Unsolicited commercial email (spam) is a fact of life when using e-mail on the Internet. E-mail providers, including SOSInet take measures to block spam, including installing spam blocking software on our servers and blacklisting known spammers. However, the problem with preventing spam is that spammers change their tactics constantly. Each time we block a known spammer, five others will pop up in their place. The sad truth of this matter is, no one can eliminate all spam, but there are some precautions everyone can take to decrease the amount of spam one gets.
Know Your Enemy
Spammers don't manually get your e-mail address, they either buy it from companies you sign up for offers from, or they run "bots"; autonomous software programs that scan websites for e-mail addresses and harvest them into a database. The bottom line is, if you post your e-mail publicly on the Internet, be it on a website, guestbook, discussion forum, usenet, or profile page, you will be targeted and added to the spammer's database. Once a spammer has your e-mail address, they will sell the database to other companies that send spam, thus increasing the amount of spammers who have access to your address.
Another way spammers get your e-mail address is by buying it from companies that offer "promotions" when you sign up for them. When you sign up on a website for free software, or free anything, your e-mail address is at risk of being sold. Companies can't offer free services without some kind of incentive, in their case it is selling your e-mail address to spammers.
Measures You Can Take to Avoid Spam
Below you will see a list with tips and tricks you can do to help prevent yourself from receiving spam.
- Never post your e-mail address in plan form anywhere on the internet. Instead disguise it in a creative manner, that is still easily distinguishable by users, but not by bots. For example, instead of posting your e-mail address as "bob@sosinet.net" try giving it as "bob(at)sosinetDOTnet". While the e-mail address may not be in the "correct" format, someone wanting to get a hold of you will know to replace the incorrect terms with the correct formatting, while a bot will not recognize it as a valid e-mail address.
- Never sign up for free offers from suspicious sites or companies. Nine times out of ten these companies make income by selling your e-mail address after they provide you with "free" content. However, some sites will specifically say they will never give your e-mail address out, while other sign up forms may have a check box that enables you to opt-out of third party mailings. Always be sure to read the fine print when signing up for services on the internet.
- Keep a private e-mail address that you share only with family and close friends. By having an e-mail address that you never give out except to trusted people, you won't have to worry about spammers harvesting your address.
- If you do need to sign up for free offers, use an e-mail address that you've created just for that purpose. While some sites might make you sign up to view content there are various ways around that. First, sites such as The New York Times require a valid e-mail address to view their content, however when you sign up, they have a box that when left checked enables them to sell your e-mail address to third-party companies. There is a site called Bug Me Not which provides logins to various sites across the internet that require logins. Another way to thwart spam is to create a temporary email account, used just to sign up for offers. SpamHole offers free temporary e-mail address which will help you avoid spam.
More Tactics to Beat Spam
Spammers also find e-mail addresses by sending e-mails to random common e-mail addresses. If they send 10,000 and only 500 actually go through, they are still completing their goal. To help protect yourself, try to create a unique e-mail address, for example, try adding a couple numbers before or after your chosen e-mail address, or create a unique name.
Furthermore, there are various e-mail clients that provide built in spam filtering tools. Mozilla Thunderbird is a terrific, free e-mail client that provides automated spam filtering that learns as it goes. It's easy to use and a very competent e-mail clients that provides more features and better functionality then Microsoft Outlook Express.
While one can take as many measures as possible to block spam, the sad reality is that there is no way to completely block yourself from spam. However, by falling the above suggestions and tips one can completely cut down the amount of spam you get.
By: Matt Denton
Resources
BugMeNot - http://www.bugmenot.com
Spam Hole - http://www.spamhole.com
Mozilla Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/
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