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Fighting Spam
What is Spam?
We are not talking about the meat in a can (luncheon meat). As least with that kind of spam, you
can eat it and satisfy your hunger. It's the inedible, electronic spam that annoys every Internet user. Yes, we're
referring to the deluge of unsolicited mails that hogs your connection and waste both your time and money.
The contents of spam ranges from the advertising of certain products or services, chain letters,
get-rich-quick schemes to Internet hoaxes. Often the sender of the email will use fictitious name and email addresses
to elude the possibility of tracing back to the source. Spamming is considered one of the cheapest means of Internet
marketing as it cost the sender an iota of what it cost the recipients.
How do spammers get email addresses?
Below are some of the most common ways which spammers collect email addresses. They are not
listed in any order but if you get a new email address, it will be wise to avoid the following.
- Spammers are known to collect email address from their spam as well. How is that possible you may wonder? Ever
receive any petitions or chain mails that ask you to sign your name then forward it to your friends? They will
usually ask every 100th hundred recipient to forward the list to a particular address. When the mail gets forwarded
umpteen times, you can scroll down and see the email address of all the previous people who signed up.
One of the more memorable spam employing this method is the appeal to the United Nations to stop U.S. from attacking
Afghanistan. Anyone with common sense will know that the United Nations will not entertain petitions via email.
Furthermore, if you were to visit the UN web site, you will see a notice disclaiming any validity to the spam too.
Besides petition and chain letters, there are people who would be more than willing to sell your email address.
The victims are usually friends of the Internet users with little or no email etiquette. Chain e-mails are often
forwarded by less savvy and gullible friends who will believe just about anything. When they forward jokes and
such, they fail to use the Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) and carelessly put all their friends' addresses in the To or
CC email field. Many direct marketing companies are more than willing to purchase and resell such list.
- Senders of junk email could also gather email addresses from Usenet News postings. They would write a
short program to sift out email addresses without having to read these postings.
- Email addresses collection off the web through programs that crawl the World Wide Web is also very common.
These programs will search all the web pages they encounter and look for the signature of an email address.
Thus, it's not advisable to sign guestbook with your frequently used email address. If you need to, get a yahoo
email and use that for signing up for whatever newsletter or mailing list from the web.
Interestingly, there are sites that produces a list of randomly generated fake address in retaliation against
the crawlers. See Fight Spam!
- It is also wise to avoid putting your email address when filling up lucky draw coupons or surveys. Many have
reported an increased number of junk mails when they have done so.
Never click on link at the bottom of spam or junk mail that tells you that you can only
unsubscribe if you click on it. If you do, you are only alerting the spammer that your email address is active
and you do read spams. This results in further unsolicited junk mail in your inbox.
What To Do?
So what should you do if you receive such emails? Here are some pointers.
- Check out Hoaxbusters to verify the validity of the e-mail.
- If you cannot resist the urge to forward the e-mail, insert the receipient's e-mail address in the BCC
(Blind Carbon Copy) field, so that other recipients will not be able to see the addresses.
- When forwarding unimportant email, delete the original sender's address in case the e-mail ends up in the
wrong hands.
- Do not reply to spams or click on the link in the email suggesting that you can unsubscribe from it. This only
tells the spammer that your email address is valid and you are checking your emails. They will continue to spam you
using another email address.
- In some cases, emails can contain offensive images or can contain invisible images that tell the sender that you
have opened that email (and thus verify that your email address is active). To prevent spammers from subjecting you
to these images, you may wish to prevent all images from loading until you are satisfied that they are safe to view.
Yahoo! Mail has this security feature that protects you from spam.
- If sender is someone you know, contact them and inform them not to do it again.
- Set your e-mail program to filter out the address if you do not know the sender.
- Use your anti-virus program to scan suspicious email before opening a file. Where possible, do not open any
attachment with a ba[st], chm, cmd, com, cpl, crt, eml, exe, hlp, hta, in[fs], isp, jse?, lnk, md[be], ms[cipt], pcd,
pif, reg, scr, sct, shs, url, vb[se], ws[fhc] extension.
Double Trouble
Did you know that under legislation governing pyramid selling and fraud, you could be in trouble if you sent an e-mail
to him promising a recipient future income? You could, if the recipient believed the e-mail and followed as
instructed (perhaps even sending money), and then lodged a police report against you if you did not fulfill your
promise.
Under the Computer Misuse Act, sending repeated unsolicited e-mails to someone could be construed as harassment and
liable for legal action. Your ISP may take action against you too, if you use your ISP account to send out such spams
and hoaxes.
Reporting Spams
There are web sites that allows you to file a complaint to the sender's ISP and network
administrators so they can take action against the sender.
Check out some of the following.
Useful Links on Spams
News on Spams
Real Threats
Of course if there are hoaxes, there must be real threats on the Internet too. Visit
CIAC (Computer Incident Advisory Capability) regularly to learn about real threats.
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