Dealing With Spam

Fighting Spam by Avoiding Spam - Choose Your Address Carefully

Please note: If you have an e-mail account long enough, you will get spam. Don't beat yourself up trying to avoid it - you can't. With these tips though, you should be able to at least keep it to a manageable level!

One of the very best ways of dealing with spam is to make sure we don't get it in the first place!

As many people have found out to their cost, you don't even have to give your e-mail address to anybody, or even use it, to be the lucky recipient of sleazy advertising. Read on...

There are many ways in which a resourceful spammer can get hold of your address, and one of the most often overlooked is that they (or their software) guess it!
Yes, if you happen to be called John Smith and your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is AOL, then I'm going to make a pretty good guess at your e-mail address! If it isn't you, it will be someone else. That is the thing that makes spamming the lowest form of advertising. They don't care exactly who they are sending their stuff to, just as long as someone - and lots of people - get it.

I don't know about you, but this seems to me like hanging off a highway bridge in the rain and dropping a million leaflets onto the road below in the hope that a couple will land face down on the windscreen of a couple of cars and force the drivers to read it. They don't care about the inconvenience or the mess. It's not their problem. Ugly - but true. We're not dealing with rocket scientists here!

Anyway, back to your address: You see what I'm getting at here? To have "JohnSmith@aol.com", "JSmith@msn.com", etc... is simply asking to be spammed - and spammed often.
You know those "cutesy" addresses you see now and again: "1980babygirl@someisp.com"? If "BabyGirl" is as careful as she should be, she'll be getting a lot less spam than you will John! Let's get creative.

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Be Careful What You Do With Your Address!

OK, you've got your shiny new e-mail address; the "dot.coms" and the @ signs are all neatly arranged and it's your very, very own. You're eager to start using it right?

Well, think about this: that address of yours is quite a valuable commodity. Well, not just yours exactly, but yours and a few million others that change hands regularly for some serious amounts of money. It will be sold over and over again, re-sold, traded many times over.
Each lucky new recipient gets a chance at using your internet service, your computer and your time to bombard you with inane, and very often extremely offensive advertising materials.
Doesn't seem right does it? Damn straight - it isn't! Here are some tips on dealing with spam by keeping your address from being abused in this way:

• Watch the Web Forms - It seems that most anywhere you go on the internet these days, you are asked for your e-mail address. Unless you can see there is a good legitimate reason to part with it, try to avoid it at all costs.
  
  Now, this depends a lot on who is doing the asking. If a large, reputable company, such as Amazon.com is asking, then I would bet you're pretty safe - they will be as active in fighting spam as you. They neither need to, nor would risk spamming or abusing your e-mail address. If it is a little known internet site demanding your address for no apparent reason and with whom you would desire no further contact after your visit, then it's time to either go elsewhere or become the now infamous: "jlkjlkj@jhkjlk.com" (apologies if someone actually has that address, but at the last count you were registered with about a gazzillion web sites across the globe).
  
  If you do provide your address, take a careful look for those check boxes that hint at what they will do with your address. Read them carefully. I have seen things such as: " Check here if you do not wish us to keep your address from inclusion in our weekly advertising messages and/or to be passed to selected affiliates or partners of our site". Say what???
  
  Here's a tip for the more seasoned netizens among us: If you have your own domain name with a "catchall" address, where anything at that domain would come through to you, consider giving an e-mail address which contains the name of the site you are giving it to. For instance, if you visiting "joeschmoewindows.com" and they ask for your address, give "joeschmoewindows@yourdomain.com".
  This way, if you start getting spam at that address, you know exactly where it originated from, you can block that address from your inbox and you know where to send "The Boys"- just kidding...
  
  
• Don't Post Your Address on Newsgroups! - Newsgroups are one of the nicest places for e-mail address harvesters to hang around. Harvesting of e-mail addresses can be done either by a human (well, a spammer anyway) on a small scale, or by software on a huge scale.
  A harvester basically crawls around the internet extracting e-mail addresses from wherever it can find them and adding them to its database. They can be extremely efficient and will get your address if you are foolish enough to leave it on a newsgroup posting.
  One fresh, unused address once received a spam message nine minutes after posting it on a newsgroup! Oh yes, they'll find you...
  
