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Spam Prevention - 8 Simple Rules
What is spam? Spam is unsolicited email sent out in bulk,
usually from addresses “harvested” from the web. A small percentage
of spam may tout legitimate services, but most are fraudulent.
They are either trying to sell something worthless or illegal,
or they are trying to con people into revealing confidential information
such as bank account numbers. Spam is not, however, just any piece
of email that you didn’t want. Often signing up for
services and accounts on the web gives permission to the
service provider
to send you email about their products as well as those of
their business partners. Be careful about what you agree
to when setting
up new accounts (and downloading software, entering online
contests, etc.). Most reputable companies allow their customers
to opt
out of these email lists.
So, now that we know what spam is and isn’t, here’s
how to avoid (or at least reduce) the real thing.
1) Don't Respond
The first rule is this – never, ever
respond to a piece of email you think is spam, no matter
how good
the
deal seems.
In fact, the better the deal, the more likely fraud is involved.
My favorite is the offer from a Nigerian lawyer offering
to share his millions with you. All you have to do is wire
him a few hundred
(or a few thousand) dollars to get the paperwork started.
(For some reason he needs someone with a US bank account
to get his
money.) If everyone followed this rule, there wouldn’t
be any spam. It only takes a very tiny fraction of people
responding to the email to make it worthwhile to the spammer.
2) Forget About It
The second rule is this – don’t
respond to the email! (Didn’t you read rule #1?)
Don’t
try to track down who sent you the email to report them.
It can
be done, but it’s
easy to get fooled. Spammers often hijack computers of innocent
people to do their dirty work, or they hide their true identity
with false email header information. Also, don't fall for
the "remove me" links often found at the end of the email.
While a legitimate business will include a method for "opting
out" of email, the spammers just use the link to verify that
your address is valid (see rule #3)
3) Don't Open It
Don’t even open spam email. Just delete
it and forget about it. Why? Spammers often include links
to
graphic
images
in their messages. If you have an email program that can
display HTML
files (and most do - Outlook, Eudora, Mail all do), the graphic
gets downloaded to your computer, alerting the sender that
your email address is valid (many on the spammer’s
list won’t
be). Confirmed valid emails are worth more, so they’re
likely to turn around and sell your email address to even
more spammers.
Some of the programs, such as Mail (included with Mac OS
X) have the option to turn off the viewing of embedded images
in HTML-based
email. If available, use this feature.
4) Contests/Giveaways
Don’t sign up for contests (or other
services) from sources you don’t trust 100%. Essentially
all contests, drawings, etc. on the web are created to gather
information, especially email
addresses. Even when dealing with a reputable company, be
careful when signing up and read the privacy policy to see
how your information
will be used. If you don’t want extra junk mail, be
sure to opt out of all of the subscriptions; the better companies
have
an opt-in process, where you won’t get any email unless
you explicitly sign up for it.
5) Newsgroups
Don’t publish your email address on a
newsgroup. Newsgroups can be a great source of information.
You can
read answers
to posted questions and post your own questions. However,
including your email
address in the message can be a big mistake. Newsgroup postings
are among the favorite places for spammers to harvest
email addresses. If you are going to post your address, use
a disposable one (see rule #8) or try
to obfuscate it (see rule #7)
6) Personal Webpage
Don’t publish your email address
on a webpage as this is another favorite place for spammers
to get email
addresses. Most webpages include an email link as a way for
readers to contact the author. However, it’s relatively
easy for spammers to employ programs (called “spiders” or “robots”)
that search the web for email addresses. Therefore, if you’re
going to include your email address, be sure to obfuscate
it. One way is to manually change the address to fool the
spammers’ programs
while keeping it readable by humans. An example would be
to change noreply@supereasyadvice.com to “noreply –at-
supereasyadvice.com”.
The reader would know to replace the “-at-“ with “@”.
Another way is to change the email address by adding extra
words, rendering the email address invalid. An example would
be noreply(remove-this-text)@supereasyadvice.com.
The reader would know to remove the extraneous text, but
the robot couldn't tell the difference. Another way is to
use an email obfuscator (such as Quarella)
which renders your email
address in HTML code rather than plain text. It looks the
same to your viewers, but it’s invisible to the spammer
programs. The address noreply@supereasyadvice.com is coded
like this: < SCRIPT language="javascript">eval(unescape('%64%6f%63%
75%6d%65%6e%74%2e%77%72%69%74%65%28%27%3c%
61%20%68%72%65%66%3d%22%6d%61%69%6c%74%6f%
3a%6e%6f%72%65%70%6c%79%40%73%75%70%65%72%
65%61%73%79%61%64%76%69%63%65%2e%63%6f%6d%
22%3e%6e%6f%72%65%70%6c%79%40%73%75%70%65%
72%65%61%73%79%61%64%76%69%63%65%2e%63%6f%
6d%3c%2f%61%3e%27%29%3b'))</SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT>
<
a href="http://www.quarella.co.uk/email/spamproof-noscript.html">
[spam-blocked email address]</a></NOSCRIPT>
Don't worry - on the webpage it will look like this:
7) Filtering
Use an email service with
good spam filtering. If your email provider isn’t blocking
out spam, consider switching. Yahoo, for example, does a
particularly
good job at filtering
out unwanted
email. When a piece of spam does make it through, you can
flag it so that their filters will be more likely to catch
similar
ones in the future.
8) Disposable Email
Use disposable email
addresses. The best way to avoid spam is to not have an email
address.
While that’s not practical,
the next best thing is to have disposable addresses. Some
email services, such as Apple’s .Mac and Yahoo mail,
offer several email aliases with each account. You can keep
your main address
safe by only using it with very trusted sources, such as
friends, and you can create other addresses which you use
with sources that
you’re not so sure about. If they ever start getting
hit with a lot of spam, they can be deleted and a new one
created in
it’s place.