When I first set up this web site, it was just a list of names with E-Mail
addresses. If I had a person's valid E-Mail address, it was listed,
otherwise I gave everyone a dummy E-Mail address like
"224ohs@scottsmith.com".
Immediately, a Bot (robot) program came through and gathered up
all of the listed E-Mail addresses and sold them as part of a mailing list.
Luckily, only a few valid addresses were listed. The bulk of the
spam (junk mail) came to me ... as many as 1,700 per day! Even
now, I still get between 20-400 spams per day. I learned early not to show
E-Mail addresses on my web pages without requiring a "click" first.
This November, a spammer of porn decided to visit our sites and actually "click"
on several names. This wasn't an attempt to SEND mail to the users'
addresses, but rather to pretend to SEND FROM the users' addresses.
Service providers are getting wise to spammers. Many of them now check and
validate the address of the person "SENDING" the E-Mail, before they "ACCEPT"
the E-Mail into their system and pass it on to you. If you are a spammer, this
is a bad thing.
Spammers (especially porn spammers) set up a web site, blast out a million
E-Mails telling the world to come and enter their Credit Card numbers, gather
in as many horny idiots as they can in 24 hours, then disconnect and vanish
into thin air. The idiots rarely complain to the authorities that they didn't
get their full year's worth of smutty viewing, and the authorities don't have
time to catch the porn peddlers.
Consequently, spammers just want you to get their E-Mail, not reply to it. Services
first started blocking E-Mails that didn't have a "RETURN" address because it
was most likely spam, so spammers just put fake or "hotmail" E-Mail addresses in
as their "RETURN" address. Now with services actually checking the "RETURN" addresses,
spammers have to find valid E-Mails and pretend to be that person for a day.
Our site looked like a treasure trove to these guys!
On November 13th, four E-Mails were retrieved and used ... mine and three others.
On November 14th, the four of us started receiving flames (hate mail)
from hundreds of people upset that WE were sending them and their family members
porn solicitations!
We also got attacked by other clever programmers who obviously
were convinced they were shutting down a notorious smut site. Under the bulge
of band-width, our ISP killed our site so their other customers could function.
After some serious expense and programming, it looks like we'll be coming back
online soon with a solution that will protect our 34,800+ users from getting
abused.
We apologize for the delay and downtime and also for not answering everyone's
E-Mails and complaints, but life usually requires that hobbies come last, and
with free services ... remember, you always get more than what you
paid for.