Top Of Page

What is spam?

With the massive amount of information and speed the Internet is able to handle, communication has been revolutionized with email and other online communication systems. Users are able to send messages across the globe in seconds, and to many people at once. Unfortunately, many computer users have abused the technology used to drive these communications, by sending out thousands and thousands of emails with little or no purpose other than to increase traffic and decrease bandwidth.

A rough definition of spam is any unsolicited email sent against the interest and knowledge of the recipient, usually with no intention of a response other than to visit a website or sell a product. These emails are usually sent out in large numbers to many recipients. However, it is important to differentiate between unsolicited email which can be labeled as spam and solicited email. Solicited email my have the same goals as unsolicited email, but you may receive a solicited email that the sender has deemed to be in your interest, or related to a previous interest. Spam email, however, is usually sent without any knowledge or consideration of the recipients interests, and is sent out only with the desired result in mind. Even worse, devious and moral-less individuals use spam email to throw objectable material in front of good natured people in hopes of corrupting their minds with their exploitation of humans and objects for a profit.

Note: Unsolicited email is sent with the theory that the email will result in a 10% response. This is not the case! In fact, 99% of recipients will never look at the email message and are more likely to perceive the sender as a spammer and will purchase the product or service with most any other company rather than a company who practices spamming as a marketing technique. Human beings despise spamming!

How is spamming accomplished?

In order for spammers to send out an unsolicited email to a large number of recipients, they must first collect a list of emails to send the message to. Many spammers have developed tools or changed preexisting software to automate a computer to collect email addresses, usually off of the web. Typically, these programs will search a web page, downloading any email address it finds into a file which can then be used as a mailing list for spam. Once emails have been collected, spammers can then use mass mailing programs to send out their unsolicited message to thousands of recipients.

Sometimes spammers will take steps in order to ensure that they are not caught sending out unsolicited emails. They may use a token email account that they have registered for the specific purpose of spamming, or even use someone else's existing email account, so that any resistance to the spam email will be transferred to that innocent party.

Unfortunately, spammers are able to disguise or falsify their sending email and ip address using a non-existing sender email address or even your email address. All spammers will NOT include a valid reply email address in their spam email message to you so that you are not able to reply to them with spam (they don't want spam either) or report them to the proper authorities to shut down their Internet connection. NEVER reply to spam email!

Note: It seems, everybody wants to sell a million email addresses and a program to mass email targeted prospects to increase your bottom line. Don't play into the spammers world and become a spammer -- it is a scam. They will profit from the sale and you will damage your business and reputation along with more nasty replies than you could ever imagine possible! Never say we did not warn you.

How do spammers acquire email addresses?

The main source of emails for spammers comes from the web. Using email collector programs, spammers can search the web for any email addresses, whether on a personal web page, a business site, or other directory of public domain information. Some spammers write programs to collect emails from newsgroups, where each distinct user is identified with his/her email address. Some email marketers may obtain a list of emails by purchasing it from another firm which requests email addresses and other information when you sign up for their product/service online. Unfortunately, there is little to nothing that can be done about this collection of email addresses because all of the information is mostly obtained legally and is in the public domain.

What can I do to keep spammers from getting my email address?

Since spammers do not usually get your email address directly from you, but rather indirectly via the web or other service, there is no truly direct way to keep a spammer from getting your email address. However, there are many steps you can take to make it difficult for a spammer to find your email address on the web:

• Don't publish your email on the web: The only way to keep your email address truly private is to not publish it on the web in any form. This is usually not a very feasible option, because many of us would like people who want to access your email address for legitimate reasons find it. Once one spammer gets your email address, it is usually resold hundreds of times over on a convenient cd as you have probably already seen advertised through spammers -- your email address is on that cd if you got the advertisement.
  Note: If you must include your email address on your website or use it to sign up for services, use only one email address. Otherwise, you are signing up for spam email for each email address you expose.
• Be conservative with who you give your information to: Many websites and online services these days will ask you for your email address when you register or visit their site. If you do sign up with any of these services, make sure that they have a privacy statement that will ensure that your email address is not given out to anyone that you don't want it to be given out to.
  Note: Do not believe it. Trust nobody. Chances are that your email address is shared with other companies and some of those companies will sell your email address to spammers.
• DO NOT reply to spam emails: Although it may sometimes be tempting to reply out of anger or frustration to an unsolicited email attacking the sender, it can sometimes lead to more serious problems. First, your email address may be sent to other spammers using the same email account, causing your email address to appear on more lists, and give you more spam mail. Also, if the account name that the spammer is using is actually someone else's (this is easy to do), you may be sending an unsuspecting computer user an unnecessary email. Spammers don't want spam either and they could care less if you are offended.

