Spam is like venereal disease. You don’t get VD from sitting on a toilet seat. You get it by doing something dumb.
It’s the same with spam email. If you get it, it’s because you engaged in unsafe computing behavior.
Maybe you posted your email “in the clear” on a website where spambots could find it. These are electronic web crawlers that copy every string of letters that have an @ in the middle of them and add them to the spammers’ email lists.
Or perhaps you got a spam email and naïvely clicked the “remove me from the list” link, which perversely merely tells the spammer that you’re a valid address, so you’ll get even more spam.
Once you’re on a spammer’s list, you will never, ever, ever get off.
Spammers sell their lists to each other and they combine them willy-nilly without doing the “merge/purge” or list-cleaning functions that any legitimate postal mass mailer will use.
Spam exists only because email is free. If spammers find only one pinhead out of 100,000 people who falls for their phony spiels and sends in ten dollars, they make a profit because those other 99,999 emails cost them nothing.
(I don’t want government interference in the web, but it’s worth noting that if every email cost just one penny, it would be an insignificant cost to individuals, but spam would disappear overnight.)
Spammers are clever criminals. When banished from one ISP (Internet Service Provider), they’ll jump to another — or pay bribery to a corrupt one.
And before you whine about “junk mail” in your real mailbox, you’d better understand that if direct mail, catalogs, and magazines weren’t subsidizing the Postal Service, you’d be paying through the nose to mail that occasional letter to Aunt Matilda. The U.S. Mail only works because of volume. (Have you sent an envelope by FedEx lately? That’s what your stamp would cost.)
In case you were wondering, the magic number for snail-mail direct mailers is 2%. If at least two out of every hundred people don’t respond to their solicitation, it’s stopped because it’s uneconomic. This guarantees that in addition to postal “junk” mail helping support the Postal Service, only mailings for products or services that fulfill a legitimate need will survive.
THE GOOD news is that you can be spam-free. I get at most one or two spam emails a month, and it’s been that way for five years. I don’t even have my ISP’s spam filter turned on!
THE BAD news is that to get to this state, you will need to change your email address and start fresh. You can never make a tainted email address clean again.
THE UGLY “solution” is that some people clumsily force their correspondents to go through machinations to “register” their email addresses. This is like making all your friends get tested for AIDS because of behavior you engaged in. It is especially nettling because many web users have multiple email addresses that we send from, forcing us to jump through your hoops over and over again.
Yes, it’s a pain to let all your friends know you’ve changed your email. But if you do it right, you only need to do it once. (And most of you could use a shorter or more memorable address anyway. Take a few minutes to try some different ones, and don’t use whatever number-jumble your ISP throws at you as the default.)
The points below are common-sense explanations of why you get spam and what you should do to avoid it in the future.
The content is from http://gnwda.org/nospam.htm
I have deleted their point #18 because it’s a hustle for a paid spam-blocking service. Only a fool pays to block spam. All the tools you need are your ISP’s spam filters and your own common sense.
Note: Mac users can easily configure a “bounce” button on their Apple Mail toolbar. This will send it back to the sender as an invalid address. But it’s merely a more sophisticated option. Hitting the delete key works for any email application.
1. Be private. Do not give out your email address in the first place. In many instances if you are required to give your email address in order to receive something off a website, give an email address that you have set up specifically to receive junk. Some people then choose “nospam@----“ for their private address.
2. You can also set up a fake email address at such places as hotmail.com or yahoo.com; these email accounts are free.
3. Look for options to opt out of receiving promotional mailings when you have to give your address.
4. Preview all email by reading their subject lines before opening the mail. If you’re using an email program, such as Outlook, use the “View” menu to set the “Layout” to show only the subject lines, so you can select what you want to delete without opening the mail. Treat every email you preview as being of a suspicious nature. Many harmless-looking emails with attachments may contain viruses. Many people succumbed to the “I love you” email that contained a virus.
5. When you receive a forwarded email asking for help or money from someone, and in return you will have eternal good luck (or bad luck if you don’t forward it), do not forward it on. It is likely to be a hoax and is a great way for spammers to cultivate email addresses. Many virus warning emails are a hoax as well. You should research virus warnings before telling your friends about it so you don’t spread the hoax to them. (Research only takes a minute; see “Viruses, Legends & Lies”)
6. When forwarding emails to groups of people, send them via the BCC field; this shields their address from others. Ask others to send emails to you this way, too.
7. Use the filters function, if your email program or service provides them, to filter out unwanted emails that do or do not meet certain criteria.
8. Keep your name off mailing lists, chat rooms and newsgroups by not giving out your correct address in the first place.
9. If your email address is on a website, ask your web designer to transform it in to a picture or change the @ sign to # so that it’s not recognized by the ‘robots’ that come to steal email addresses for mailing lists.
10. Many spam messages have instructions at the bottom of the message asking you to reply to the message if you want to be removed from their mailing list. Don’t do this, as it will only confirm that your address is valid and active and you will most likely be hit with more spam.
11. Check the email address of the sender: Do you recognize it?
12. Watch out for fake headers. These are in the subject line and are commonly “Dear Friend.....” or “Here’s the information you requested.”
13. Never buy anything from a spammer’s email, even if it is something you want, as it is likely to be fraudulent.
14. You can complain to the spammer’s internet service provider by sending an email to abuse@ [the domain] or postmaster@ [the domain].
15. Don’t reply to contests in your email or offers of free websites, nor send money to anti-spam organizations, as they are most likely hoaxes.
