Avoiding Spam Email

Tips to Avoid Spam Email

What is spam? Basically, spam email is unsolicited email sent with the purpose of getting the recipient to spend money on whatever the email is hawking, or tricking the recipient into sharing bank account or credit card information.

Most spam carries a commercial advertising message, often for shady merchandise, get-rich-quick schemes, or other suspect services.

Unlike the catalogs and other junk you get in your postal mailbox, spam email costs spammers very little to send, as almost all of the costs are paid by the spam recipients and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

The goal of a spammer is to get just one single response from a spam message. Because their costs are so low, that one response will be all profit to them, and they are willing to send out ten thousand emails to get that response.

It makes no difference to them that the rest of the users on the internet have to pay the price for their spam email.

"SPAM", in all caps, is a registered trademark that refers to the luncheon meat. Use "spam" when referring to junk email.

Spam happens in all email accounts connected to the internet. The only way to avoid it is to disconnect your computer from the internet. Since this solution won’t work for most people, the burden is put on the internet service provider (ISP) to try and stop the spam email.

The ISPs put into place software and hardware to try and stop spam email, but it’s an ongoing battle.

The spammers are constantly changing their mail addresses and the subject and body of the messages they send. So the ISP can’t just write a rule that will “look for” a specific characteristic and call it spam. They can look for certain word combinations, sexually oriented words, or the like, but they aren’t always successful in identifying spam email correctly.

Your ISP walks a fine line between identifying and blocking spam, and letting your “good” mail go through to your account. Sometimes good mail is identified as spam and deleted accidentally. This is called a "false positive" event.

Here’s a statistic to put your ISP’s (and the internet's)problem into perspective:

"AT&T WorldNet says it rejects 10 million to 12 million e-mails a day because the addresses don't match real users' email addresses…a sure sign that spammers are at work." - Newsweek

So if you don’t get a message once in a while, you can see why. It’s the price paid by everyone for being able to use a mail account that isn’t inundated with spam.

Many ISPs have begun to put into place “white listing” tools for their users. White listing basically means the email recipient can add the email addresses of the senders from who they want mail to a list on their mail account. Messages sent from anyone who is NOT on the “white list” are automatically refused by the ISP.

There are some things you can do to help out your ISP and limit the amount of spam email that targets your email address.

Steps to Limit Spam in Your Email Account

1. Don’t post your email address anywhere on the internet. Spammers send out pieces of software to scour the internet for addresses posted on websites and in chat rooms, so don’t let them see yours. If you’ve already done this, and been deluged with spam, you’ll know what I mean. Start clean with a new email address. If you do choose to use chat rooms, use a screen name that is not associated with your e-mail address.

2. Don’t reply to spam. This verifies the address is good to the spammer. At that point, they will really start mail bombing you.

3. Use a unique e-mail address. Create an email address that is hard for spammers to guess and easy for you to remember. Spammers will associate common names with domains to “guess” at valid email addresses to which they can send spam.

4. Get an internet mail account that allows you to use multiple e-mail addresses. Set up several that you don’t use for anything else except buying online, or using in a chat room. If these addresses then start to get spammed, you can just delete the address and create a new one.

5. Beware of email offers that sound too good to be true. Spammers will use “phishing” schemes to try and dupe you out of your credit card number. A phishing scheme will use an email that “looks” like it came from your credit card company, or from eBay, or some other well known company with which the spammer hopes you have an account. The email will say that your credit card has expired on your account, and could you please send the number again. Reputable companies will NEVER ask you to verify your credit card number via an email. Delete any email that asks this.

6. Be aware that there’s a new type of spam called "pop up spam". It travels via the Microsoft Windows Messenger Service. It is a stream of "pop up" messages that stop you from using your computer until you close them. You can avoid this new form of spam by disabling Windows Messenger Service. Here are the steps: Click Start, and then click Control Panel (or point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.) Double-click Administrative Tools. Double-click Services. Double-click Messenger. In the Startup type list, click Disabled. Click Stop, and then click OK.

7. Report spam to your ISP. Mostly likely, your ISP has some way for you to do this easily. For instance, my mail account has a button that says Report Spam at the top of my web mail window. I just check off the offensive message and click Report Spam. The message is automatically deleted and I’ve done my part to tell my ISP about this spam so they can block it.

If you would like more information on spam, Wikipedia has an excellent article on spam here.

Done with Spam Email, take me back to Email Etiquette

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