an Orthodox friend writes:

>I get about ten spam emails a day. many I think originate from

>programmes that must pick up usenet email addies.

At only 10 you should consider yourself lucky, My daily ration is between 20 and 30.

>I do not know how many times I got that “Do you want to be a

>millionaire’ letter. Getting quite sick of ity all. So.

>What can I do. I use Forte Agent to read and post from. I have seen

>others plase NOSPAM in their email addies and then make a note at the

>bottom to remove NOSPAM when replying by email to a post. Is the the

>only way to do it or is there a better way.

There is only one safe way to ensure that you don’t get junk/spam emails – don’t use email or contribute to net discussions or do anything which involves communication over a computer network.

If you look at the first line in this it includes your email address. There are programs around which spend all their time scanning newsgroup messages or Web pages for anything which looks like an email address. This then gets added to a long list – you can buy CDs with 50 million email addresses quite cheaply.

And some nasty people have, recently, managed to get hold of some internal University of Queensland email address lists, so that lots of staff are now getting what seem to be personally addressed email.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but such is life in this electronic age.

>I though of making a false email account to have as the one with

>usenet and in the body of the message put the real one, but I guessed

>that many people would send emails to the false account without

>realising it.

>Any suggestions?

>Telstra easymail is shutting down in a few weeks so my new email might

>as well start as free of SPAM as I can get.

>Thanks for any words of wisdom.

>an Orthodox friend

Salaam Ken Smith

— Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … `When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.’ The First Law of Arthur C.Clarke