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“Spam” is the name used for unsolicited email—electronic junk mail.
Spamming is against the law, but that doesn’t deter true spammers. For the recipient, spam can make opening an email client a thoroughly miserable experience. Much of the material is offensive, even in the subject line, while the time wasted sifting through it can be more than they have to spare.
The beginning of this page deals with ways of dealing with spam if it’s already arriving. The second part of the page suggests much that you can do or avoid doing so that you don’t get spam in the first place.
Here’s part of a letter from someone who’s been using the Internet for a couple of years.
Re-spam, I really think I shall have to change my email address.
I was out yesterday and didn’t access my email all day.
Today there were 45 emails and 44 were junk!
Before deciding to give up on your email address there are a number of things you can do to minimise spam problems.
Some of these answers are specific to a particular email client—Outlook Express—and a particular Internet Service Provider—Telstra Big Pond. Where necessary, modify the suggestions to reflect your own client and ISP.
You can configure Outlook Express to delete unwanted email.
With the email highlighted, click Message > Block Sender. Future emails from the same address will go straight into Deleted Items.
Spammers do make slight changes in their addresses, though. If they change one letter in the address their email will bypass the block you set up.
Going to Google and searching for “Outlook Express Filter” will help you find more pages to explain how to do this, but I feel these two in particular are clear and easy to understand.
There is a form at bigpond which
you should fill out if you get spam at your bigpond address.
For other Internet Service Providers, search their site for instructions, or type their name into Google and add “abuse” or “spam” before clicking the search button. Some ISPs will require that you fill out a form, others will ask that you paste the spam (as explained below) into an email.
To use the bigpond form you need to input your name, email address and
daytime phone number.
You then need to select “view full headers” on your email, copy the entire email with the full headers included, and
paste it into the box on the form.
Make sure “Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE) or Spam” is selected on the form, decide whether or not you want bigpond to contact you about your report, and click “submit”.
Using this form makes it likely that bigpond will find the spammer who is bothering you and close their account.
There are also several Spam Reporting services online. If you want to
find out more about them, type “spam reporting” into Google. Visit some of the sites listed and read as much as you can take in. Don’t jump at the first thing you find. Services vary, and some are bound to suit you better than others. There’s always the possibility, too, that one of the sites you find may be a problem in itself. Consider carefully.
What do I do to change my e-mail address?
It isn’t always possible to change your primary email
address without closing your account and opening a new one.
Ring your ISP’s help desk and ask about this. You may find that a small fee is charged.
On the othe hand, your account may allow you to have several addresses.
In a real emergency, or to keep one lot of mail separate, you could use a web mail account. There are many free web-based email accounts available online. Two of
the most widely known are Yahoo and Hotmail.
Because they are well known, they are sometimes targeted by spammers,
so you are more likely to attract spam than you are if you use an
email address given to you by your ISP, but they also have fairly good
spam blocking software.
You can configure Outlook Express to receive Hotmail mail, but this can make for a lot of complications.
To get a free Yahoo! mail account go to
Yahoo.
Filling in the form on this page will let you
have a free Yahoo! mail address.
This form is fairly self explanatory, but a few tips follow.
Do not click the “People Search Listing: List my new Yahoo! Mail
address for free” box or any box below it. Clicking any of these
boxes means you want Yahoo to send you advertising. You cannot even
report this advertising as spam, since you have requested it.
To get a Hotmail account go to
MSN Hotmail.
Again, the form is quite straightforward, but remember to uncheck
the boxes under “Services” Hotmail Member Directory Internet White Pages.
There will be a graphic below these boxes with some numbers and
letters and some squiggly lines. Type the numbers and letters into the
box below it. The reason Hotmail want you to do this is because many
people write programmes to go to free email sites and sign up for
multiple email accounts. No computer can “read” the graphic of numbers
and letters, so having this box makes sure only humans can sign up for
a Hotmail account.
Do not click any of the boxes under “Tired of registration forms?”
Read through the text in the “AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND MICROSOFT
CORPORATION” box.
