Anti-Spam

Spam! Yum! (I'm hungry, sorry.) What I'm here to really talk about is unsolicited bulk email. I hate it. That is why I made this page.

What is spam?
Spamhaus defines spam as:

The word "Spam" as applied to Email means Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE").

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

To be Spam, a message must be sent Unsolicited AND Bulk. Unsolicited Email is normal email (first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries, etc.), Bulk Email is normal email (newsletters, discussion lists, etc.). ONLY the combination of Unsolicited AND Bulk is Spam.

So, what is the big deal, it is just a little annoyance, isn't it?
Wrong, in a big way. The amount of global spam sent each day has increased by a factor of five in the past year according to some estimates. IDC conservatively predicts that the total number of spam email messages sent will increase from 10 billion per day today to 30 billion a day by 2006. According to a recent study conducted by a European Union commission, the Spam problem costs the world economy some $9.33 billion US dollars a year. You know, about a billion spam messages flow into Hotmail alone every day. Some 80% of incoming Hotmail messages are spam. Why do you think Hotmail had to implement a 2 mb limit on email accounts and add all of the advertisements? Spamming taxes their resources so MUCH that the innocent user had to suffer, not to mention that a lot of spam is adult oriented.

As Paul Myers said:

The spammers want to use everyone else's resources for their own purposes, without paying for them. They shift the cost of their advertising onto the ISPs, the web hosts, the end users, and everyone who uses the Net responsibly in any way. They scream "free speech," while forcing unwilling others to subsidize their advertising, to the tune of billions of dollars a year. Sorry, SpamBoy. The term "free speech" does not mean "You get to talk and we have to pay to listen."

Basically if you spam someone, you are stealing from them, because we have to pay for the resources to send your spam messages and for us to receive them. If you accept spam, and support it, you are a thief. If you buy from it, you are a thief.

Ok, so it does cost money, but I like some of the products they are advertising, why not buy?
Spamming is an industry. If you buy from one, you support them all. If you buy from one you are also more likely to get yourself on others lists. Spammers buy/sell/trade your email address. Another big point is that many of these messages are fraudulent. If someone is to stoop to the level they are by spamming you, what will they stoop to next. Credit card theft? Buy from them and they have your number, which they might sell/trade that as well. Also, like I said above, you are a thief if you support it.

Ok, so I am inviting more in by buying. So what?
Here are a few more statistics.

• 2.5 billion porn emails are sent everyday

I did say "few" didn't I? I changed my mind. That right there should be enough to convince you. Do you want your kids seeing bestiality, or rape fantasy? Do you?

I can always change email addresses.
After the fact that it has already been seen. Another problem with spam is that it is destroying email as a communication medium. Legitimate emails are being lost in the pile. Spam is taking over inboxes. There is more spam than there is legitimate email. Some people take such great measures to block spam that they block legitimate email as well. Companies who want to have email addresses for customer support have problems because they have to filter out legitimate from illegitimate. Sometimes your email might get filtered for whatever reason. That might be why they never reply to you. You also have to notify all your contacts that you changed addresses, who have to update your address. You could lose contact with someone with all this address changing. Besides, why should we just run away. Let's take a stand.

Ok, so it is a big problem, how can I help? What can I do?
Use these tips and resources, and cut down on Spam.

This page contains:

• Some tips to protect yourself.
• A spam bot catching service that you can link to on your webpage. It helps catch spam bots and keep them from crawling your site.
• A link to an organization against spam.
• A spam reporting website that allows you to copy or forward the spam message and report it to the spammer's ISP (Internet Service Provider).
• A anti-spam filtering program that will bounce back spam emails so it looks like your address doesn't work.
• A anti-spam filtering program that uses the collective force of thousands of people to fight spam.
• A website that creates temporary email addresses that automatically forward them to your regular account.
• A website that will create a temporary email address.
• A study that, well, studied spam and its origin. (Very helpful information.)
• Yahoo's Anti-Spam Resource Center.