  This brings us to the subject of obfuscation. "Obfuscating" or "munging" are two particularly ugly words that refer to the practice of purposely making your address unintelligible to automated harvesters, while easily understood by human readers. (By the way, "Mung" stands for "Mash Until No Good")
  
  Computers, despite apparent evidence suggesting the exact opposite, are eminently stupid machines being guided by intelligent people. As such, they require definite blatant "pointers" to what they are looking for.
  In the case of e-mail addresses, it is the format of an address which makes them take notice: "xxxxxxx@xxxxx.com", or something like that. If we can get away from that format while still making it obvious what we mean for human readers, then we will be dealing with spam by avoiding the harvester's grasp. Here are some examples for our friend John Smith:
  
  "JohnSmith[at]aol.com"
  "JohnSmith@aol[DotCom]"
  "JohnSmith[Put @ sign here]aol.com"
  "John(NoSpam)Smith@aol.com"
  
  
• Use BCC! - There are three places in an e-mail message where a delivery address can be placed. The first, and most often used is the "To:". Underneath that there is a "CC:" address. CC stands for "Carbon Copy" which, as the name suggests, sends a copy of the message to any addresses placed there.
  There is a third place for addresses which is often overlooked. This is the "BCC" or "Blind Carbon Copy".
  This third place acts as a "CC" with the notable exception that any addresses in this section do not show up in the e-mail.
  Remember that if you are sending, or forwarding, a message with a list of names in the "To" or "CC" sections, then anybody that gets that message, either directly, or from a forward further down the chain gets to see those addresses. Responsible "netiquette" dictates that one should help others in fighting spam by removing those addresses, or move them to BCC before broadcasting everyone's address for them!
  
  
• Placing Your Address on Your Web Site - Just as harvesters love to crawl around newsgroups collecting e-mail address, they will also "crawl" around the internet harvesting addresses from web sites.
  This will mean that if you have your e-mail address on a web site, it will be picked up and used by spammers.
  
  Many businesses just accept this as "coming with the territory" and will use other methods of dealing with spam once it arrives rather than inconvenience their customers in any way, but there are still one or two things that can be done to help stop it arriving in the first place. Private users can be far more creative:
  
  Consider using address "obfuscation" as outlined in the above section about newsgroups.
  
  Consider creating a graphic - a picture of your e-mail address and placing that on your web site. The harvesters can't read it. The only problem with this approach is that ideally you would like it to act like a link and open the users e-mail program when they click on it. To do this requires a "mailto:" link, which defeats the purpose as a harvester will read the address from that link.
  
  This is where our little utility comes in handy. See the "Address Obfuscator" on the left of this page? Enter a name for your link, your e-mail address and click "Obfuscate". Quick as a flash it will generate some HTML code for you to place in your web site.
  As you can see from the generated code, your e-mail address is not visible, yet when viewed in a browser it becomes a normal "mailto:" link.
  You're welcome ...
  
  One last thing about web sites. Why not do even better and provide a form for your visitors to type their message direct to you. If you don't know how to do this yourself, ask your webmaster, your ISP or scout around the internet for the many free scripts available.

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Use Multiple Accounts

Many people keep separate addresses for "at risk" use and private use for friends and important contacts.
This is where those "free" addresses provided by people like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc... are quite handy.
In the past, the record of services such as these for keeping spam out of their user's boxes has been less than stellar, but they do have the advantage that if your spam rate increases beyond manageable levels, you can simply create another account and stop using the previous one.
It is worth having at least one of these "throwaway" addresses for when you are not 100% comfortable about parting with your "precious" one.

I even have one or two "black hole" addresses. These are free addresses of the type mentioned before that are set up to immediately send mail into the trash can! Well, it takes a little pressure off of our friend "jlkjlkj@jhkjlk.com" doesn't it?

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Fighting Spam - What To Do When You Get Spam

Maybe this would have been better titled: "What not to do when you get spam". Unless you're a proactive spam warrior (we'll get to you guys later), it really is more of a case of what not to do. Read on...

Now, I'm only gong to say this once. For the sensitive souls out there, cover your ears 'cause I'll be shouting this one: Never, under any circumstances, reply in any way to a spam message! There, that's better.

Replying directly to the message almost certainly will be a waste of time as the return address will have been forged.

Do not click the "Unsubscribe", "Opt-Out', etc... link. All this will achieve is to validate that your e-mail address is active so the spammer can send you even more spam and sell your address to even more people as a "validated" address.
No matter what baloney they put beside the "opt-out" link about respecting your privacy, honouring remove requests, yada, yada, yada... you didn't opt-in so don't opt-out. If they were so worried about your privacy they wouldn't be invading it right now would they?

Now this one really should go without saying: Never buy anything from a spammer, or from "spamvertised" web sites.
Really, I'm sure it is none of my intelligent readers here, but someone must still be doing it, otherwise the spammers would have given up by now and resumed their previous occupation. The burger flipping workforce is suffering a serious lack of people.
If you accidentally read a line or two of a spam message and see a product that may interest you, simply do a web search for that product and buy it from there. Would you really want to be buying from a thief anyway?

