Death to Spam!
Issue No. 12
Spam is the scourge of the e-mail world. Unless you have a fairly new e-mail account, and you have been very, very, very careful, you are likely to have spam in your mailbox. So how do you get on a spammer’s list? There are a number of ways as described below.
Be careful when you sign up for something – read the fine print. When you request additional information, such as from an ad, when you give out information, such as responding to a survey, or when you post something such as an opinion on a web site or in a chat room, you are open to spammers. Once you put your e-mail address in the public domain, it is free for anyone to use to send you unwanted e-mail. And spammers “harvest” e-mail addresses from these public web sites. So how do you avoid spam without avoiding the Internet completely? Read the fine print on web sites, on advertisements, on surveys, on anything to which you respond. Legitimate web sites will tell you what they will do with your information and usually they will allow you to “opt-out” and not have your e-mail address disclosed even to any affiliated web sites. For example, Amazon.com offers joint or co-branded products from other vendors as varied as Toysrus.com, AT&T Wireless, and drugstore.com. Since Amazon.com is a good web site, they not only tell you to whom they pass your information, but from whom they get information about you, what kind of information is passed, and how you can request that your information is kept private. If a web site does not list their policies on a Privacy Notice page, then don’t risk giving them information about yourself, especially your e-mail address.
Where did the word “spam” come from? Spam, made by Hormel, is a canned meat product. The name Spam comes from a contest Hormel held in 1937 to name their new SPiced hAM product. But how did it come to mean massive amounts of unwanted e-mail?
In the early 1990’s, spam became a computer term for overloading something so the original need was obscured. For example, overloading a computer system until it crashed or flooding a newsgroup with the same message over and over to prevent serious discussion are examples of early spam. Now spam means to flood computers with unwanted bulk messages. Spam also gets this latest definition from the Monty Python Flying Circus skit where a customer in a restaurant asks what is on the menu. The waitress lists the items on the menu, many of which contain spam, “Well, there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage, and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon, and spam; egg, bacon, sausage, spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; spam, sausage, spam, spam, spam, bacon, spam, tomato, and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg, and spam," etc. A group of Vikings at another table in the restaurant starts singing about their love of spam until they drown out the waitress. Hence spam can mean a flooding of senseless repetition that removes the ability to get to the needed point, or so much junk e-mail that you can’t get to your real e-mail.
Have several e-mail addresses. One e-mail address can be for business only, one for friends and family, one for ordering online, and one can be for use at questionable websites and chat rooms. You can get free e-mail accounts from such sources as Yahoo and MSN hotmail, then, if one of the e-mail addresses starts getting too much spam, simply delete it.
Do NOT respond to spam e-mail. Spam often has a “click here to remove yourself “ button, but don’t believe it. Spammers use these features to verify that your e-mail address is valid. Once they know it is a valid address, you’ll get even more spam.
Get an anti-spam filter such as Mailwasher (free) or Norton Anti-Spam ($40). Anti-spam filters enable you to do a number of things to reduce the spam in your mailbox. For example, you can create a list of business clients whose e-mail should always be allowed. You can blacklist senders so you never see their e-mail. You can bounce e-mails so that the spammers think your e-mail address is not valid and remove it from their list. And you can set the application to analyze your e-mail and decide which emails might be spam, a virus, or a chain letter. You also can go to www.consumerreports.com or www.spamfilterreview.com for reviews of additional anti-spam software. With over 75% of business e-mail consisting of spam, it is imperative to the health of your business to eliminate as much spam as possible.
Will we ever be rid of Spam?
No. The March 24, 2004 issue of the Wall Street Journal included an article titled Spam sometimes finds receptive in-boxes. The article described people who actually love, live by, buy from, and utilize spam; they are similar to junk-mail junkies. And as long a there are spam junkies, spam can be profitable. If a spammer sends out 10,000 messages, they only need one taker to break even. An example in the article showed that with a mailing of 5 million messages about vitamins and a 30% commission on $100 worth of vitamins, with 500 buyers, the spammer would make $15,000.
Processing spam can waste a huge amount of your time and money, which directly affects your bottom line. By following the steps above, you can reduce the amount of spam you have to wade through, and save precious time and money.