Has Anyone Gotten Weird Emails Since Going on Fodors?
 

A friend to whom I sent the link for my Dordogne trip report told me that she started getting 25 to 30 wierd e-mails per day as compared to the half dozen or so she used to get per month after she started going on Fodor's. Quite a few of them were about travel but most were about other stuff she said. She even changed her email address because of this.

I can't see how this can be other than a coincidence, especially since she didn't even have to register to read my report. Fodors is a legitimate site and not the kind to mess up your system I'm quite sure.

Could someone with expertise about websites please provide an explantion to set her mind at rest so she can finish reading my report?

How do you define wierd?

degas, weird was her word. Let's say excess spam instead. I just want to assure her that it didn't happen because she visited this website.

In the month after I registered on this board, I received several travel related "Spam" messages - but I think this was just coincidental as it did not continue.

It's nothing to do with Fodors. Many spammers now no longer bother 'fishing' for addresses from web sites, they just write a program that automatically generates a huge list of 'email addresses.' Even though the addresses are thus randomly generated, a lot of them correspond to actual addresses, such as yours. If you respond to their emails, the program notes that your email address is a 'live' one - so whatever you do, don't hit reply to any of these junk emails, even to tell them off.

I suspect by 'weird' you mean these spam emails have strange, garbled subject lines and sender's names. These have been deliberately devised to get around email spam filters, which work by scanning for specific words and phrases, or by blocking specific names the account holder has designated as 'spam'.

So, good news is, it's nothing to do with Fodors. Bad news: Until yahoo, hotmail etc. figure out how to filter out this latest round of spam, we are all stuck with these garbage emails.

I use a spam filter and it takes care of 95% of the viagra, penny stock, porno and discount drug junk!

degas, are you willing to name the spam filter you use or is that against Fodors non-advertising rule? I get alot of junk mail going directly to my yahoo Bulk folder and so I followed Yahoo's recommendation to forward the junk to their junkmail department. So, then I started getting mail from the yahoo junk dept telling me they got my forwarded junk. So, instead of just the original j-mail, I got an additional j-mail from yahoo. What a vicious circle!

I don't really know what its called - my whizz kid son set it up for me.

On my yahoo account, I forwarded some a while back and now it directs almost all the weird stuff to the bulk folder. An odd one gets by every once in a while. Fingers-crossed for the future!

Thanks, Sue. Hopefully your input will be enough to convince my friend that visiting Fodors is not the problem.

Willit, I'll mention your experience too.

Degas, this is what my friend said about her spam filter:

"Even though they were all intercepted by our filter system and ended up in our deleted box, they took an hour or more per day to come in (we're still on dial-up)."

WHAT? You mean I didn't win the UK lottery? :-O

What is dial up? Do they live in lower Romania? Fork over a few more bucks and get cable. If I can do it, anybody can.

Whatever it is it's not Fodor's in general as i never get any SPAM e-mails a'tall and i've been on here several years. Or maybe i have some super security aparatus doing it for me.

I get no more weird e-mails than I used to.

Degas, I only have dial-up. The area on my island where I live doesn't have many options. There is high-speed available but according to one neighbor who has it, it's REALLY unreliable & doesn't work more than it does. It's not a case of $$.

I get weird emails now and then but they are from posters on Fodors LOL
((F))

Carrybean, I was just joshing you.

Hi M,

It is highly unlikely that your friend's spam problem has anything to do with you.

I use Spybot, Adaware, Norton's and AVG on my computer.

My ISP has spam filters.

I still get spam.

((I))

PS.

I do not inform yahoo that I have bulk mail in my bulk mail folder. I let them dump it.

Moolyn, we've been using Fodors for four months now and nothing has changed. And I HATE spam so I would be off this site in a second if they did that to me. Highly doubt it is from Fodors. Hope she gets passed it and enjoys Fodors as much as we do.

emh

If you select the "display email address" option in the user profile, you will be visible to spambots. A well-engineered site wouldn't expose addresses, but well...

Speaking of spam, do you ever open them and read some of the gobbledygook nonsensical prose they put in to sneak by the spam filters? Talk about weird. Here's and excerpt from one I just got:

<i>...and trustworthy individual.In this progress of his father young Cowperwood definitely shared. Hewith their children; and so this family, which increased at the rate ofrains; and the sidewalks were of red brick, and always damp and cool. Infour children, was quite an interesting affair when he was ten and they...</i>


Using actual spam messages such as that for the script, here are a couple of little animated movies, which I think are brilliant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ0c5F6pFi4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c03b5A_gfIU