Junk email

[tremmor]

I don't have a clue. Im receiving a lot of junk email all the time now. I clean the reg with regseeker and cclean. I have java script controls off much of the time. I scan occasionally with avg free and housecall. Somebody suggested it may have a lot to do with mass mail i do with family and friends. Short movies and docs. Im heavy on this and receive and send many on a daily basis. I run spyware doctor and spybot.

they said it may likely be because everybody is not using blindcopy or carbon copy. any suggestions on this subject?
tremmor

 

[ceewi1]

That's very likely correct. If your friends/family forward the emails you've sent to others, they can eventually end up in the hands of spammers, who will have a whole long list of valid emails if noone's thought to delete the list of people who it's previously been sent to.

Using BCC will help prevent others from being spammed, but since your email address will appear in the From field anyway, it's important that the people you send it to delete the information about previous recipients before sending it on, and use BCC as well. That way, if the email ever does end up in the hands of spammers there will be a far shorter list of email addresses for them to use.

There are many other possible causes as well. Some unscrupulous websites who collect your email address will sell these lists of email addresses on to spammers, in order to make a profit.

Now that you're on the spammers lists, there's really not all that much you can do to get off them. Changing your email address would obviously work, but is probably not an acceptable solution. Installing a spam filter would help weed out spam emails.

 

[tremmor]

I thank you very much. Now my question is a solution for mostly my family.
Don't they make maybe a software with a icon they could hit to help make this happen. My family and friends (many) but do not know and won't have a clue what your talking about. it will be another nightmare for me with many question and how to. If not then a simple explanation in layman terms. I know what your saying but i do not know how to put it in words to explain it.
thanks....

 

[tremmor]

funny thing comes to mind. I have 5 computers in the house. talking about mine only. about every 3 to 5 yrs i have to do a low level format. don't ask why. it runs slow or what ever. at least one of the computers needs this at one time or another. for some reason it seems like the spam disappears. Back to the grind as usual with everybody using including me and then it starts again.
just another thought though.

 

[ceewi1]

I'm not aware of any programs that will automatically and easily do this.

As for simple instructions, maybe just tell them to delete everything except for the actual message when they send it on? And to simply put everyone's addresses into BCC: instead of To:.

funny thing comes to mind. I have 5 computers in the house. talking about mine only. about every 3 to 5 yrs i have to do a low level format. don't ask why. it runs slow or what ever. at least one of the computers needs this at one time or another.

A true low-level format isn't possible on modern drives outside the factory. The term is often misused to refer to a re-initialization or zero fill, but those aren't something you'd normally do just to speed up your system (usually done if you want to make data recovery very difficult, erase boot-sector viruses, etc...). Do you mean a (regular) high-level format?

In any case, this shouldn't have anything to do with the amount of spam you receive. Spam emails are just emails sent from other people, who have no way to tell whether your PC has just been formatted, etc...