If you agree to all they say, click the “I Agree” button.
Once you have your new email account, log in and turn on the spam
protectors.
In Yahoo you do this by clicking on “Mail Options” on the far right at
the top. Under the “Management” section you will find a section
called “Filters” Clicking here will allow you to choose what level of
filtering you want.
In Hotmail you do this by choosing the “Options” tab near the top
right of the page. Under “Mail Handling” in the middle column the
first option is “Junk Mail Filter”
Click on the words “Junk Mail Filter” and choose the level of filtering
you want. I find the middle option is best in most web mail clients, but in Hotmail you’ll need the highest level.
Choose what to do with your junk mail—I like to delete it right away.
Click “Save Changes”.
Many people like to keep two separate email addresses; one for mailing friends and one for filling out online forms and using news groups. The more online forms you fill in or news groups you post messages to, the more spam you are likely to receive.
First of all, DON’T open spam when you get it.
Viruses are sent this way, and while your antivirus program (updated daily, of course) may zap it almost instantly, the thought that it was there at all is horrible.
Use Mailwasher or something similar.
Install and regularly update SpyBot Search and Destroy.
Install and regularly update AdAware.
Install Zone Alarm or some other good firewall program.
Don’t fill in on-line forms, or else have a web mail account just for form filling.
Be wary of freebies.
Don’t click the “Take me off your mailing list,” link included in many spam emails.
Mailwasher lets you view mail without downloading it. It also suggests which emails it suspects of being spam, or of carrying a virus. You then have the opportunity to mark those that you yourself recognise as unwanted before clicking a button to send your real mail to your usual email client—Outlook Express or whatever.
Mailwasher keeps a list of blacklisted sites and a list of people you name as friends.
It also has its own list of known spam sources.
You can check the contents of letters you’re not sure about without having to monkey with the property sheet.
You can mark for deletion items that Mailwasher has not marked and you can unmark any items that you feel you want to receive.
When you click the “Process Mail” button, your regular email client will be loaded and all unmarked letters will be transferred to it. The marked mail disappears.
This is a download link for Mailwasher.
This indispensable program searches your computer for spyware. People have found over a hundred pieces of spyware on their machines the first time they’ve run it.
An item of spyware is something that hangs around in your computer and watches what you do when you’re on line. Its results are used to inform spammers what sort of products or web sites you’re most interested in. Some really bad spyware watches the keys you press and tries to collect passwords, credit card numbers and banking details.
Apart from the hazards that spyware presents, it’s using your resources. Often, people are alerted to the presence of spyware when their computer slows to a crawl, even when they believe that they have just one program running.
Some spyware openly offers itself as a device to remember passwords for you. How very convenient! Why, it’s just like not having a password at all!
This is a download link for SpyBot Search and Destroy.
AdAware is very similar to SpyBot, but using both programs makes you doubly sure. Sometimes one will find something that the other doesn’t
There’s been a battle royal going on between the makers of these two programs. For a discussion and explanation of the merits of each, read this informative article. I think it will persuade you to use both programs.
This is a download link for
AdAware.
Zone Alarm and other firewall programs notice and inform you when anything on your computer tries to “phone home” (contact the computer whose owner made the software). There’s a “Remember this answer,” thingy, so it won’t jump up every time that you try to send an email.
You’ll be amazed, though, at just how many of your programs do try to contact the Internet. Sometimes you can see an obvious reason, but sometimes there’s none that you can see. It’s quite satisfying to hit the button that denies one of the big expensive programs from getting in touch with its parent company.
The real purpose, though, is to stop spyware from sending your personal details and browsing habits back to its host.
This is a download link for Zone Alarm
Sometimes there’s a real reason that you want to fill in an on-line form. More often, though, there’s no advantage to you in doing so. You may be seeking information and be sent to a site that apparently has that information, only to be confronted with a form that you must fill in before entering.
