Drug Spam

[Marge]

Is it just me, or has anybody else had the experience that since I started participating in this board, I have been getting more and more drug-peddling spam in my e-mail? It used to be mostly for viagra, now I get lots and lots of spam for CHEAP pain-killers, tranks, opiates of all kinds, etc., etc. All this stuff is prescription only and a lot of it is the heavy duty stuff, that the DEA requires doctors to jump through hoops to prescribe .... How can these internet sellers get away with it?

 

[terry40]

Not me Marge,

Not me Marge,

But some web site I went on thinks I'm in debt over my head and need help with loans, credit cards, refinancing my mortgage, etc.

I use my computer to refill my prescribtions, but no drug spam
e-mails.

I sure others will respond,

terry40

 

[Ross]

It's got nothing to do with this website. Everyone is getting spam of all kinds. It's the marketing worlds way of telling us "Thank You" for the National Do Not Call list.

 

[Nancy]

I get all kinds of spam all the time, drugs, "enhancements", mortgages, loans, porn, scams, you name it. If I don't know who sent me an email, I delete it and report it. Also I don't open anything with an attachment unless I know who sent it to me.

This has been getting progressively worse over the years. It doesn't have anything to do with VR.com. My daughters get it also and they don't visit here. It's a nasty global internet problem and many of the sources are distant and outside the US.

I have also gotten the "official" looking emails that pose as legitimate sources, such as AOL and even government sources. They all go to the circular email file and are reported.

We're all victims.

 

[Ross]

And here I thought that I was getting subliminal messages from these despicable things, suggesting that my schlong needed improvement.

 

[Nancy]

According to these guys, I guess EVERYONE is inadequate in their most prized body parts. They must envision a land of GIANTS!. I guess we'll all have to walk around with canes or walkers to keep from falling over.

 

[Marge]

Oooops. It occurred to me, reading the thread this a.m., that somebody might think I was accusing the site of somehow making e-mail addresses available. No way was I implying THAT!!!!

I was just thinking that maybe the online prescription drug outfits "troll" the various medical sites looking for likely prospects. If so, the increased volume of "medical" spam could also be attributable to another message board I've gone on at HeartCenter, or to the one or two times I was in a chat-room at HeartCenter. I still get the mortgage, porn, and other spam I used to get; it just seemed that the drug spam had increased a bit lately.

 

[Ross]

That's alright Marge, I think we are all seeing more of the drug ones too. Most claim to be in Canada, when in fact they are not. They're trolling alright. Trolling for our money!

 

[Karlynn]

There was about a 2 month period of time when I'd get 2 or 3 spam mails a day - expressly those basically trying to convince me that I need to change to a man just so that I can take their wonderful drugs to enlarge...that part.

Now I'm not getting many at all. (There goes my day.)

I'm just glad I don't have small children to worry about getting this type of email.

 

[wlaldridge]

I think most of the drugs are cheap counterfeits as well as some black market stuff.

Now, I would really like to know the source they go to to get email addresses. My wife and I have separate email accounts, but in mine I get offers to enlarge my breasts as well as my, as Ross calls it, "schlong" then there are the performance enhancers to go along with all the things everyone else mentioned. Saintly wife gets almost none.

I get more of that crud than I get legit email. It must be my punishment in this life for my sins in my earlier life/lives(depending on your point of view)

Great enlargement and perfomance to all who desire those things,

B

 

[Nancy]

Every time you visit a site, be it one that you found on Google, news channels, even a site like WebMd, etc. you get a cookie and most of them are harvesters of info, so you almost can't get away from it. If your wife does not go to high volume sites like news, stock quotes, etc, she probably won't get much. Just look at all the banner ads that are on some of those sites, every one of them has the potential to spy on you, so to speak.

If you install SpyBot, it can hunt down and get rid of the programs that automatically attach themselves to your hard drive. You'll be surprised at how many programs you can accumulate and how much spyware there is out there.

I'm sure you already know all that anyway, Bill. But for those who don't, it's on your computer, guarantee you, whether you want it or not.

Deleting cookies and temporary internet files and some temp files routinely will help some, but as soon as you surf, they're right back on your computer.

I probably get 10-15 per day, at least because I use many different sites every day.

 

[tommy]

Spybot helps, but is not the total answer. SBC Yahoo filters a lot for me in my bulk mail box, but some get through. I have an email address that I have not ever given to anyone and it gets the most spam. Go figure. I wonder if we are destined to change address now and then to stay ahead of the spammers.

 

[wlaldridge]

I have used spybot since before Ross first mentioned it here at Vr.com. I don't think it does much about the spoofed emails. I have been experimenting trying to get at the leak of my email address to spammers. Cookies are not likely the problem since only one of my many email addresses seems to be the favorite of the spammers.

I begin to distrust eBay and payPal more than anything. I don't go to the kinds of sites that are the biggest offeneders like porn, etc.

I use popupkiller and it had the devils own time with a popup that came from classmates.com(a site I personally hate more than porn for its approach to business). A particular popup assereted itself 8985 times before it stopped. Now I don't like that kind of garbage.

too bad that this version of PoPup Killer is no longer available. It is just great at what it does.

Anyway it is sad that some of these dirtbags clutter up the internet so.

Bill

 

[Johnny Stephens]

My MSN mail account filters it so effectively, I wondered if it was really doing anything and turned the filters off just to see. Sure enough, about 50 spams showed up that day. Turned it back on, and am only getting 1 - 2 a week leaking through.

I heard a big-time spammer being interviewed on the radio the other day, and he was talking about how they build their database of addresses. An interesting bit - they have a system that builds addresses out of common words, numbers and names. It generates millions of addresses a day. They send them out, and if an address *doesn't* bounce back to them as "no such user", they mark it as good. So you wind up validating yourself even if you don't do anything.

I use History kill to clean my cookies out automatically every time I close my browser. It lets you mark the ones you trust - like this site - I only keep about 5. It also has a pop-up killer that works really well - except that some sites I do business with use popups for legitimate input, and then I have to turn it off.

 

[Nancy]

AOL filters some also and they have a popup killer which works very well. PayPal is something I won't use. I get a warning message everytime I have tried to access it, from AOL, something to the effect that it has not met the security setting that I have which is set at medium, so I guess there are issues there. I've used eBay quite a bit and haven't found anything out of the ordinary.

I'm thinking that Google might be a place that one can pick up some of this stuff, and I use that a LOT.

Oh well, I don't mind deleteing it.

 

[Abbanabba]

I must be about the only person on-line who doesn't get spam (..aside from newsletters I've previously signed on for and now can't find where to sign off!! ..). The only thing I can think of is that I've set my security to medium-high so that only the sites I'm actually logged onto can veiw my cookies (..I think that's how it works..) and sponsor and other links cannot. Otherwise I must be incredibly fortunate..!!

A : )