware.  Cement  
the deal by switching to the Mac OS, which is more robust and less of a  
target for virus writers than IE/Windows.

For spam, my ISP has a filter and then my mail program has one -- between  
the two, very little spam comes thru (though occasional false-positives  
mean I do sometimes miss an email I wanted to see).  If your email address  
is shown on a web page somewhere, or you've posted to a newsgroup or an  
open-archive mailing list, it increases the likelihood that your address  
has been harvested by the spammers.

My $0.02,
Joe

On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 10:34:37 -0500, Chad Skaggs  
<chadskaggs at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Bill,
>
>     Several experts I know, besides Suzanne, recommend Firefox. However,  
> I'm still using Internet Explorer, and get only a moderate amount of  
> spam and virtually no pop-up ads. I use Spybot Search and Destroy (free  
> download) regularly to kill off the adware, and Zone Alarm (another free  
> download, though I paid $24 for the "Pro" version) as a firewall, and  
> Norton Antivirus  (of course you pay for this one) for viruses. Keep  
> them scrupulously up to date, and use 'em at least once a week, and I'm  
> in OK shape.
>     I know people at the AJC. (I taught journalism for 10 years at GSU,  
> and I have worked on the AJC copy desk.) I do not believe that the paper  
> provides your e-mail address to anyone else. Whether someone hacks it I  
> don't know; I've seen no evidence of that.
>
> Cheers,
> Chad