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If
you are fed up with the amount of spam or virus email you
receive, and would like to do something about it, read
on...
Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to have visited any web sites
selling pornography, degrees and doctorates, low-rate mortgage deals,
human growth hormone or schemes to get you rich quick, to receive their
unsolicited emails. And in spite of what it may say at the bottom of
such an email, you almost certainly won't be "receiving this email
because you have registered your email address at [the sender's] site
or the site of one of [the sender's] partners".
What happens is, as soon as your email
address is available on the internet, such as in a Usenet
newsgroup, an on-line directory, on a mailing list or most
probably on a web site, "spammers" (those who
send out unsolicited email) can find it. They use sophisticated
scanning software ("harvesters") to look through
thousands and thousands of pages looking for anything that
resembles an email address and add it to their database.
Some "worm" viruses can even collect email addresses
from locations on your computer hard drive such as the "My
Documents" or "Temporary Internet Files" folders.
The longer you have a particular email
address, the more spam you will receive, because as well
as your address being found by more spammers' scans, these
databases are also re-sold on CD to companies and individuals
looking to send out mass mailings. And if you have your
own domain name, you will often find your mailbox being
intensively spammed using a dictionary attack of common
words or names before the @ sign - it is easy to get a
list of valid domain names from the internet registrars
and use a computer program to pump out thousands of emails
to alice@yourdomain.com, anne@yourdomain.com, arthur@yourdomain.com
and so on. Even if none of these addresses exist, the law
of averages says that eventually the spammer will score
a direct hit.
Almost every one of these emails is highly
dubious, probably illegal in many countries, and costs
the recipient time and money to process. There are laws
in place that state that such emails must include a "remove" option,
so you can unsubscribe. However with the more unscrupulous
spammers, doing this merely reports to the sender that
you have a valid email address and hence you are likely
to receive more, not fewer, emails. If you are interested
in finding out more about those responsible, visit the
Spamhaus
Top 10. You can also follow the discussion of latest
trends, at the Fight
Back site. If you are in doubt about the legitimacy
of any domain name, type it into the Site
Advisor. |
| Use just
one address |
If you are running a business
then it is impractical to not publish your email address
or to keep changing it. But if your web site has several
addresses on it (e.g. sales@, billing@, enquiries@),
all of these will be valid spam targets. Better to use
one address and get your mail server or email software
to redirect messages based on their content to different
departments locally, rather than at source.
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| Scramble
your mailto: |
Your web site
designer can encode your email address so that it still
works when you click on it but cannot be harvested by
spammers - ask if this has been done. |
| Use forms |
Where possible,
get your web visitors to fill out "contact us" forms
on your web site - these provide a structured email response
with clearly defined "Subject:" lines, which
helps you to route them efficiently at your end. |
| Beware postings |
If you post
your address on a Usenet newsgroup or an auction, this
is another place it could be picked up by a harvester
program, so use newsgroups wisely and maybe use a separate
email address that you're not too bothered about, such
as Mailinator, for any such correspondence. |
| Subscriptions |
Make sure that
any site you are subscribing to has a privacy policy.
Most reputable companies have a policy of not selling
their email lists on to others, but best to check. |
| Use spam
protection |
Just as you
would use virus protection, and you can run both together
- see the information about server and local spam protection
services below. |
| Keep
your system secure |
If everyone kept their
virus definitions, operating system and firewall up to
date, there would be less chance of malicious code gaining
access to your computer and using it as an address harvesting
tool or spam source. |
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When a piece of spam arrives at your
mail server, you have two basic options:
a) deal with it at the mail server, and/or
b) download it to your local PC or network and deal with it locally,
(or both, if you receive a lot of spam, for a belt-and-braces job). |
| Mail server
option |
Programs such as Spam
Assassin run
on the actual mail server, and can redirect or delete
spam emails before you are even
aware that they have arrived. It is the equivalent
of having an agent standing at your door to meet
the postman every morning, and sending him away with
anything you didn't want to receive, and/or putting
unwanted mail straight in your dustbin without you
seeing it.
These programs reject mail depending on subject, content, and sender
to filter out all the main culprits with ease. With spammers increasingly
turning to "botnets" (networks of compromised PCs dotted
around the world) to send their messages, Spam Assassin also looks
up the constantly updated blacklists of spam distribution points
as part of its scoring system. It is a standard instation for all
my web hosting customers and it will rid you of a significant amount
of obvious spam before you are even aware of it. If you are not
one of my customers or do not have access to such mail server tools,
then you still have the option of a local filtering option... |
| Local option |
Having to
filter spam locally is, on principle, outrageous, because
you have then incurred the cost of downloading the spam
and the time to process it. However, because of the tools
that are now available, you can safely screen all downloaded
mail and quaratine anything that is suspect to a local
folder in a matter of seconds.
Just as you wouldn't dream of not having a virus-checker on your
computer, spam can be just as costly to your business and you should
consider handling it in the same way. |
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| See also my "tips" page for
more advice on stress-free surfing. |
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