Email and Spam – How To Reduce Your Junk Mail
Posted: Sunday, June 11, 2006
by Danny Davids
Internet access is more the rule and less the exception. As a result, email is fast taking its place as the preferred method of communication, especially when documentation of a conversation is required. (You don’t think so? The next time you talk to somebody, see what they ask for first when they want to get in touch with you - your mailing address, your phone number, or your email address.) With free access to computers in public places such as libraries, and no-cost services such as Hotmail and G-Mail, everybody has email these days, even if they don’t own a computer or have Internet access at home. Businesses are seeing the opportunity to save time, reduce costs, and increase their customer base by using email as a way to advertise their goods and services. They call it advertising. The rest of us call it spam.
How They Do It
Businesses can get your email address in several ways. The easiest way is for a company to know your business’s email naming strategy. Most companies want email addresses that follow a certain internal convention and are easy for customers and vendors to remember. Maybe your company assigns email addresses by using a person’s first name and last initial, like dannyd@fakeemailaddress.com. (Don’t try sending email to that one, folks. Like the address says, it’s a fake.) If an advertiser can figure out the naming standard, and can obtain a list of all employees in a business, there’s a whole new group of potential customers to whom email can be sent.
A more difficult (and much less legal) method would be to have someone hack into a computer system and steal a company’s email list. The problem there is the time, money, and expense involved in doing so. Oh, yeah, and the lawyers’ fees incurred once you’re caught. With the increased security that businesses and Internet service providers (or ISPs) are providing these days, and the severe consequences that can occur when a hacker and his employer are caught, it’s just not cost-effective.
Another method is to utilize a software program that sends out blanket emails to a particular domain name. The software generates an email for a@fakeemailaddress.com, then b@fakeemailaddress.com, and so on. When it gets to the end of the alphabet, it starts with aa, then ab, then ac through az, then ba, then bb, and on down the line. Each time the program gets to the end of a series, it adds a letter and starts over. This means a lot of emails don’t go through. However, the ones that do turn out to be legitimate are noted and saved in a database. This database is the one the business uses to send out their advertising. In fact, some people use this method to generate email address lists that can be sold to other businesses (keep reading).
Some companies utilize viruses to increase their contact base. They’ll send out an email that has a virus embedded in the message. When the recipient opens the message and reads it, the virus is activated, going through the computer’s email address book, creating new email messages for each of those entries, and sending them out from the infected computer. In effect, they’re letting you do their email for them.
As mentioned earlier, companies can contact service bureaus that maintain lists of email addresses for purchase. These are not exclusive purchases, and can be sold to anyone over and over again. The names are entered into the company’s database, and you start getting their advertising. A variant of this is contacting a service bureau that tracks which sites a user accesses on the ‘net through “free" software programs it offers. (More on this in a future article.)
Finally, why go to the trouble of hunting you down when they can get you to come to them? Some organizations set up a Web site, have an item a visitor can click on to get more information, and let them send the email address they can use to promote their products. Does it have to be a legitimate site? Are you kidding? Companies can put out multiple sites, all designed to do nothing more than get you to send them your email information!
There are probably newer methods businesses can get your email address that are gaining popularity. The bottom line is that these businesses end up with your personal information which they use to send you unwanted advertising.
How You Stop It
You can’t eliminate all spam. But you can protect yourself by using some common sense.
Don’t use your work email address for personal use. Businesses are joining ISPs by adding software protection to their email servers, preventing most spam from coming through. A few still slip through the cracks, however. If it’s not for a specific work-related reason, do not give your work email address to anyone for personal communication.
Use your Internet service provider’s tools. In addition to running their own software, many ISPs now provide free firewall and anti-spam programs that you install on your computer and help limit unwanted email and pop-up ads. Contact your ISP, find out if they have these programs and how to use them, and do so.
Reserve an email address for “information only". There may be sites that you want to know more about, but you’re leery about using your email address to get information. Create an additional email address through a service like Yahoo or Hotmail, and use that address instead. You can check the legitimate offers and send those companies email using your regular address, and let the rest go.
Report spam to your ISP. Notifying your ISP know when you’ve received particularly offensive email or repeat messages from the same vendor gives them a chance to update their records and prevent that material from coming through to your computer.
Utilize your email’s pre-processing functions. If your email program allows you to use rules to process your email before you read it, use the feature. Learn how to set up rules so that emails coming from a certain vendor, or with certain key words in the topic or body of the email, can be moved to another folder or even deleted. You’ll want to check after setting up a new rule to make sure you haven’t inadvertently deleted emails you want, but after awhile you’ll get used to the syntax and will know what you need to do to eliminate those unwanted spam.
Don’t open and read suspicious email. Because some messages come through in spite of all precautions, don’t hesitate to delete any email you receive that comes from someone you don’t know.
NEVER “unsubscribe"! Many spam emails have a note at the bottom saying something like, “If you received this message in error and wish to unsubscribe, click here." DON’T! What you’re doing is validating your email address to the company that sent you the spam! Do that and you can bet your name and information will appear on somebody’s mailing address list. You’ll be making money for them and allowing more spam to be sent to you.
Create a new email account. If your spam count is just too much to deal with, consider a new email address. Your ISP should be able to create a new email account for you, or tell you how to do it yourself. If you go this route, be sure to give the new address ONLY to people you know, and follow the guidelines above to limit spam. If you don’t, in a few months you’ll be right back where you started, defeating your whole purpose.
Don’t Do The Obvious
As kids we’re told that we should share our things. That works just fine for toys, but it can cause serious problems in more grown-up situations. As a responsible email user, you have to find the balance between giving out your personal information and finding the information you want. Using common sense and the guidelines above, you’ll find your spam count dropping drastically.
This Article has been viewed 1,946 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Not to plug a specific provider.... but I've found that gmail is incredibly effective at spotting and eliminating spam without removing what you want.
Actually i was looking for material which could tell me the various reasons that affect spam count of our mailsIf you mean why email you send out is treated as spam by the recipients, there could be several reasons. Many spam filters will treat a first-time email from a specific address as spam. Not much you can do about it except to notify the recipient to check their spam folders and mark your email address as acceptable for future messages. If an ISP flags a range of IP addresses, or addresses from a particular Internet domain, as bad, and you're included in that range, your messages could be treated as spam as well. In this case your messages are blocked at the ISP's server rather than flagged at the recipient's computer and the messages never get through. You can try contacting the ISP that has you blocked and explain your situation, and they may make an exception for you...or not.
Hi Danny,Very nice article about spam. Very Interesting. Thanks for same.
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