On May 10th we opened an account at Hotmail and Yahoo. The Yahoo account was easy to setup and instantly available. While the Hotmail account was easy to setup, we never did get it to work with our Internet Browser likely due to a cookies issue or our firewall, however it was very easy to setup within Outlook Express. So now we have a Yahoo and Hotmail account.
After three days of not using these accounts for anything, we had zero spam.
5/15 We used the Hotmail account in a newsgroup and the Yahoo account where we "signed up" at Expedia.com. When signing up at Expedia, we did not check any "notify us" or "email us" options. As of 5/20 there was no spam in either mailbox.
5/20 We used the Yahoo and Hotmail accounts on a web page. This web page was not available to the public via any link. Here we are testing to see how effective the spammer search and gather engines are on unpublicized pages. The Yahoo account was placed as a normal click on type link to email while the Hotmail was listed but was not a link.
5/28 We now had two in the Hotmail account and one in the Yahoo account. We "clicked to remove" from the mailing list on one message in Hotmail... And we used the Yahoo account in a chat room at Yahoo for one minute, one day only.
6/1 We had one in each account. Today we added the addresses to this available page. One as a link, one as plain text: bergtest2003@yahoo.com bergtest2003@hotmail.com
6/21 We used the hotmail account at one of the on-line drugstores.
7/21 we are now receiving two spams a day in the hotmail account but none in yahoo.
9/1 Well it's been a while since we've checked these. We have since
used either address at different reputable sites.
Hotmail had 8 (since Aug 1st), Yahoo had 2. So what's triggering
spam? In the interest of furthering the experiment we'll post this: bergtest2003@hotmail.com
9/25 We are now getting almost 20 spam messages every day in the Hotmail account so posting an active email address on a website does draw spam. What is interesting about these as opposed to our other email accounts is each and everyone has a virus attachment.
Additionally, almost everyone of the Hotmail messages contain an infected attachment! If Microsoft really wants to resolve problems with the Internet, they should start at home by inspecting Hotmail messages for viruses.
- See newsletter 10-03 for more on these attachments.
- See how to hide your email from searchbots.
On other interesting thing: We posted our Yahoo address in June the same way we posted the Hotmail address earlier in the month but we are still receiving only a couple message a day in the Yahoo account.
7/12/04 Another thought on this problem, click here