If you're a new member of our user group, or new on the Internet, you might not know that spam refers to unsolicited commercial e-mail (in some definitions, unsolicited bulk e-mail, whether commercial or not)-rather like those junk phone calls that are also soaring in frequency. Spam got its name from a classic Monty Python comedy bit, back in the days when it seemed more common to be explaining the term than to be receiving actual spam.
New e-mail users sometimes don't realize how passionate we oldsters can get about spam. Some dedicated e-mailers consider spam to be higher on the scale of wrongdoing than breaking and entering, or even assault and battery. This is a holdover from the time when you had to pay by the minute for e-mail, and spam literally cost the recipient money.
Whether it's postage due or just a waste of time, though, spam is almost universally held to be colossal bad manners at best, money-grubbing sleaze at worst.
The Flow Goes On
Spam seems to ebb and flow, and at the moment it seems to be flowing more than usual. In fact, the flow into my e-mailbox has been great enough lately to stir me to look for remedies.
I'm not the first to be so inspired, of course-lots of Web sites offer more information and help to the besieged. Here's a roundup of the best current information I could find about how to avoid spam in your own mailbox.
Spam is almost by definition an e-mail trying to sell you something you don't want, from a company you didn't ask to send you e-mail. You can find a lot of information from the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) listed at SpamFree. There's a ton of useful information at Death to Spam, also. But note that this site is illustrated with "indecent" images from classical art.
There are people who consider it spam if a site that you've bought from sends you unsolicited e-mails, but because that list would leave off very few companies these days, we'll overlook that group in favor of the real nasties.
How Do They Get My Name?
You become a victim of spammers, generally, in only a few ways. First seems to be posting to a Usenet newsgroup with your real e-mail address. Newsgroups are discussion groups, something like chat boards but not "live." You type in your comments and send them as a message, while other people are doing the same around the world. The messages are collected in newsgroups that you read with special software. Your Internet service provider will usually have a special news server that holds these messages.
Some companies have developed software that goes through these messages reading and collecting the e-mail addresses that show up in people's messages. They then sell the addresses they've found to people who want to send out junk e-mail sales pitches.
These automated programs are apparently not too smart. Many people camouflage their e-mail addresses in a rudimentary fashion (e.g., myname@ NOSPAM.aol.com), which makes it easy for a person to read the actual address (myname@aol.com) and send e-mail. An automated program, however, will send mail to a non-existent address.
If you choose this path, remember that your address can be posted as the "reply to" address and as the "posted by" address. You should check your newsreader or other software to make sure you're not posting your true e-mail address in parts of the message that your software doesn't display.
Another source of e-mail addresses is Web pages. Software has been developed that scours Web pages looking for e-mail addresses. This "harvesting" software, like that for the newsgroups, just reads pages and collects the names and addresses.
You can't very well put phony addresses on a Web page, because you won't get the mail you presumably want to get from those who visit the page. One alternative here is to use a (free) service like Memo.to, which gives you an address in the form of Memo.to/ TomAnderson. This routes your e-mail to their server, which takes out the spam, then sends on to you the non-spam e-mail. You'll presumably want to check what's left on their server periodically to ensure you don't overlook mail they accidentally sidetracked.
Another alternative is to use something like Wpoison. Wpoison is a CGI program that automatically generates false Web pages for the robot address harvesters, causing them to reap multiple phony addresses instead of the real ones. There are other, similar tools available at SpamFree.
Spam in the Box
When spam starts showing up in your mailbox, it's probably too late to take preventive measures like those above. There are a couple approaches you can use here. There are services like Pop3 Scan Mailbox (free) which can delete spam, or let you view a few lines of it, before you even download it, without interfering with your regular e-mail program. Other programs, some of them fairly expensive, are available through SpamFree.
Bounce Spam Mail (free) creates a bounce message to make it look like your e-mail address is invalid. This won't do much for real spammers who don't give a valid return address, but it might help to get you off some lists.
When the spam actually gets through all your defenses and reaches your e-mail inbox, there are a number of resources you can use to complain. One of the most widely known is SpamCop. SpamCop is a free complaint service that will send your complaint to the administrators of a spammer's ISP. You can do that yourself, but it's easier to use SpamCop.
You'll find that many spammers these days are claiming that what they do is legal, and some quote S. Bill 1618 as if it were the second commandment. The bill died in conference and never became law, and there are no laws legalizing unsolicited commercial e-mail. In fact, the only laws that might apply are those that outlaw unsolicited fax messages, which might cover e-mails as well. Don't let the spammers fool you into thinking you've got no defense against them.
In fact, if you get a message threatening you with the FBI if you complain, you know the complaints are getting through. The louder these bums yell, the harder they're getting stuck. Keep at it!
Filters
Once you start getting mail, possibly the quickest way to limit its impact on you is to begin filtering your e-mail.
I don't know of any e-mail program that doesn't have some facility for filtering incoming mail and routing your unwanted e-mail to a trash mailbox. In Outlook and Outlook Express, it's under Message/Rule, in Eudora it's under Filter, in Calypso it's under Add Filter. Usually, you can choose to filter e-mail based on a word or phrase that appears in a specified part of the e-mail header or message. For example, you can filter out particular e-mail addresses (spammer@spam.com), particular domains (spam.com), particular words or symbols in the subject line (Make Money Fa$$$t), particular recipients ("Undisclosed Recipients" seems a favorite).
A number of sites host lists of known spammers you can add to such a filter, and some even often pre-written filter files for various e-mail programs.
General Resources
There are a number of tools that can let you trace spam messages back so you can find where they came from. You can find a selection of tools at SpamFree.
One of the organizations fighting the war against spammers is SpamHaus. Their Web site includes some entertaining threatening e-mails from spammers who have been shut down multiple timers by ISPs whose policies they've violated.
There are many resources you can access at Abuse.net and at Elsop's Anti-Spam Page to help you fight spam. Many of these deal with reading e-mail headers to find out where mail really originated; tracing owners of IP addresses so you can complain to a spammer's ISP; listings of known spammers you can add to an e-mail filter; and much more.
There are so many resources I can't list them all. To find them, go to any of the big search engines and type in "spam filter" or "spam defense" or something similar, and you'll get enough references to spend several days increasing your knowledge of the subject.
