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FIGHTING SPAM

Everyone is tired of getting more junk mail in their e-mail inbox than "real" mail from their friends, family, and co-workers. After a few months of research, I've come up with a list of rules that everyone should follow for both fighting spam, and helping prevent it from starting in the first place. First let's look at the definition from PCwebopedia.com :

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SPAM: Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. However, if a long-lost brother finds your e-mail address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.

In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted e-mail, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, some online services have instituted policies to prevent spammers from spamming their subscribers.

There is some debate about the source of the term, but the generally accepted version is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam…" Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Another school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat Spam:

	Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.
	No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.
	Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.

PCWebopedia.com also has this Page on Getting Rid of SPAM

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Basic Rules to Fight and Prevent Spam

Clean all Spyware off your PC. If you have suddenly started receiving tons of spam mail after downloading some free software online (Kazaa, Mopheus, Aries, or other free download services often include a boatload of spyware and adware programs), chances are your e-mail address was captured by the spyware software that is running on your PC. To fully understand spyware, read my article here.

Make sure your e-mail address is not available from a webpage. If you post messages on a website, use an alternate e-mail address, one that you wouldn't mind junk mail to be sent to. Spammers often have computer programs that search websites for e-mail address, which soon are added to their list of people to be sent advertisements.

Pull your e-mail address off of online member lists. When using Hotmail or Yahoo Web mail, subscribers often are put on a searchable member list for persons searching for an e-mail address of a particular person. What started out to be a pretty nice Internet e-mail White Pages, soon became a Spammer's Mecca for finding e-mail addresses of real people. If you have put yourself on one of these lists (Bigfoot for example), remove your account or hide the e-mail address so that it's not displayed publicly. For Web mail accounts (Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Excite, etc.), check your member options to remove yourself off of the searchable member list.

Do not post your e-mail address in newsgroups are chat rooms. Sometimes Spammers hang out in chat rooms or read newsgroups to see who's e-mail address is posted and collect them.

Sometimes Unsubscribing works. Many people say that by clicking to unsubscribe from a advertisement list, it only verifies that your e-mail address is valid to the spammer and they will continue to send you e-mail. This may have been true at some time, but in my recent experience Unsubscribing or "Opt Out" options have actually worked... even if someone has gotten you e-mail address seemingly out of the blue. Spammers have gotten better at what they do. Instead of creating e-mail addresses at random to see which ones are real based on who replies, they often times search for real e-mail address (as mentioned above). Attempting to "Opt out" or unsubscribe from an Ad list may actually help in many cases.

Filter E-mail. E-mail programs such as Eudora, Outlook, and even online web based e-mail services often offer a filter option. Using these filter options you can enter key phrases (such as "sale", or "buy Diplomas", etc.) and forward messages to a particular folder... perhaps a "Might be Spam" folder or even "Trash." Sometimes this helps, however Spammers are getting better at coding their e-mail in HTML in special ways so that even ads with key words slip through and into your inbox. It's not 100%, but it might curve many of them.

I'm on AOL and I get hundreds of Junk E-mail every day. What can I do? Sadly, nothing. AOL sells it's users e-mail addresses to spammers (also more on that story on Slashdot). There's nothing you can do to block them or stop them... even though they claim to block millions of messages a day. This also applies to users of CompuServe which is owned by AOL.

Questions?: Contact Steve Baham here.

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	Clean all Spyware off your PC. If you have suddenly started receiving tons of spam mail after downloading some free software online (Kazaa, Mopheus, Aries, or other free download services often include a boatload of spyware and adware programs), chances are your e-mail address was captured by the spyware software that is running on your PC. To fully understand spyware, read my article here.
	Make sure your e-mail address is not available from a webpage. If you post messages on a website, use an alternate e-mail address, one that you wouldn't mind junk mail to be sent to. Spammers often have computer programs that search websites for e-mail address, which soon are added to their list of people to be sent advertisements.
	Pull your e-mail address off of online member lists. When using Hotmail or Yahoo Web mail, subscribers often are put on a searchable member list for persons searching for an e-mail address of a particular person. What started out to be a pretty nice Internet e-mail White Pages, soon became a Spammer's Mecca for finding e-mail addresses of real people. If you have put yourself on one of these lists (Bigfoot for example), remove your account or hide the e-mail address so that it's not displayed publicly. For Web mail accounts (Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Excite, etc.), check your member options to remove yourself off of the searchable member list.
	Do not post your e-mail address in newsgroups are chat rooms. Sometimes Spammers hang out in chat rooms or read newsgroups to see who's e-mail address is posted and collect them.
	Sometimes Unsubscribing works. Many people say that by clicking to unsubscribe from a advertisement list, it only verifies that your e-mail address is valid to the spammer and they will continue to send you e-mail. This may have been true at some time, but in my recent experience Unsubscribing or "Opt Out" options have actually worked... even if someone has gotten you e-mail address seemingly out of the blue. Spammers have gotten better at what they do. Instead of creating e-mail addresses at random to see which ones are real based on who replies, they often times search for real e-mail address (as mentioned above). Attempting to "Opt out" or unsubscribe from an Ad list may actually help in many cases.
	Filter E-mail. E-mail programs such as Eudora, Outlook, and even online web based e-mail services often offer a filter option. Using these filter options you can enter key phrases (such as "sale", or "buy Diplomas", etc.) and forward messages to a particular folder... perhaps a "Might be Spam" folder or even "Trash." Sometimes this helps, however Spammers are getting better at coding their e-mail in HTML in special ways so that even ads with key words slip through and into your inbox. It's not 100%, but it might curve many of them.
	I'm on AOL and I get hundreds of Junk E-mail every day. What can I do? Sadly, nothing. AOL sells it's users e-mail addresses to spammers (also more on that story on Slashdot). There's nothing you can do to block them or stop them... even though they claim to block millions of messages a day. This also applies to users of CompuServe which is owned by AOL.