What can I do to block incoming spam email?

Although it may be difficult to prevent your email address from getting into the hands of spammers, keeping from receiving spam email is a little easier. Many developers of email software programs (such as Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) and online mail services like Hotmail and Yahoo! have already developed tools within their software to help filter out a great deal of spam mail by recognizing certain characteristics of spam emails. These tools are very useful because you will never even see these unsolicited messages. The only problem is that the spammers are always one step ahead of their victims. They figure out how to get the email through, then we try to figure out how to avoid it! It is so stupid.

If these filtering tools aren't enough to get rid of unwanted spam email, there are also a few steps you can take to rid your inbox of spam. If there are common addresses or servers that spam email is coming to you from, most mail servers will allow you to block certain addresses or domains from sending email to you. Although this might block some of the email you'd like to receive, it cuts off the spam email at the source. The only problem is that almost all spammers disguise their email address, domain name and ip address and use different non-valid values with each spam email sent in each batch -- oh well. You may also want to contact your system administrator to see if your current service has any other ways of guarding against incoming spam. Of course, no matter how many precautions are taken to get rid of incoming spam, unsolicited emails will still be able to get through. Learn to recognize unwanted email and delete it when you see it.

Note: The only good and reasonable way we know how to avoid 99% of spam is by using spam filtering services offered by SPAMCOP. Or, change your email address periodically.

Are newsgroups vulnerable to spammers?

Users of newsgroups online are identified as unique users by their name and email, which appear at the top any usenet message they send. Unfortunately, spammers have recently figured out methods for extracting these email addresses. Considering how popular the use of newsgroups is, this could pose a major problem to fighting spam, but there have been methods devised to prevent spammers from collecting these emails. Some users choose to put an "anti-spam" string in the "From:" field of their message. For example, j_smith@mailserver.com may publish his email on a newsgroup as j_smithNOspam@mailserver.com. This "corrupts" the email that spammers collect with their programs, making it unusable unless the spammer takes the time necessary to remove all of the anti-spam strings. However, this causes problems in that a user who may want to contact the poster of the message may not recognize that the address has an anti-spam string, and will not be able to contact that person.

There are other tactics to fight off spam on newsgroups that are not as problematic. One way of publishing your email address correctly on usenet is to only put your email address in the "Reply-To:" field. Since it is much harder for spammers to harvest emails from further into the message, the chances that your email address will be collected for a spam list are greatly reduced. Also, it is possible to surf newsgroups anonymously, without posting messages or publishing your email address. Often referred to as "lurking", this is looked poorly upon in some online communities, but ensures that your email address doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

How can the proper authorities find spammers?

Computer authorities and network administrators are constantly trying to fight spam in any way possible, including trying to catch spammers and deal with the threat they pose. Every digital transaction leaves some sort of record, usually in the form of an IP address, which can be used to track down the location of a spam email. Systems administrators can check logs of these addresses and find out exactly where the offending email came from, and deal with it either by blocking that IP address (or a set of IP addresses if the spammer is using more than one) or take more serious action if necessary -- such as closing their email or hosting account, NOT any sort of real punishment to correct the problem since the spammer will simply sign up for another account elsewhere.

Is anybody safe from spammers?

Not really! There are no rules or laws on the Internet. Until there are consequences for spamming and other misuse of the Internet, it will only get worse. Many ISPs pay highest regard to spam because it causes unproductive usage of their servers (they work harder to do nothing for anybody) and slows Internet connections with massive useless email spam, and are constantly changing and updating their services to combat the threat of spammers, and hope to lead an Internet-wide charge against unsolicited email.

Understanding what spam really is...

Would you purchase a product or service from a spammer?
Would you want to mass email your product or service?