[geeks] free magazines

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Wed, 03 Dec 2003 @ 11:10 -0600, Brian Dunbar said:

> Charles Shannon Hendrix [mailto:shannon at widomaker.com] on Wednesday,
> December 03, 2003 9:55 AM said;
> 
> > Tue, 02 Dec 2003 @ 23:07 -0600, Bill Bradford said:
> 
> > > y'all like free magazine subscriptions?
> > > 
> > > http://www.mrbill.net/magazines.txt
> 
> > Sounds nice, until they SPAM you to oblivion.
> 
> > If you don't mind being added (re-added in my case) to ever direct
> > marketing list in the country, go ahead.
> 
> Spam filters are part of the overhead of doing business - like AntiVirus
> software became (in the Win32 world) a few years ago.

????

I'm talking about physical SPAM.

A friend of mine baited an address and used it for some free magazine
subscriptions.

Catalogs and other junk mail started showing up at the baited address in
1-6 months.

I know they claim they don't do it, but the evidence seems to indicate
the contrary.  Not a perfectly scientific test, but the bait address had
been available for 2 years and never got any junk mail.

Sometimes it isn't the magazine itself, but the company fronting the
"free" subscriptions.

Service Merchandise used to deny they sold their customer information,
but it was a lie, as a baited test done locally proved.

The next time you give out your address for something "free", change
your name or other information in the address, but make sure it will
still deliver where you want it. like that, and only for that one deal.
Then you can easily see if they sell the information.

Alternately, get a post office box to use as bait.

-- 
UNIX/Perl/C/Pizza____________________s h a n n o n at wido !SPAM maker.com