16. Don’t submit your address to Opt-out or removal lists, as these are a hoax and you will end up getting more spam.
17. Be sure to have antivirus software installed on your computer. While you may be able to recognize an email with a strange attachment without opening it, a picture or Word document may harbor also a virus.
It’s the same with spam email. If you get it, it’s because you engaged in unsafe computing behavior.
Maybe you posted your email “in the clear” on a website where spambots could find it. These are electronic web crawlers that copy every string of letters that have an @ in the middle of them and add them to the spammers’ email lists.
Or perhaps you got a spam email and naïvely clicked the “remove me from the list” link, which perversely merely tells the spammer that you’re a valid address, so you’ll get even more spam.
Once you’re on a spammer’s list, you will never, ever, ever get off.
Spammers sell their lists to each other and they combine them willy-nilly without doing the “merge/purge” or list-cleaning functions that any legitimate postal mass mailer will use.
Spam exists only because email is free. If spammers find only one pinhead out of 100,000 people who falls for their phony spiels and sends in ten dollars, they make a profit because those other 99,999 emails cost them nothing.
(I don’t want government interference in the web, but it’s worth noting that if every email cost just one penny, it would be an insignificant cost to individuals, but spam would disappear overnight.)
Spammers are clever criminals. When banished from one ISP (Internet Service Provider), they’ll jump to another — or pay bribery to a corrupt one.
And before you whine about “junk mail” in your real mailbox, you’d better understand that if direct mail, catalogs, and magazines weren’t subsidizing the Postal Service, you’d be paying through the nose to mail that occasional letter to Aunt Matilda. The U.S. Mail only works because of volume. (Have you sent an envelope by FedEx lately? That’s what your stamp would cost.)
In case you were wondering, the magic number for snail-mail direct mailers is 2%. If at least two out of every hundred people don’t respond to their solicitation, it’s stopped because it’s uneconomic. This guarantees that in addition to postal “junk” mail helping support the Postal Service, only mailings for products or services that fulfill a legitimate need will survive.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
THE BAD news is that to get to this state, you will need to change your email address and start fresh. You can never make a tainted email address clean again.
THE UGLY “solution” is that some people clumsily force their correspondents to go through machinations to “register” their email addresses. This is like making all your friends get tested for AIDS because of behavior you engaged in. It is especially nettling because many web users have multiple email addresses that we send from, forcing us to jump through your hoops over and over again.
Yes, it’s a pain to let all your friends know you’ve changed your email. But if you do it right, you only need to do it once. (And most of you could use a shorter or more memorable address anyway. Take a few minutes to try some different ones, and don’t use whatever number-jumble your ISP throws at you as the default.)
The points below are common-sense explanations of why you get spam and what you should do to avoid it in the future.
The content is from http://gnwda.org/nospam.htm
I have deleted their point #18 because it’s a hustle for a paid spam-blocking service. Only a fool pays to block spam. All the tools you need are your ISP’s spam filters and your own common sense.
Note: Mac users can easily configure a “bounce” button on their Apple Mail toolbar. This will send it back to the sender as an invalid address. But it’s merely a more sophisticated option. Hitting the delete key works for any email application.
1. Be private. Do not give out your email address in the first place. In many instances if you are required to give your email address in order to receive something off a website, give an email address that you have set up specifically to receive junk. Some people then choose “nospam@----“ for their private address.
2. You can also set up a fake email address at such places as hotmail.com or yahoo.com; these email accounts are free.
3. Look for options to opt out of receiving promotional mailings when you have to give your address.
4. Preview all email by reading their subject lines before opening the mail. If you’re using an email program, such as Outlook, use the “View” menu to set the “Layout” to show only the subject lines, so you can select what you want to delete without opening the mail. Treat every email you preview as being of a suspicious nature. Many harmless-looking emails with attachments may contain viruses. Many people succumbed to the “I love you” email that contained a virus.
5. When you receive a forwarded email asking for help or money from someone, and in return you will have eternal good luck (or bad luck if you don’t forward it), do not forward it on. It is likely to be a hoax and is a great way for spammers to cultivate email addresses. Many virus warning emails are a hoax as well. You should research virus warnings before telling your friends about it so you don’t spread the hoax to them. (Research only takes a minute; see “Viruses, Legends & Lies”)
6. When forwarding emails to groups of people, send them via the BCC field; this shields their address from others. Ask others to send emails to you this way, too.
7. Use the filters function, if your email program or service provides them, to filter out unwanted emails that do or do not meet certain criteria.
8. Keep your name off mailing lists, chat rooms and newsgroups by not giving out your correct address in the first place.
9. If your email address is on a website, ask your web designer to transform it in to a picture or change the @ sign to # so that it’s not recognized by the ‘robots’ that come to steal email addresses for mailing lists.
10. Many spam messages have instructions at the bottom of the message asking you to reply to the message if you want to be removed from their mailing list. Don’t do this, as it will only confirm that your address is valid and active and you will most likely be hit with more spam.
11. Check the email address of the sender: Do you recognize it?
12. Watch out for fake headers. These are in the subject line and are commonly “Dear Friend.....” or “Here’s the information you requested.”
13. Never buy anything from a spammer’s email, even if it is something you want, as it is likely to be fraudulent.
14. You can complain to the spammer’s internet service provider by sending an email to abuse@ [the domain] or postmaster@ [the domain].
15. Don’t reply to contests in your email or offers of free websites, nor send money to anti-spam organizations, as they are most likely hoaxes.
16. Don’t submit your address to Opt-out or removal lists, as these are a hoax and you will end up getting more spam.
17. Be sure to have antivirus software installed on your computer. While you may be able to recognize an email with a strange attachment without opening it, a picture or Word document may harbor also a virus.