You could use an address that isn’t your usual email address—some people give their address on line as, for instance, marynospam@isp.com or marydeletethis@isp.com. A human sees the obvious, a robot doesn’t. You can also simply back away. There are other sites.
There may be some newsletters that are of real interest to you. If that’s so, sign up, but remember that means that your address will be out there somewhere. Only subscribe because you want to; not because you feel somehow obliged to do so.
There is genuine freeware offered on the Internet. There’s also a lot of stuff that purports to be free but isn’t. The trick is to recognise which is which.
Most programs that are truly free suggest that you make a donation if you use them a lot, or that you consider upgrading to the professional version, buy another product by the same author, or that you at least send some acknowledgement to the author. A few come with a banner ad that will be removed if you register.
(There is also beta software—free to you as long as you report any bugs to the developers—and open source software—written for The Good Of All Mankind. This software is truly free, but isn’t always easy for the novice to come to grips with.)
Some “free” programs, though, ask absolutely nothing. They are often for small things that sound attractive, especially for new users, like pretty screen savers and wall paper, whole desktop themes, somewhere to upload your own photographs, ultra-handy toolbars. There are bigger and “better” things as well.
Ask yourself, “why”. Then set about finding out.
You can type the name of the program into Google and type the word “spyware” beside it. Often you’ll see the answer in the headers straight away.
If that doesn’t suggest that the program has unwanted passengers—and if you really do want to try it—download it and, having right clicked and checked for viruses, run the set up. Then run Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware. Allow them to kill any spyware or adware that they find and then see if the program works. If it does, that’s great. If it doesn’t, delete the program and its set-up files.
Be aware that removing an unwanted program isn’t always straightforward or easy. Some of these nasty programs have no uninstall and Add and Remove Programs can’t handle them. Sometimes people have to get detailed instructions on how to search their computer—often including the registry—to root out the pest. Not a job for the faint-hearted!
Remember, though, a visible advertisement, usually saying, “Register to Remove This Banner” or something similar, shouldn’t be confused with spyware.
Never click the “I don’t want any more mail from this sender,” link in a letter unless the letter is from a group you actually signed up with in the first place, such as a mailing list. That’s just there to confirm that they’ve got a real email address.
One way the unscrupulous have of getting addresses is just to generate millions of possible addresses: anne1@bigisp.com,
anne2@bigisp.com, anne3@bigisp.com and so on and send letters to all of them.
Most of those letters get no response; often the address doesn’t exist, and most actual recipients delete the letter without opening it. Where the person has clicked the “I don’t want any more mail from this sender,” link, though, their address is put into a database of real addresses (because that click proved that they are real).
Another method of getting addresses is to send out a robot to harvest them.
The writers of spam aren’t setting out to offend you. They’re just looking for customers. If they get one customer from 1,000 bodgie letters, that’s money in the bank.
It would appear that lots of gullible persons go to web sites offered in spam, and this way lies a fortune. One thing that can happen is that the person’s connection can be broken and quickly remade though an “x dollars per minute” dialling “service”. They don’t notice a thing until the phone bill comes in.
I’m told by someone who uses an instant messenger that these too are targetted by spammers. Should an obvious spam message pop up, don’t respond, just close the window.
OK. Now you have a few ideas about how spammers operate. I hope it’ll help.
I’ve copied this last bit from my Outlook Express page. It’s something everyone needs to know but lots don’t.
If you want to send the same message to more than one person, please use the bcc (blind carbon copy) rather than the cc (carbon copy) slot to enter the names. Using cc sends a list to every recipient and could make people feel that you are careless of their security.
You may see only each person’s name in your “To” or “CC” line. The full email address of each recipient is included in every copy, though, and is readily accessible.
If you can’t see a bcc slot at the top of the email form on which you’re about to write, click View on the toolbar and click Show all Headers.
Similarly, if you want to forward an email that you feel is of interest to another person, remove names and email addresses from the top of the message. Better yet, copy the pertinent parts of the message into a new email and send that.
Email me from this link,
or copy paste and edit
obbyspageATiprimusDOTcomDOTau
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