Spam : How to Break Free from Unsolicited Commercial Email

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

You've probably heard the term "SPAM" used before, but what does it mean, and why is it such a big problem in the world of computing? And if you're sick of SPAM in your inbox, how do you stop them from sending it to you?

• What SPAM is and why it is sent
• Why SPAM is a problem
• How "spammers" take advantage of the Internet
• How to reduce the amount of SPAM you get and ways to get rid of the SPAM that sneaks through

Processed Meat?

Yes, SPAM is the name of a processed meat product made by the Hormel corporation. But it has also taken on another meaning: it is the term used by Internet users for the "junk" e-mail you receive. We all receive junk postal mail at our homes; it is a proven way for advertisers to reach consumers. However, it costs them the price of a stamp every time they want to reach people.

Nowadays, almost everyone has an e-mail address. The great thing about e-mail is that I can send the same message to tens, hundreds, even thousands of people, and it won't cost me anything! Advertisers caught on to this panacea pretty quickly, and it wasn't long before people started to receive unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE, or spam). These advertisers are referred to as "spammers".

Spam has become the #1 complaint among Internet users. Annoying as it is, however, it also costs Internet users and service providers (ISPs) millions of dollars every year. Not only that, but spam has succeeded in making some Internet technologies unusable. Usenet is a part of the Internet that acts as an electronic bulletin board. There are scores of categories, and you can post information and questions to other Internet users like yourself. However, spammmers inundated the different bulletin boards with relentless advertisements, making it impossible for many users to find the information they need. For every real posting, there was one advertisement, so 50% of the time people spent on Usenet was wasted in downloading unwanted ads.

E-mail is used by everyone on the Internet. At the time of this writing, reports state that 25% of all e-mail processed is spam. For every 20 messages you get, you have to find and delete 5 messages! It costs very little money to get into the spamming business, so we can only expect these numbers to rise. What a waste of time!

Spammer Secrets

How do spammers get a hold of your e-mail address? Well, huge lists of e-mail addresses are sold on the Internet all the time. The people who make these lists get e-mail addresses from company web sites, e-mail directories, search engines, and from any postings you might make on chat, web, or usenet forums.

Another way they get your e-mail address is directly from you! When you download a program from the Internet, or sign up for any type of service on the web, you are usually required to fill out a registration form. On the registration form, you must write your e-mail address. When you submit that form, your e-mail address is added into the company's advertising database, and you can be sure that you'll get e-mail from them soon. Most companies will let you opt out of receiving spam by putting a very small checkbox on the form. Read those forms carefully, folks!

Spam Reduction

So how do you stop getting spam? The first step is to stop giving out your e-mail address. The more times your e-mail address appears on a web page or on a newsgroup posting, the more spam you are likely to receive.

An easy way to do this is to get a second e-mail account, one used ONLY for giving out to companies or to post on web sites. A free e-mail address is easy to get through Netscape's WebMail, Microsoft's HotMail, or Yahoo's YahooMail, and once you get that new address, you don't have to check it for new e-mail very often. Use that address on all forms and you're halfway home.

Some spam tells you that you will stop receiving more spam if you just reply to their original message and write the word "cancel". DO NOT DO THIS! It is a clever ploy by the spammers to find out that your particular e-mail address is active and in use. By replying to that spam, they will send you lots more in the future, because they know that you use that address.

The Filter Fumble

The best way to reduce the numbers of spam in your inbox is to use an e-mail program with filters. Filters are a set of rules and procedures for e-mail that you create. Every message you receive in the e-mail program is examined against your rules, and then is either saved, deleted, or moved into another folder.

For example, you want to delete messages with "Make $$$" in the subject. Set up a filter that searches every message for "$$$" in the subject line. If it finds one, you can tell the filter to delete it automatically, or to move it into a "spam" folder, so you don't have to deal with it. Filters are flexible, but they are often not easy to use. Keep checking the Help2Go home page in the future for new filtering tutorials.

Spam is bad now, but it is likely to get worse. Take charge in the fight and sign one of the many petitions available on the web. Organizations are out there to lobby Congress on the subject. Let's take back our e-mailboxes.

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