Yesterday I got an interesting comment regarding my posts on the scam e-mails, so I thought I’d talk about it today. A reader asked if they’re driving me nuts, and if there was more I could do about them with my Macs.
Yes, they’re really getting annoying with these scams. More importantly, I’m really disappointed that these job search sites are allowing access to these bottom feeders!
Normally I’m not hit with too much spam or scams. The Mac does a great job filtering and flagging junk mail. My recent problem is caused by listing an actual e-mail address at the job listing sites. Even if I bounce mail back, these goofballs are still getting my address from my job posting and resume. Ugh.
On the larger front of spam, spam e-mail, and scams I’m not suffering to greatly. I have some fantastic anti-spam tools. My Mac account filters well, my mail servers at hikenbike and digitalrv do a good job, and the Mac itself also flags e-mail and moves it right to a junk mail folder.
If you really want to know about the worst spam attempts, take a look at the Akismet counter on this web site (in the left column). I only started using Akismet a few months ago on all of my Wordpress sites. See, spammers like to leave Spam comments. Then when visitors come to the site and see comments they’d go look at the spammer’s site.
Prior to Akismet I was having to read tons of fake comments, marking them as spam, and deleting them. Akisment has cut that to a trickle. Hooray!
Overall, these scammers are out of control, and I wish more could be done. What I’m seeing right now is:
- Job Scams: These sound like real jobs, but they’re not. I’ve posted many samples of these guys.
- Work at home job scams: These style scams are in the line of 419 scammers. You process checks for them and get 10% of all the transactions. These scams are relying on your greed. Watch out.
- Standard 419 Scams: These types always offer you millions for transfering funds. Client died, husband a former dictator who robbed his people, etc. Once again, all about your greed. Pretty easy to flag these.
- Advertising Spam: Good lord, does anyone really need as much Viagra as these people advertising it think? If so, why hasn’t society come to a grinding halt???
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I like Askimet too, although the volume of spam comments that come through can be hard to deal with. I have seen a couple false-positives and I don’t want to delete anyone’s actual comment, so I try to skim over them. It can be hard when askimet has 700 comments waiting for me to delete.
Hey Tim. Just checked out your site. Like it!
I agree, it’s hard to sort through so many spam comments to make sure Akismet is hitting everything right. So far it has not filtered any legit comments. And it keeps catching and catching for me.
Of course, a few bad ones slip through too. But once flagged as spam akismet seems to keep similar ones out. Glad it’s available!