Finally, if (when) you are the lucky recipient of ever increasing amounts of sleazy advertising, then it's time to start investigating spam filters. These can really make a difference to your day and it is quite satisfying seeing the spammer's product going straight to where it belongs - the trash can without you even having to read it.
For an overview of the different kinds of anti-spam technologies available today, take a look at our Types of Filters section and our Reviews section for what we humbly consider the "pick of the crop" of spam filters.

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Fighting Spam - Want To Fight Back?

I have often been asked why spam is so annoying. Most everybody finds it extremely annoying and some get positively psychotic about it! Seldom, I find, do people actually analyse why. After all, it's only an e-mail isn't' it? You know where the delete key is don't you? You get plenty of junk letters in the mail don't you? etc...

One of the greatest reasons has to be the total disempowerment of the recipient.
Spammers go to great lengths to hide behind forged message headers, hijack open proxies, set up "bulletproof" servers, use "spam haven" countries etc... so that the average person seems to have absolutely no recourse against them.
The average internet user is forced to sit back and take day after day, year after year, countless people stealing - yes stealing - their money, resources and time to bombard them with their cheap, sleazy and totally untargeted advertising. There seems absolutely nothing they can do about it and you are paying for the privilege!

Rightly or wrongly, a person's inbox is a very personal thing yet spam is such an impersonal entity. They're not sending the message to you. You are just a number, an address - cannon fodder. It really is the lowest form of advertising. (Ed: May their armpits be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels)

The good news is that there are some things we can do to help ease the world of this blight, make your life easier and even do your bit in fighting spam.

• The first thing we can all do has already been stated. It is the single, sure-fire way to stop all spamming for ever. I know I said I'd only say it once, but I just can't help it: Never buy anything from a spammer, or from "spamvertised" web sites.
  The only reason spammers continue to exist is that some misguided individuals actually buy their wares. If it wasn't working, they wouldn't do it - simple as that.
  
  
• Get yourself a spam filter. As stated in the previous point, the less people that even see their trash, the less effective it will be. Make your life a little easier and hit the spammers in the only place they will notice - their pockets. Take a look at our Reviews section for our opinions and recommendations on the current crop of spam filters.
  
  
• Learn how to understand e-mail headers and complain to the spammer's ISP (Internet Service Provider). This is not for the faint hearted! E-mail headers are the parts that a user doesn't usually see, but is the main area that is used when dealing with spam by tracing the source. For a sneak peak, e-mail headers look like:
  
  Received: from p4072-ipad44hodogaya.kanagawa.ocn.ne.jp ([221.191.55.72])
  by sccrmxc21.comcast.net (sccrmxc21) with SMTP
  id <20041008040321s210092i4me>; Fri, 8 Oct 2004 04:03:55 +0000
  X-Originating-IP: [221.191.55.72]
  X-Message-Info: XV6wjsXRW8TFGpxru11zvQOGxcsJE496ijWVU908xZTouW8
  Received: from dns08wildmail.com ([246.156.8.64]) by 3xm-jh79.Carolyn.Hare@didamail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2999.4069);
  Wed, 06 Oct 2004 22:03:12 -0700
  Message-ID: <3090916663.13433@Carolyn.Hare@didamail.com>
  Reply-To: "Erin Marin" <Carolyn.Hare@didamail.com>
  From: "Erin Marin" <Carolyn.Hare@didamail.com>
  To: "Alanharriscpa" <alanhariscpa@comcast.net>
  Subject: RE: account # 9380G
  Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 06:04:12 +0100
  MIME-Version: 1.0 (produced by anionhomeland 38.59)
  Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
  boundary="--83432020027266933"
  
  Amongst other things, the headers give a "roadmap" of the route a message took to get to you. This route can be traced backwards to the source. Complaining to the "from" or "reply-to" address will invariably get you nowhere as these will have been forged.
  Unfortunately, often a spammer will insert some "red herring" headers in the message to cover their tracks. It can sometimes be quite an art to unravel it - but not at all impossible.
  I can personally attest that spammers do keep a list of "do not spam" addresses. People who frequently trace e-mail headers and complain to ISPs make it on to this list and consequently receive very little spam. I know, I've been there!
  If you'd like to become that pro-active in the war against spam then good on you and read the section on "Understanding Headers".
  
  
• And finally, being a self confessed "Spam Nazi", I can well understand when people vent their frustration in other ways against spammers such as repeatedly phoning the free phone numbers sometimes provided on spam, or visiting their web site and repeatedly filling in their forms with bogus information, etc... Been there - done that.
  If you'd take a little advice from this seasoned spam fighter though - I'd step back, let the software do the work for you and don't waste any more time on them than they deserve. They're really not worth it...
  

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