War on Spam


When the topic is email, spam is a four letter word. Ooops, wait, it's a four letter word regardless!

Spam clogs our email inbox. It insults us with ridiculous offers. It disgusts us with offers for viagra and worse.

Would anyone actually buy anything from a spammer? Unfortunately, yes. And this is why spammers exist and continue to proliferate. It is easy and very inexpensive for them to generate hundreds of thousands of emails, millions even. If only 1/10th of one percent responds with an order out of 100,000 emails/spams sent out, that is 100 orders. If the product costs only $20, that is $2,000 in their pocket. It probably cost them less than a dollar to send the onslaught of emails (spam).

Now you see why they won't give up.


How To Make Them Go Away

It is very simple. Simply do not respond to them. Do not buy anything from them. Do not request information from them. Do not click on their links. Delete their emails. And tell everyone you know to do the same. If nobody responds, they will go away. Any cost at all to send spam is a waste if no one responds. So Rule #1, ignore and delete all spam. Rule #2, tell everyone you know to do the same.


How Do They Get Your Email Address?

There are a couple ways they get your email address. If you respond to anything they send, they can add it to their database of known good addresses. These are worth extra when they go to sell mailing lists. And they do sell mailing lists. That's extra profit for them. If you enter your email address while purchasing something online, there is a decent to good chance that the seller will share or sell your address with others. It's just like the old days when companies sold your name and mailing address to other retailers. Okay, so they have an online privacy policy that states they won't share your email address. Do you believe them? How can you prove they did or didn't? Don't use your primary address in such cases. Sign up for one of the free email services such as Hotmail or Yahoo or Mail.com or any of a myriad of services. Use it for online purchases and such. If it gets overrun with spam, kill it and sign up for a new one. Guard your primary address with your "life". Give it out only to trusted friends and family.

Another way they get it is when one of your family members or friends quite innocently sends you an online greeting card. Now the online greeting card service has not only theirs but your address! Two valid email addresses to share with others for a price! Tell everyone you know to never, ever use your primary email address to send an online greeting. You appreciate the greetings but don't want the spam. Tell them that if they must send one to please use your free email address (Hotmail, Yahoo, Mail.com, etc.).


But wait, there's more! Your friends may forward you a page from a joke site or poem site or some such. Again, the web site culls theirs and your address as two valid email addresses. Extra points for them! Tell your friends this is a no-no. Instead, have them copy the URL manually and send it to you in a separate email.

Still more! Some new web sites have sprung up allowing you to manage your business contacts by creating electronic business cards. Your associates think they are being more efficient by inputting everyone they know. You get an email from the web site asking you to go update your info. NO! DON'T DO IT! In fact, ask your associate to remove you immediately from their database! Then pray that the website didn't already cull your address. (Note, in the War Against Spam, my employer has recently asked us to never give out our business address to those outside the company. They have taken the "Trust No One" tact. Can you blame them?)

Don't post to Usenet newsgroups, message forums, etc. using your primary email address. Always use your free, throw away one, or a fake one. Robots (I'm not kidding here) will quickly find your address and add it to their email address lists. Some have reported this occurring within 15 minutes! Yikes!

As well, don't sign up for an email mailing or newsletter using our primary address.

If you have a personal web site, don't post your email address on it. Robots will find it. If your friend or a family member has a web site, don't let them post your email address there. Robots will find it! Instead, use a mailform. There are free ones out on the web that you can use. Your ISP may even offer one. Robots have trouble with mailforms. Tripping up a robot...that's a good thing!


What about registering software or other purchases online using your primary email address? Surely Sears or Microsoft can be trusted. NOT! Trust NO ONE! I mean no one. Use your free email address instead!

Okay, you're getting the picture now. Never, ever, ever, ever give out your primary email address to anyone except the most trusted of people. Trust no one unless they are blood (and not all of them even!) or darn good friends (not all of them either!). If they slip and give out your address to a website or whatever, jump on them and ask them to never do it again.


Still. You can be extremely protective of your primary address. You're sure it has been fully protected. You're nearly invisible. And then, one day, the spam finds you. And it grows in quantity until it becomes nearly unbearable. What happened? Some spammers don't rely on known good addresses. They use software to generate any number of random possibilities using known Internet Service Providers (ISP's). For example, more than 20 million people subscribe to the AOL service. That's a pretty huge base of potential buyers for Joe Spammer. Rather than trying to cull those addresses from any number of places, why not let software generate all the possibilities? We'll start out with joe@aol.com, then joe1@aol.com, then joe2@aol.com, etc. We'll especially target common names like joesmith@aol.com and bobjones@aol.com. And we'll hit all the big ISPs, like Earthlink, Comcast, Yahoo, Hotmail, Roadrunner, Cox, etc. We'll even target large businesses. Our software can generate millions of potentially valid addresses very quickly. We can spam every single one of them. We don't care if a huge percentage is invalid because we ignore bounced email. For us out here guarding our address, this one hurts. We can't dodge it. But if we don't respond, maybe we won't get hit again by it. At least not anytime soon.

Since that software will target common names and big ISPs, it goes without saying that selecting an unusual email address or ISP will help. You may not want to quit AOL or Earthlink but making your address unusual should help. Something like fr34am@aol.com is much less likely to be generated by the software than heather15@aol.com. And your friends don't care because they will simply add you to their address book.


What To Do When All Else Fails

So you have a primary email address you really want to keep. Common sounding or unusual sounding, for whatever reason, you don't want to change it. But the spammers have found it and are drowning you with their drivel. What now?

There are two or maybe three main defenses left.

If your ISP has a spam blocker, use it. Some of the big ones, even the free ones like Hotmail, offer this now. They work on 65-95% of the spam, depending. At this point in your state of drowning, any reduction in spam is good, right?

Next, you can use filters. Most email programs such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape, even Hotmail allow you to set up filters. You can often block by ISP, by keyword or even phrase. It's pretty likely that you will want to block any incoming email with the word Viagra in the title or body, for example. (I'm guessing anyway.) These filters aren't foolproof. The spammers easily alter their wording. Viagra become V-i-a-g-r-a or Vi@gra or Vi-agra or any number of variations. You might pass out before you enter all the variations in your filters. It's a cat and mouse game. Filters used to be pretty effective but the spammers aren't stupid, and in my opinion, the filters aren't that great anymore.

Another option is to purchase an anti-spam program. McAfee and a host of others offer such software. I am told it works pretty darn well. The downside is that it often blocks all but those emails from addresses you have previously approved of in the software configuration settings. So if a long lost relative emails you, it won't get through unless you review the quarantined mail. Or if someone in your address book changes email addresses for some reason and forgets to tell you, guess what, their email won't get through. Or if you violate one of the rules mentioned above and give your primary address to a retailer, any email from them won't get through. Unless you review the quarantined mail. These are pretty minor things in my opinion, in the War Against Spam. You have to keep these things in mind though.


So We Can Win The War On Spam?

By all means! Simply follow the rules above and tell everyone you know to do the same. It's going to take a while but we will eventually win. In the meantime, it will take a little work on your part and mine. But we can do it!


More On The Subject

Visit the War On Spam web site. It is not affiliated with this site, but it has more information related to spam.

Remember, your goal is to someday be 100% spam-free!