Scam

[Chuck and Carol]

Has anyone else received an e-mail from someone in West Africa who said they got our e-mail address from this forum? Kinda scarey. Asking for money of course.

Carol

[Bill and Ann]

Not me.

[Chuck and Carol]

I know how to report this type of thing to e-bay, but how do I do it to AOL?

Carol

[prariepoodle]

Not me either

[richfaa]

Nope.

[steves]

I have had several. I do not open their email and immediately add them to my block sender list.

[Kathi]

On AOL when the mail is opened, just to the right in the email itself, just below your address book there is a REPORT SPAM icon. Click on that and the mail will be sent right to AOL who will investigate it and block it from your address. I do it all the time. Now that is if you have already opened it. If you haven't opened it, highlight it with one click and then down at the bottom of all your mail in box there is a icon right next to the delete icon that says REPORT SPAM, click on that and it will go the same place. You won't get anymore emails from that person. To be safe I would just click on the 2nd option as if you open the email you could be opening yourself up for a virus or worm. Good Luck.....Kathi

[CountryGuy]

What baffles me, is how they claim to have obtained your email from this forum, as we are supposed to be rather closed?? But, the world baffles ole Carol, so to be baffled by this is not a surprise. SIGH

Carol

[Glenn and Lorraine]

Now you know why I rarely post my email addy in any of my posts or replies. They have spiders/robots that scan forums/message boards for good active email addy's and YES Carol they do have ways of penetrating even password controlled forums. As we all know anyone, anywhere at anytime can join the MOC and not necessarily be a Monty owners. There are now well over 6000 MOC members and I can guarantee you that many never owned any RV, muchless a Montana.

If you need to email any member just click on the envelope at the top of any of their posts or merely click on their user name and Click to send an E-Mail or send them a PM but DON'T be posting that addy in these threads.

[Montana_1240]

I can’t say how any particular SPAMMER gets addresses. Most probably buy them from low-life dirt bags who make a penny per hundred addresses. Some can be data-mined from sites where PROFILES, (hint, hint,) contain e-mail addresses. But loads of SPAMMERS get addresses quite easily due to the laziness of many an e-mailer.

When I receive something that is humorous, or deals with a subject I know another person on my address book would want to share in, I don’t simply use “FWD.”

First of all, in most e-mail programs, “FWD” will send the stuff on with a bunch of those “>” symbols being added to the left. And, invariably, the receiver, (possibly agreeing that it’s humorous or interesting,) will lazily once more “FWD” the darn thing. Within a couple cycles, (and it happens at astronomic speed,) there are almost more stupid “>” marks in that thing than there is original text.

Oh, and don’t get me going about trying to “FWD” photos! In many an e-mail program, the user decided to use a TEXT format, so pics are most often simply ignored. And the recipient simply gets an e-mail with those blank spaces with red “x’s” in them.

But the worst thing someone calling themselves your “friend” can do is to NOT use “BCC” to address anything that has more than one recipient. Because, as soon as it gets to one of the recipients, and that person simply uses “FWD,” all the original senders, and senders in any of that e-mail’s “generations,” will still be right there on the many headers that end up in so many shared e-mails.

If you get one of these, and don’t like to have to sort the wheat from the chaff, it would be a nice time to do a little editing. Put the text into Word, Wordpad, or almost any other text editor, and use the “REPLACE ALL” function to delete all those dang “>” marks. Save each photo, individually, (and you will have to give them a decent name, aside from the strange one the e-mail programs have assigned to the many-times-forwarded pics. Then you can take a fresh blank e-mail page, and compose a decent e-mail worthy of sending off. Copy and paste the text from the word processor you used to delete the trash, and re-insert each pic, where it was originally, and be proud that you aren’t cursing a friend with all manner of trash, missing pictures, and God knows how many e-mail addies of folks he’s never met, nor cares about.

When you address e-mails, (especially to MANY recipients,) using “BCC,” rather than either “TO,” or “CC,” all the many recipients will get is that it was sent to “UNDISCLOSED RECIPIENTS.” At that point, should it fall into the hands of a scumbucket who makes a few cents a day selling e-mails to SPAMMERS, he won’t have any addresses that came from you!

Eventually, (though not truly likely,) SPAMMERS will wither and die.

One way I do my best to irritate those who have gotten my address from the folks I’ve sent stuff to, when they lazily “FWD” it to someone else, is to download and use a free program called “MAIL WASHER.” See: Mailwasher.net for it. You can set it to BOUNCE e-mails back to SPAMMERS, if they have a valid address on their junk mail. And a SPAMMER who truly wants to make money by SPAMMING will have a program that detects such bounced e-mail addresses and stops sending to them. It simply wastes their server’s time, and it appears as if the recipient no longer exists.

There. I’ve said it.

And I’m glad.

Sorry this is so long. But I do hope any lazy “FWDers” out there take heed and change their actions, lest they let their “friends” in for evermore SPAM.

Steve