Getting Rid of Spam

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Dermot

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Getting Rid of Spam

Spam has become ubiquitous - one of the facts of life, like taxes. Until strong anit-spam laws are passed and actually enforced, spam proliferation will continue because it's proven to reach a mass audience. If it didn't work, spammers wouldn't waste their time.
Most people, however, see spam as the scourge of e-mail and look for ways to stop it from infecting their e-mail boxes.

There are several ways to block spam from your e-mail inbox. They say prevention is the best medicine, so avoid giving out your e-mail address to unfamiliar or unknown recipients. This has become very difficult to do, however. Spammers can use software programs that troll the Internet looking for e-mail addresses, much like throwing a net in the ocean and seeing what gets caught in it. Nowadays it's almost impossible to shop online without providing a valid e-mail address. Offline stores are even asking for e-mail addresses in exchange for discounts or free merchandise. Realize that what they are doing is potentially opening the door for a flood of unsolicited e-mails. These organizations will most likely turn around and sell their list to someone else looking for valid e-mails. In these cases, it might be wise to have more than one e-mail address, one for friends, family and colleagues and another for unfamiliar sources. There are many free e-mail services in cyberspace to choose from.

However, also know that even trustworthy sources may be unwittingly shelling out your e-mail address. Ever receive an e-mail greeting card? The sender has given your e-mail to an organization that may very well be compiling e-mail lists to sell to spammers.

A second way to stop spam is to use your e-mail application's filtering features. Most e-mail applications allow you to block specific messages. When an offending e-mail comes in, set the filter to block further incoming mails from that sender.

A more aggressive approach to ridding unwanted e-mail is to report the e-mailer to the spammer's ISP. This is not always an easy task. First you must determine the spam's origins. Many of the bigger and more commercial ISPs forbid spammers from using their services and, once discovered, will actively ban the offending parties from using their services. But there are plenty of smaller ones that do not. To find the spam's origins, instruct your e-mail program to display all of the e-mail's header information. View the "Received" lines, and working from top to bottom you can often pinpoint the origin of spam. Spammers don't typically just send e-mails from their ISP to yours; that'd be too easy and apparent. Instead, they channel the e-mails through one or more ISPs in order to obfuscate the origin, but each computer that handles the e-mail will attach a "Received" line to the header. There are numerous Internet resources available for help in tracking down the source of spam.

Don't be fooled by phrases such as "to be removed from this list, click here." Spammers use these types of catch phrases to entice users to respond to the e-mails. The spammers may or may not remove your e-mail from their list. Either way you have told the spammer that your e-mail address is valid and reaches a real person. They know this because you responded and asked them to removed you from the list. This can actually be more valuable to the spammers because they can now sell your address to another spammer with the assurance that the e-mail address is legitimate. So you may have been removed from one list, but there's a good chance that you will end up on another.

Yet another way to deal with spam is to just not be bothered by it. Accept it as a fact of life. Delete the e-mails from your inbox without reading them and move on from there.
 
I think your last paragraph sums up the only method that seems to "work", other than prevention.


Spam is right up there with root canals and paying bills.

Our ISP gives an unlimited amount of accountnames that point to our domain. (it all goes to a "catch all" account) What I do is give a variation of the email address every time I give it out. This way I'll know WHO sold my name. I also have the ability to BLOCK just that particular variation, to stop them. example: GRUMBLE@GETTHEPICTUREFRAMING.*** is what I use here. For HH I use HITCHHIKER@GETTHE..., PPFA@getthepic..., etc. Most ISPs allow this and give the ability to block individual aliases through the web based administrative tool. It works well to identify and stop those who won't take "no thanks" for an answer. It's also interesting to see WHO is selling my name.

Mike
 
My ISP recently added an upgraded feature called Spamcatcher that monitors my emails for potential spam. I get a notice when it catches anything and can choose to go to their secure site and view it or delete it. If I don't check on what it catches, it holds anything it thinks is spam for 15 days then deletes it for me. I've noticed a decrease in the amount of spam it is catching in the last few weeks we have been using it.
 
Our ISP also had a spam catcher for a while, and I saw a dramatic drop in garbage. Then, for some reason, their servers went down, and they now have a message posted that the screening program is "down for maintance". Now what this means, beats me; however, I've been deluged with the stuff since then. I'm lucky, if out every 25 emails, 3-4 are real, and not spam.
 
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