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This is slightly off topic, but I figured that I would post anyway. Gmail (www.gmail.com) has started sending me invitations (The Gmail e-mail service is currently available by invitation only)... many many invitations (about 10 a day), so I have now given out about 25-30 accounts. I will now open up the offer to all of you. If you would like a gmail account (a gig of space), send me your e-mail address and name to ben.salinas@gmail.com. Depending on how many responses I get, it might take me a few days to send you the invitation.

-Ben
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No offence intended, Ben, and I can understand and appreciate your honest and generous offer to share with us what you honestly think is good, but anyone interested would do well to have a look at this revealing link:

Thirty-One Privacy and Civil Liberties
Organizations Urge Google to Suspend Gmail

Sending e-mails to Gmail accounts will make the sender equally vulnerable, as his/her e-mail address will be harvested and processed by Gmail.

Everyone can (and should) do as he/she pleases, but I'm neither getting a Gmail account nor sending *any* e-mails to such accounts.

Best regards from V.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4707

Not as big a problem as rumors think it is.

Quote:
Everyone can (and should) do as he/she pleases, but I'm neither getting a Gmail account nor sending *any* e-mails to such accounts.

This is a pretty silly attitude. You better stop posting anything in this, or any other forum on the Internet while you are at it. NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING you transmit via the Internet, whether it be via email or on a web site, is private any more. If you think it is you are only fooling yourself. If you want electronic communication to be, and stay private, you better use a several thousand bit encryption routine, and hope quantum computers never become a reality.

Chris W

Gmail? What's all the fuss? Just another marketing ploy from yet another new public internet company. Is this any worse than having to tell Earthlink that I'm a real person, not a machine by responding twice to an email? Honestly, it's all a bother and only further illustrates electronic communication is a very imperfect medium. It's not a recognized legal means. Never will be in it's present state. We still have a long way to go. Don't get your panties in a knot about Gmail... It will morph and be a fee based service before it has any staying power. It's only free so you'll accept the baggage that comes with it. P.T. Barum said it first...

Anybody still getting a discount via the internet on their groceries or gas? Wake up and count the money. Nothing is for free.

For me, $0.37 makes my communications very private. If that's not fast enough, I can always pick up the telephone. To second Chris's point, NOTHING that is electronic form is in anyway private. To think otherwise is foolish. 'Nuf said on something that has absolutely nothing to do with calculators.

Edited: 23 June 2004, 8:38 p.m.

"Gmail? What's all the fuss? Just another marketing ploy from yet another new public internet company. "

Yes, who has ever heard of google? They're just some tiny company that no-one uses.

"Don't get your panties in a knot about Gmail... It will morph and be a fee based service before it has any staying power. "

Just like hotmail and yahoo mail?

Hi, Chris:

Chris posted:

"This is a pretty silly attitude."

Thank you for your comment, very considerate by the way. You're always like that or is it seasonal ?

"You better stop posting anything in this, or any other forum on the Internet while you are at it. NOTHING, I
repeat NOTHING you transmit via the Internet, whether it be via email or on a web site, is private any more. If you think it is you are only fooling yourself."

I'm fooling noone, least of all myself. Yes, I know private communications are utopic but that's not my point about not sending e-mail to a Gmail account.

My point is, when I post to this forum my e-mail address remains absolutely private, if nothing else for the simple hard fact that I do *not* type it in anywhere. So I do not risk it being harvested by spammers' robotic tools and then being subject to ton after ton of delicious spam.

However, that's not the case when sending e-mail to a Gmail account, because Gmail will instantly know about the sender's e-mail address unless you bother to take protective actions, which I'd rather not.

Understood ? :-) Long live the HP-15C and ...

Best regards from V.

Quote:
However, that's not the case when sending e-mail to a Gmail account, because Gmail will instantly know about the sender's e-mail address unless you bother to take protective actions, which I'd rather not.

I read the whole article you submitted a link to in your original post. Giving your email address to spamers was not their major concern, they were concerned about the privacy of the content of your email message, not address, and that is what I was responding too.

I don't know if MSN and Yahoo are guilty of what you are accusing gmail of intending to do or not. But if they are, I can understand your belief that gmail will give your email address to spamers. I don't belive it will happen and am willing to test it by sending several emails from a new account on my local ISP to my gmail account as a test. If interested in the results let me know. However, I would be far more concerned about the spam you get just because your email address is in the MS Outlook address book of someone who doesn't keep their computer secure. I for one am looking forward to seeing advertisements that are for things I might actually be interested in, instead of being bombarded with messages about enlarging certain body parts, drugs I don't want, home equity loans for the home I don't have, or credit cards I don't need or want.

Chris W

[quote]

I would be far more concerned about the spam you get just because your email address is in the MS Outlook address book of someone who doesn't keep their computer secure


[quote/]


Hi Chris, Valentin,

I think the above quote is absolutely on the mark. This has happened to me repeatedly over the past 8 years or so, though by no means frequently. Once, my company's entire public address book got "ramped up" to a spam machine via a virus that came in through an attachment on one person's computer.

I do not fret spammers too much anymore, because I have a different paradigm:

I give my website, http://plattdesign.net and the person can find my currently active e-mail address there. (In fact, a poster to this forum did just exactly that recently.)

I think if we all did this, we could foil the spammers, because when you start to get too much spam, you just change your address, but not your own private domain.

Of course, this means that your "friends" will suddenly get returned mail. But, if they know the paradigm, they go to your website, and find the current one.


But this approach is far from known widely, so it may take time to become accepted.


Best regards,


Bill

Hi, Bill:

Bill posted:

"I give my website, http://plattdesign.net and the person can find my currently active e-mail address there."

Spot on. I do exactly the same. Perhaps this is a much better known trick than we thought ...

Best regards from V.

Quote:
I give my website, http://plattdesign.net and the person can find my currently active e-mail address there. (In fact, a poster to this forum did just exactly that recently.)

I had a similar idea I have not yet implemented. I was going to have my email address be something like chris.june.2004@cox.net and then change it every month. That way all my friends would just keep chris.month.year@cox.net in their address book and then just change to the current month and year when they send me a message, I was also thinking of keeping an email address that was automatically replied to by my computer telling posters what my active address is. If spamers suddenly found that 99% of the email addresses they find, are inactive by the time they get them, that could take all the profit out of spam.

Chris W