junk mail

does anyone else ever get junk mail through the post that is related to web sites you have been looking at without loging into the site or given your details to them.its just i was looking for car insurance online and NEVER gave them any personal details and since then i have been bombarded with junk post from car insurance companies,can anyone else please tell me if this happens to them.

Get gmail, you never have to worry about any junk at all. The filter on it is amazing and having it myself for 6 months now only 4 junk emails have gotten through, and none of my friends ever got caught up in the filter.

Just u2u me and i'll give you an invite (I have 49 left).

BTW you get over 2000 megs of storage, 8 times as much as hotmail.

Can you set up Gmail to open in Outlook Express? If so i would be more then willing to swap as my ISP email is terrable for stopping the .

Their has been alot of garbage going around lately. The paypal scam going around as the Admins have discussed. Also their has been a sober.x virus going around that went into your address book and sent an email out to everyone in it with your name on it. The second anyone opened it, it would go to ALL of their contacts. So you can see how quick that could multiply.

It has been contained as of late I have seen which is good, but also could be contributing to any spam or junk. I always say its better to be safe than sorry, so always show some caution.

Originally posted by coffeeaddict
does anyone else ever get junk mail through the post that is related to web sites you have been looking at without loging into the site or given your details to them.its just i was looking for car insurance online and NEVER gave them any personal details and since then i have been bombarded with junk post from car insurance companies,can anyone else please tell me if this happens to them.

Do you mean physical/snail mail or email?

Let's assume you're talking email. I can't think of a way they would be able to log an IP address and link it to an email address... Well, not without the help of ... Yep... You guessed it Spyware. Get yourself Spybot Search and Destroy, and the new MS Antispyware is free at this stage, and really worth the effort!

If you already have the software, and it detects no Spyware, but still get these sorts of emails, then someone sold your email address, or it appears somewhere where a Spider (program that searches the Internet for certain stuff, like email addresses) picked it up.

The fact that you visited a car insurance site, and then get similar Spam, may just be some eerie coincidence.

Its called cookies...no, not a chocolate chip kind.

They check that and see what sites you have been to, and the ads you recieve in your email are from them basically "spying" on you. They do this to target adds that they think will interest you, in hopes you will go to there site and buy whatever crap their sellin.

oh, and I almost forgot to mention to not listen to diehard_democrat.
You do not want G-mail...I had it once apon a time...The thing that just drove me nuts about it was that I couldn't delete ANYTHING. Whether something you got it junkmail, private, garbage mail that you get from some friends & relatives. It stays on there f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

What I use and recomend is Hotmail.
I have the Beta version of MS Live mail. Which gives you 2 gigs of space as well, except they let you delete whatever you want, whenever you want. Its setup very well. If "adcrap.com" sent me an email it would go straight to junk, But if a friend who got a new emial address sends you something it will put it in your inbox, with a checkmark box asking you if you want to allow this address or junk it. Its a very good system.

Its still in its Beta phase, but I love it.
I've had it for around 3 weeks now, I applied for the Live Beta a month before they let me come aboard. So its not a quickswitch...but its worth the wait.

I've been using GMail for months now, without a single problem, and have deleted tons and tons of emails. I think I currently have 6000 spam mails in my junk folder though that I haven't bothered to get rid of.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
I've been using GMail for months now, without a single problem, and have deleted tons and tons of emails. I think I currently have 6000 spam mails in my junk folder though that I haven't bothered to get rid of.

ahhh...

I used to have a G-mail account, it had no delete button...But that was around 2 months ago...maybe they added it in.

BTW, For anyone wanting to uo upgrade there hotmail, to Windows Live mail, just say so...I still have a email invite MS sent me...so I think I can just send it to you with no probs.

I have gmail too and love it but the spam filter is not exactly perfect. My newsletters and some of my friends emails keep going into the spam folder and some spam reaches the inbox. The most annoying thing is that I have to check the spam folder frequently which gets like 20 letters every day for non spam. I would recommend avoiding of posting your email adress anywhere. That seems to work for most people.

Fair warning:

If you fully read the terms and conditions of gmail, you will see that they scan all incoming and outgoing mail.
They claim it is so they target specific ads at you.
Personally, i find the idea of them going through all my outgoing/incoming email offensive.