I used Orange for many years and switched to GMail two years ago for precisely this reason. Orange have a spam folder, but I was still getting 50-100 spam a day into my inbox. I get ~2 spam per day in my inbox with GMail.

What's with the sales pitch, anyway?

No punishment is too great for spammers. I personally endorse a ritual humiliation involving stocks and thrown rotten vegetables, followed by torture and eventually, death. After that, the dead body would be skinned and bits of it used to decorate Britain's royal castles and cities, as a deterrent to others.

is spamming still worth for spammers? i mean, who the hell generates any sort of business for someone/company that spams others?

filter stuff out, and never ever help by clicking those porn ads.. erm.. i mean, nuff said.

paris, because thats where you came from.

I just sent him an email, to say that I sympathise with his problems, and that .. oh. wait a sec. I'll get my coat.

And to think I get hacked off by the mere 22,000 spams a week that hit the handful of domains that I manage.

I've had this problem too, with hundreds of spam messages a day... I just point my domain's catchall autoforwarder to gmail. I've had to set up a few manual rules for those that "slip through" but its very good for filtering.

Another tip for people with their own domains is to use the "catchall", and register on websites using an address unique to the service. Then you can very easily see who sells your email address to someone else.

e.g. tesco@yourdomain.com

dodgypornsite@yourdomain.com

I now only get about 10 a day tops, using this method, which is much better than 400+ spams to wade through - it also helps other Gmail users at the same time as Google's systems stands more chance of recognising it as spam as other users might recieve it at a similar time.

Its always interesting to see who sells your data too..

The only real downside of this method is the catchall makes anything arrive, including randomly generated account names...

To get that much SPAM you have to let people know you are there in the first place. Giving proper consideration to when/where you divulge your email address is one of the basics of avoiding SPAM. It would appear that this clueless person is a victim of their own lack of thought.

If in doubt - us a disposable address (mailinator etc.).

a) Orange have rubbish anti spam controls.

b) Orange attracts the sort of customer who signs up to lots of online services or post their addresses on bot crawled sites.

c) Orange sell their user database to third parties.

I wonder which it is.

Why oh why do people tie themselves to an email address provided by their ISP? They are invariably crap and what happens when you switch provider? Paris cos she just takes what she's given (wherever she's given it and whoever it's given by).

I was getting upwards of 500 spams per day to my email address (not including those sent to other random email accounts to the catch-all on my domain). My ISP put in a Mailfoundry box, and I now get 2-3 a week. :)

I feel sorry for the person I have signed up to a lot of spam over the years

Unfortunately for him I did not know that ASIF is actually a real Muslim name until after I had been using it to fill out stupid online sites that required an email address (but not for verification, just as a way of getting email addresses to spam).

As the person who was lucky enough to get Asif@hotmail.com should be spammed out by now.

If the spam I receive is to be believed then I am overweight, have a small penis and need a replica nice watch.

But I have a nice watch!?

Porn spam just dried up didn't it? Either the jazz sites are not making the money they used to, or the filters got really good at blocking porn.

Shame really, as I would prefer that to the thousands of stocks and pharma ones I now get instead.

At least I still have the occasional Nigerian classic to keep me entertained.

Back on topic.. I had to kill my orange emails years ago - worst I ever had for filtering spam.

I think that they really *DO* know stuff about us, but their algorithm is bad.

See, I'm not overweight, am of average "size", and own a few nice watches. Until recently, I did not have a mortgage, so was not in need of refinancing. but, I recieved all of these messages. (I also, without a doubt, do not have any relatives in Africa)

But recently, I bought my first home, and as such, "might" have need of a refinancing....that's when the mortgage spam stopped.

Co-incidence? I think not, my friends.

I recollect last time I turned off spam filtering[1] in (I think) 2001 or 2002. Ran it for just under a week, and collected 4000-4500 a day. So I'm surprised those numbers - at least at the lower end - aren't much, much higher.

That comes of having an address that's been much-used in public since those innocent days when there wasn't a spam problem in email.

[1] Not completely - known spam-factory IP addresses were still firewalled off - though that was probably less effective than today's spamhaus service.

Out Of Office was always thought to be a wonderful thing on Outlook until it was realised that it's exactly what the spammers are looking for.

It's pretty much the same as sending and 'un-sub' to a list you've never subscribed to "Coo-ee, I'm over here!" it says "I'm not in but I exist".

"But it tells people I'm not in"

"Yeah and it advertises yourself to spammers"

"But I need it!"

Where's the PFY's cattle prod when you need it?

The pieces of advice "don't unsubscribe" and "don't use out-of-office replies" assume the spammers are thinking "This guy tried to usubscribe - keep - this one sent an O-o-O - keep - but I never heard back from Jimmy@whoopdidoo.com - better take that name of my lists".

Whilst that MIGHT be true for they EveryCommonName@ListOfDomains generated lists, I don't think it's likely to be true for harvested addresses.

"Why oh why do people tie themselves to an email address provided by their ISP? ... what happens when you switch provider?"

See www.ContactClean.com

I get spam too.

BBC America are showing the restored monty python's FC.

Only ever had one account get out of hand and that started with an "A" and bots used it first in fake 'reply to' headers. First week about 5 'you have sent a virus' messages, then the spam started to hit also. Ramped up so much that in 6 weeks had to close the lycos account.

Bet if I could remember the password lycos would open the account again, after all its only been closed for 5 years. ( 4yr old account opened ok)

Do not give a shit about information security or about the security of their customers' information.

I wasted two years of my life watching security recommendations being totally ignored by executive management in spite of their once touted BS7799 registration.

The development of new whizz-bang products rules the roost and recommendations for the development of secure code is routinely bypassed.

I would not trust Orange to hold personal information of any kind in a secure fashion.