Anti-Spam Tips

• Never reply to spam messages, even when they entice you to reply to "remove" you from their mailing lists. Often the instructions are either bogus, or a way to collect more addresses. Replying confirms to the spammers that your e-mail address is active, and you may receive even more junk mail. Don't click on any unsubscribe links either.
• Don't flame (send a rude message) or mail bomb the spammer's address. Many spammers forge e-mail addresses to hide their real identity, so you may be flaming or bombing a nonexistent account or, worse, the account of an innocent person.
• Avoid spam by faking your email address. Example: If your email address is somebody@someone.com then use somebody at someone dot com. Most people can figure out how to change this to send you an email, but spam bots (programs that scour the internet looking for email addresses) don't find them. Do this on services that display e-mail addresses, where spammers can gather them. This includes bulletin boards, usenet newsgroups, mailing lists, chat rooms, guestbooks, and unprotected member directories. (Or you can establish a second e-mail account that you can use specifically as an address for newsgroups and bulletin boards.) Also avoid spam opt-out lists, as spammers cull them for active e-mail addresses.
• Report spamming to Spam Cop. (Don't use it to unsubscribe from newsletters you subscribed to. You will just give the owners unwanted headaches.)
• Don't buy anything through unsolicited advertising by e-mail, even if the product is something you want. By buying you legitimize spam, and thus add to the problem. If nobody buys anything, why would they send them out? Moreover, many of these offers are fraudulent. As Paul Myers once said,

  "Spammers exist because people buy from them. It typically takes from 1,000 to 10,000 spams to make one sale. If you buy from a spammer, you are PERSONALLY responsible for the next 1,000 to 10,000 spams sent... Including the porn spam sent to your kids."

• Use obscure email addresses in Hotmail and Yahoo, ones which cannot be "guessed" by spammer software that auto-generates email addresses. For example, if you want your email address to be someone@hotmail.com but it is already taken, Hotmail will suggest someone654@hotmail.com (or the like). Don't do that. A spammer has software that will try several different combinations of letters and words. All it has to do is start putting random numbers and letters behind a certain word. Use a completely unique email address when you sign up for Yahoo, Hotmail, and other email accounts.
• Don't ever put your email address on your own webpage. Like I mentioned above spammers have software that can harvest these addresses. Use somebody at somewhere dot com or use a form (in PHP, ASP, etc) like I have. Try a remotely hosted CGI form. Or you can use javascript to hide your email address.
• Don't forward messages to all your friends. These include chain letters, petitions, or virus warnings. When you receive an email and forward it, not only does that message contain a bunch of ">>>" in it but it also adds an email header to the message. This header contains the email addresses of the people that sent you the message. If these headers are not cleaned out by you (the person forwarding the message) then that huge list of email addresses will eventually fall into the hands of a spammer. If you must forward an email use a free program like E-Cleaner to automatically clean them out before you do. (And don't put all the addresses to the recipients of your message in the "To:" or "CC:" field. Use "BCC:" instead.)
• Don't open up the message. If your email program has a "preview pane," disable it. It is possible for a spammer to tell if you have read the message just by opening it. Thereby legitimizing your address. Use an anti-spam program like Mailwasher to open them without the spammer knowing.
• Never, ever, never, post your email address in a chat room. Use a temporary email address, or use an email address from yahoo or hotmail specifically for this purpose.
• Check a website's privacy policy before disclosing your email address. Don't forget to uncheck any "check boxes" that grant the site owner permission to allow partners to send you unwanted junk.
• Keep your computer virus free. 99.99% of all spam comes from computer that have been infected with some sort of malware. Why? Sending out millions of messages from one computer would cost too much in bandwidth fees and make it easy for authorities to find the spammer. Instead, spammers use computers that they have hijacked with malware (spyware, virus, trojan, etc.) to do the dirty work for them. That means that your computer could be sending out hundreds of spam messages because its part of a botnet. Its following the commands of someone else. If there were no computers infected with viruses and spyware there would be hardly any spam. Use a good anti-virus program, firewall, and anti-spyware program. Turn on Automatic Updates in Windows and OSX. (Yes, I actually got my Mac hacked into and was sending spam.) This is critical folks.