Take a Bite Out of Spam

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 Computing and especially electronic communications with computers is great and makes life more convenient in most cases.  Could you image we would be doing this 10 or 20 years ago? Emailing friends and family, your congressman, shopping and getting other things done.  While email is a godsend to most of us the issue of spam or junk mail is enough to drive anyone crazy.  As I was preparing this article I noticed an article posted by the BBC that said it is estimated that 40% of all email traffic is spam.  It also mentioned coincidently that spam turned 25 years old in early May 03, I’m sure that was one ugly baby.  I did a lot of moving in my military career so junk mail per say never really caught up with me until I retired and settled here in San Antonio.  More than half the mail I get in my snail mailbox is uninvited junk mail.  Some of it addressed current resident which means as long as the advertiser is going to spend the money he can send those little worthless postcard ads to anybody he wants.  Email spam is much the same.  Most spammers acquire your email address through lists sellers who collect email addresses and sell them to these spammers or spammers may simply gather them themselves through various methods.  One popular way is to surf the newsgroup forums.  If you regularly post messages to newsgroups be careful about posting your email address.

 

Here are some steps you can take to reduce the spam that you, your family and friends get:

 

1.  Don’t respond to spam.  This includes spam with lines that let you opt out – they are building mailing lists as I discussed earlier.  This is true in most cases however there are cases where you may want to respond to the lines that generally read, “If you do not want to continue to receive email correspondence from this sender, click the link below” or “send a blank email with the word remove as the subject”.  If this is from a company that you regularly do business with such as your bank, then it is more than likely legitimate and safe to reply.  However, if this is from an email address that you do not recognize I would recommend that you simply delete the email and add them to your junk or spam list which I will go into more on later.  Whatever you do, do not open any attachments from an unknown sender.  By responding to these emails you are informing the spammer that you are a valid email recipient and will more than likely be sent more spam.  Some of these senders are doing this to merely validate your email address in order to compile lists to sell to other spammers.

 

2.  Create a junk mail rule or block senders list depending on your software.   You can do this with your email software, such as Outlook (http://support.wadsnet.com/tech/outlook_junk.htm), Eudora (http://support.wcc.net/spam/eudora.html) or through your online web mail server.  Basically you add addresses of known spammers to a list that your email software will recognize and delete before you see it.  The suspected spam will be put in your deleted email box so you will have a chance to screen it before deleting it permanently.

 

3.      Use an alternate email address when submitting to sites on the Internet for such things as filling out registrations to web sites.   Be wary of who you give your email address out to on the Internet, some of those sites on the web that ask you for your email address aren’t doing it just to send you quotes, jokes or news of the day, they are actually compiling lists. 

 

4.   Don’t forward email chain letters and hoaxes.  Check out hoaxes at http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org.   If you feel strongly about a certain issue or feel that it must be passed on do it but I recommend that you check some of the issues out yourself first.  I remember getting one some time back with a subject that was sure to scare any grown man.  It had the infamous line at the bottom “Please for their sake, pass this on to your friends and family.”  It was an email that basically said to be careful when taking things out of the microwave because they can be hot.  There were probably 30 addresses listed in the send to field of the email.  Lots of email servers were probably put to the test with that email and that is the sole reason some people start these emails along with the ones that say “to have good luck send this to 7 people or face the option of having bad luck.”

 

5.   Install spam filtering software.  I use I Hate Spam (http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=930).  This is an excellent choice if you are using Outlook.  You can compare some of the most popular at http://www.scananddelete.com/spam_filter.htm

These programs can really take a bite out of spam.  I just started using my filtering program about 6 months ago and it saves me a lot of time now that I don’t have to scan and delete the spam myself.  

 

6.  Contact the sender’s ISP.   If you feel that you have been targeted by a spammer you can contact the offenders ISP.  However spammers are becoming very illusive these days and many use fake email addresses, or pay for forwarding services which makes it impossible to find the senders true ISP.  I have taken the time to pursue a spammer in this manner on rare occasion but with the amount of spam that I get it is usually not worth spending the time.

 

Here are some web sites with a wealth of information on spam and how to fight it:

Just remember that you are not alone when it comes to spam and there are steps you can take to eliminate some of the electronic harassment.

 

 

 

 

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