The Problem

Junk-mail, Spam, Unsolicited commercial e-mails(UCEs). These are all familiar names for what most email account owners simply call a nuisance. Whatever you call it, there are measures you can take to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of an exsessive amount of spam, and even reclaim a spam ridden inbox. The problems cuased by spam range from the petty annoyance of having to press delete once in a while, to having your inbox so routinely filled that you are left with no other option than to change e-mail address.

How do I know if this is real spam?

Spam is e-mail commonly defined by meeting the following specifications:

• Has the commercial intent of getting the reciever to click on a link or buy something
• You have not given the sender permission to send you updates, newsletters or product information
• They ask you to reply or click a link to be removed from their mailing list
• It just keeps coming

How did they get my address?

Spammers grab email addresses from any source that's available to them. From websites to directories and even from other spammers. In order to protect yourself from abuse, you have to make yourself hard to abuse. Being pro-active means you notice you are heading into a problem and you avoid it before it happens. This is the best way to combat spam and here are some common tips you can follow to avoid becoming a target.

Be hard to find - Posting e-mail addresses on message boards, newsgroups, web sites, chat rooms and other places open to the general public should be avoided. A lot of times, email addresses are gathered by bots, that is, simple computer programs meant to search the internet for email addresses. Most of the bots are simple creatures and can be easily fooled. If you have to give your email address out, use a simple code to "encrypt" it. For example "[email protected]" or "josh at myisp dot com." Once your human friend knows of your spam concern, they'll easily understand the email address. Should a bot come along, scooping up email addresses, they will see this and record "[email protected]," instead.

Don't give you e-mail address to spammers - Entering your e-mail address into forms online, is another risky activity. In most cases, a privacy policy or statement on the same page telling you expressly why and how your email address will be used. Read the part about your e-mail address carefully. If it doesn't mention what its going to do with your e-mail address, or the page contains no privacy policy or statement what so ever, you can assume it'll sell your address to the highest bidder.

Don't use your personal address - Use dummy e-mail addresses to sign up for web sites. Often, you can set up a secondary account and use it whenever a web site asks for your e-mail address. In other circumstances you may wish to set up more than one for different uses.

Help! I'm under attack!

If you find yourself already the target of excessive spam, here are some things you can do to help aliviate the situation.

Do not respond - Replying to a spam message lets the spammer know that you're there, and that you're listening, possibly clicking what they want you to click. This is one of the worst things you can do.

Do not click "remove me" - Or anything else within the e-mail message for that matter. In the first days of direct marketing online, honorable companies provided people who have opted to recieve newsletters and updates a way to unsubscribe from the mailing list. This is not true of spammers. They simply want you to click an address to generate hits or to confirm that you have a live address.

Filter - One of the best ways to eliminate spam is to filter it out. Most e-mail providers today will give you a set of options that will grab keywords or addresses and let you decide who you get e-mail from. Your e-mail provider will probably have to keep very up-to-date as most filter technologies have some work around that will allow spammers to sneak a few messages through. You can also install software that'll let you filter and report spam with just a few clicks. Spam Inspector is one of the most powerful and popular. If you use Outlook or Outlook express you may want to try something called iHateSpam.

Report - If filtering isn't good enough or you don't want to risk filtering out an actual e-mail from someone you know, reporting spam is the best thing you can do to combat this menace. There are many places you can report spam to, some for a fee and some do it for free. www.spamAbuse.org is a good free service that will let you easily send reports. spamCop.net lets you report spam once you register and for $30/year, they'll give you a webmail account with sophisticated filtering technology and the ability to keep using your existing email program. Something similar to Hotmail.

uber-|337-hacker method

If the title above this paragraph made any sense to you, here are some more advanced methods to take a hand in personally dealing with spammers. These instructions are meant for computer and internet users with a bit more expeirence than your regular Joe-e-mailer.

If the spam you're recieving contains a link to a web site, and most of them do, you'll be able to complain to someone who has the power to shut them down directly. Step one is finding the domain. Mostly likely you'll see a long address. You'll only need the "company.com" part. Next open any domain registering company's web site. This author chose www.godaddy.com. Then proform a whois search on the domain from the email, and look for the information under Registrar. Once you have this information, step four is looking up the registrar's website. There you should find an e-mail address to contact them personally, if not a specific form or email address meant for reporting spammers.

If you're reporting a large amount of spam to different domain registrars, to save time, once you have the domain of the domain registrar's web site, you can send your report to [email protected] and [email protected]. It's a safe bet that either of those two addresses will work.

The end

There is a war against spam and We can be innocent by standers or soldiers. The best way to combat spam is to avoid getting it in the first place. And if you personally know a spammer, let them know that it doesn't sell anything, the books they've read about getting rich on the internet are wrong, and it just wastes people's time. Spammers do not last long in a hostile environment. So let us make our mailboxes a hostile environment! :D

Copyright (c) 2003 by Josh Anderson. All rights reserved.