Who are these people?
My hotmail account is getting spammed like crazy. I have the junk mail filter set on the highest setting and yet I get about 23 messages per day with subjects like:
-Its too big for me
-Let's work this out
-Why don't we talk anymore
-Hey friend, you accidentally blocked my address!

Without exception, they're all about magazine selling, penis enlargement, and other useless tripe. Curiously, some of the domains come from officedepot.com and others look legitimate. Did they get hacked? Here's some of today's addresses:

a_abbott_iq@criticalpath.net
spencer.baker_bh@officedepot.com
a.ross_qd@sprint.com
robertt.howard_ai@lycos.com
cody.phillipsyg@dnb.com
chase_hughes_rm@weather.com
ggarcia_eb@dnb.com
samanthagrayzn@yahoo.com
kroberts_uw@mediaways.net
nsnester@papulkascbfnh.com
andreathomaspv@dialsprint.net
katelyn.halljx@optonline.net
kaitlyn_evans_wv@google.com
anthonyjonesml@apple.com
trinity.c.wilson_su@officedepot.com
lbennetttj@cisco.com
ajmillerpr@rr.com
voice@gw.deriving.net
tax@greetingwishes.endorsement.net
a.cooperjw@cgocable.net
collinsvf@t-dialin.net
kimberly_wallacefd@yahoo.com

How do I make them stop?!?

EDIT TO ADD: I have two hotmail accounts... I opened this particular one to get my account on XOC. I *NEVER* use it except to respond/reply to people from this board. During my job hunting days and "heavy use," I use my "other" hotmail account which has no trouble with spam. I wonder if there's a path from here somewhere??

Stop surfing all that porn. I set my junk mail at exclusive ( I have Hotmail), it all goes directly to junk. Anything that is not in my address book or safe list is routed automatically. Be that as it may, if I read all the e-mail about "young blondes taking huge cock", or making my member bigger, I would probably have to tie it around my waist Do I really want to split her wide open? Na not really.

That's the weird thing... I can't surf porn at work, and the only thing close I surf to at home is a couple of "babe of the day" sites and some of the posts I see here that aren't work safe. I'm just not into the hardcore stuff on line. Used to be, there were tons of pop-ups, junk ads, flashing windows and other shit to click away. I can't imagine its gotten any better. I'd think it would be easier to rent a video if you were into that sort of thing.

I use hushmail.com. No spam. Ever. I've had an account for a year and have never received a single spam. It's free and works just like hotmail or whatever.

I might switch over, but I'd really like to understand how I can have two different hotmail accounts with identical junk filter settings with one getting spammed like a 2$ whore and the other one which is more heavily used is not getting any at all.

I've gotten my hotmail account down to about 3-4 junk emails a day.

Constant vigilance. I reverse check the DNS, and go from there. Send them an email that says, in effect, "Stop spamming. This email address was NEVER opted in to any of your shit. If you feel otherwise, PROVE it." That usually stops it. I even went so far as to call one of the places one time. Surprisingly, they were quite nice on the phone...and I've never gotten another email from them.

My "blocked sender" list is huge now. Filled with IP numbers, whole domains, and specific addresses. I thought it might be able to block a whole range of IPs if I entered something like 215.*.*.*, but it doesn't appear to.

(And I have my spam setting only at enhanced)

Hotmail is the easiest way to keep spam at bay, if you set it up properly. I have mine set to block all incoming messages unless that email address is already in my address book. No spam ever gets into my Inbox.

Is your favorite Wolf man at it again? That sucks though. I have the exact same problem. 1 account gets punded daily, but I only use it for paypal/ebay and crap like that. The other is my personal and its fine, and has been for years.

Let me guess, this is the email listed in your profile?

You have to understand that spammers spider the web randomly looking for anything that looks like an email address (simple regexp).

Once you get spam, you're stuck with it. Your email is in a DB and is being sold. Calling a spammer, emailing their ISP does no good. Fine you might get one loser in his basement banned, but your email is still being sold.

Funny thing is that a couple of years ago my father had a client that wanted to spam, so he was asked to do this for him and was given a CD with millions of email addresses. My (hotmail.com) email address was on there.

So how do you avoid spam? Use multiple email accounts. Buy a domain name and get a host that will give you a catch-all. Then you can use email client filters to move things to folders, or to >/dev/null all emails going to an account that started to get spam. The problem is that a lot of people only have one account they use for everything. At one point you'll buy something from a merchant that sells your email, and you're screwed.

Edit:
Forgot to mention, but it's beyond simple to send an email using a fake return address. The "To:" is just a line in the header, the SMTP server doesn't care where it really comes from. Some are setup to make sure the domain is local, but if you run your own server you can bypass that.

Not that I needed it, but I just got proof of this in the last hour. I posted a made-up email address (anything @xterras.net will reach me) on the ENCXC message board in December, and that is the ONLY place it has ever appeared. I just got one of those "Nigerian" money scam spams sent to it today.

Argh,
Brent

The only reason I dont do that much is in case I do get an e-mail from someone I know. I just make all the spam go to junk where I can see it at leisure. (usually about 40-50 a day.) Why would they think I want to be bigger? Ill have to have a talk with the fiance.....

Maybe those emails are really from her...

ZING!