I've been told that Yahoo itself seems to be selling addresses. People have said that they received spam to an address that had never been used on the net or in email, within minutes of creating it on Yahoo. I haven't tested it so I don't know for sure. Of course, if it's going to be an account that you won't care about anyway, that won't be a problem.
=Tamar
You know, I wondered about that too. The way that the spam is addressed/sent, I am leaning toward a bot on someone's system. DA
I have had that problem with hotmail (I started getting literally hundreds of spams as soon as I signed up for the account). But Yahoo has never been a problem. In fact, I created a new account 2 years ago when I changed to my married name and I have not received 1 email that wasn't from someone I knew in all that time!
LauraJ
I use Hotmail as a throw away account, and even there I only get two or three spams a day. Maybe spammers just don't like me. DA
Lucky you!
LauraJ
I have three Yahoo email accounts. The first one that I have had for a few years, and was posted on the Internet does occasionally get some SPAM sent to it. The second one, which I have used to join a couple of websites, gets some SPAM as well. However, the third one, which I haven't used for anything like the other two... I get no SPAM whatsoever. :o)
Peace! Gemini
Some spammers do what's called a dictionary attack and generate huge lists of potential addresses based on the more commonly used patterns of email IDs. Or they take a valid email ID for one domain and try it with all the other popular domains. So a newly created email address may already be on some spammers' lists. For example, if I were to create an address such as jan55 AT yahoo.com (or hotmail, aol, earthlink, etc.), I would likely get spam immediately. However, if I were to mix up the letters and numbers and add some periods and make it 55.jan.55, I would be less apt to see any spam.
Which is likely the reason that Matthew's accounts that start with "mthecarpenter" bring in so much spam too! :o/
Peace! Gemini
By "Guides" I meant Girl Guides (Girl Scouts). There's a lot of stuff that I end up needing to use Word or an up-to-date version of pdf (all the downloadable forms from the Guide Association are in pdf).
Ray
Thanks, that makes a lot more sense now...
David
I agree Shelagh, I too, use IE and OE and never have any trouble as I have Vet and Zone alarm and do not get any spam at all as I do not receive any mail that is not in my address book. Maybe I might miss one or two e mails - not that I have ever found out that I have missed any -but having no spam is worth it God Bless Gwen
LauraJ I have had a hot mail address for four years - ever since I acquired a computer - and the spam was gross ,until I set it up so that only people whom I have in my Outlook Express address book get through to me and I have not had one spam since. I never get spam on Yahoo and very little on Optus which I use for the group and for people not yet in my address book. God bless Gwen
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