Computers and Technology

Is spam a daily annoyance to you, too? I’m not referring to the questionable kind of meat that comes in a tin, but the deluge of deceitful and obnoxious commercial emails you never signed up for.

I’m sure you’re familiar with this basic computer term.

These emails varies from interest rates to enlarging various body parts, to adult images, and their numbers grow every day. Some experts estimate that junk email counts for over 90% of all emails!

Spam is named after an old sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus which took place in a diner where everything on the menu had spam in it. A bunch of vikings chant a song about spam, making it hard to hear. Decades later, the way legit emails can get lost in all the junk reminded someone, so they called it spam and the name stuck.

It can be hard to avoid getting your email address on *some* list. It’s pretty typical for many to receive 50 to 100 junk email in just one day – I know some people who get over 300 every day! And it’s growing worse. 
Hapily here are a few tips for someone to limit the amount of spam they get. Here are a few tips:

Never try to unsubscribe or ask to be taken off the list. Those emails may have a link or a reply address to unsubscribe, but 95% either just don’t work, or you’re just notifying the spammers that they have a live one.

*Never order anything you see in spam, visit the website, or in any way answer the ad. Sending out thousands and thousands of junk emails barely costs them a thing. Every order or click through to their website just encourages the spammers to send more and more.

*Try to avoid entering your email address on websites as much as possible. If you do, consider getting a second email account with Gmail or a similar service. So you have a spam-only address.
Many websites offering contests, joke lists, free greeting cards, etc. distribute your email to other spammers for a profit.

* Never put your name in a guest book on a website. As an experiment I recently created a new email address and entered it on about five guestbooks I found with a Google search. Within 24 hours I was getting spam, and it grew to dozens a day within a week.

* Spammers can send out special messages that “phone home” and let them know when they’re opened. So if your email client has a “work offline” menu option (You’ll often locate this in the File menu) select it before opening suspect emails. You can also disconnect from the internet completely, but unless you are still trapped in the backwaters of dialup, this could involve unplugging cables. Your best option is to use the “offline” feature of your email client.
If you use a web-based email service like {Yahoo Mail, you won’t be able to go offline in this way~You can’t go offline when you use a web-based email service~It’s impossible to use web-based email services offline}. Check your mail options for a setting to turn off graphics in emails, or to display mail in plain text only. Or if you see an option to turn off remote images, choose that.
These steps can help keep the spammers from knowing you’ve opened the message.

*Avoid forwarding emails to large numbers of people.
Not everyone realizes that when you forward a message, the email addresses of everyone who receives the message is visible to every person who reads it. If any of the recipients is a spammer, or if one of a friend’s computer is infected by certain viruses, they can harvest all of those addresses, including yours.
If you do send an email to multiple people, you can avoid revealing email addresses by entering addresses in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) area instead of To or CC. This will hide the list of addresses from everyone else.
If you’re sending a message from somebody on to others, you should copy and paste just the message into a new email window rather than hitting the forward button — this trims the message down and protects the privacy of others.

*To deal with the spam you already receive, most email applications allow you to create “filters” or “rules” that move incoming email into a specified folder or even right into the trash.
Setting filters up can be complicated, but the newer versions of many email programs, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail make it much easier.
The programs recognize patterns in spam, and use your address book as a white list of legit senders. You can use a click to clear junk. The more spam you mark, the better the program gets at automatically taking care of them. You’ll make a memory of tons of unwanted spam in your inbox.
Many internet providers also provide a spam filter which blocks email before it gets to your computer. The problem with this is that they often block legitimate mail and you may never know about it.
Because of this, I recommend using filtering software on your own computer, such as the two programs I just mentioned.~*Never order anything advertised in spam, click through to the website, or in any way answer the ad. The spammers are about to email a million people at once, for next to nothing. Every time someone orders the spammers are just encourages to send more.

*Don’t bother trying to unsubscribe or ask to be taken off the list. Those emails may include a link or a reply address to stop getting emails, but most either simply don’t function, or you’re just notifying the spammers that they’ve got a live one.

* Online guest books are to be avoided at all costs. As an experiment I recently created a new email address and entered it on about five guestbooks I found with a Google search. Within 24 hours I was getting spam, and it grew to dozens a day within a week.

*Try to avoid entering your email address on websites as much as possible. If you do, consider getting a second email account with Hotmail or a similar service. So you have a spam-only address.
Many websites offering contests, joke lists, free greeting cards, etc. invade your privacy by sharing your address with other spammers.

* Simply glancing at the body of a junk email can send a signal to the spammer letting them know you opened it. So if your email program has a “work offline” option (the file menu is a good place to look for this) select it before opening suspect emails. You can also disconnect from the internet completely, but unless you’re still making the mistake of using the out-of-date dialup, this could involve unplugging wires. Your best option is to use the “offline” feature of your email application.
Gmail, you won’t be able to go offline in this way~You can’t go offline when you use a web-based email service~It’s impossible to use web-based email services offline}. Check your mail options for a setting to turn off graphics in emails, or to display mail in plain text only. If you see an option about not loading remote images, that’s the one to make sure is turned on.
These steps can help keep the spammers from knowing you’ve opened the message.

*To deal with the spam you already receive, most email programs allow you to create “filters” or “rules” that move incoming email into a specified folder or even right into the trash.
Setting filters up can be complicated, but the newer versions of many email clients, including Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac OS X Mail make it much easier.
The programs recognize patterns in spam, and use your address book as a white list of legit senders. Any spam that shows up in your inbox can be marked (and automatically deleted) with a click. The more spam you mark, the better the program gets at automatically taking care of them. You’ll make a memory of tons of unwanted spam in your inbox.
Many internet providers also provide a spam filter which blocks email before it gets to your computer. The problem with this is that they often block legitimate mail and you may never know about it.
Because of this, I recommend using filtering software on your own computer, such as the two programs I just mentioned.

*Avoid forwarding emails to large numbers of people.
Not everyone realizes that when you forward a message, the email addresses of everyone who receives the message is visible to every person who reads it. If any of the recipients is a spammer, or if one of a friend’s computer is infected by certain viruses, they can harvest all of those addresses, including yours.
If you do send an email to multiple people, you can avoid revealing email addresses by entering addresses in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) area instead of To or CC. This will hide the list of addresses from everyone else.
If you’re sending a message from somebody on to others, you should copy and paste just the message into a new email window rather than hitting the forward button — this trims the message down and protects the privacy of others.}

Ultimately, spam is a fact of modern life, and it’s next to impossible to avoid all of it, mostly because of what other people are doing with your email. If your current email address is about to collapse from the amount of spam you get, you might be forced to get a new one.
After that, if you follow the suggestions and simple computer tips above, you’ll have a good chance of keeping it under control.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.