Toward a spam-free diet

TechTalk
By Ken Doyle

If you have an e-mail address, you’ve probably been exposed to offers for enhancing various portions of your anatomy, making a quick million, or even more ludicrous claims. Spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, tops the list of problems identified in almost every survey of Internet users. Besides being annoying or offensive, spam poses a real economic problem: last year, it cost corporate America over $8.9 billion (www.spamfilterreview.com).

Last week, Congress passed its first ever antispam bill. Unfortunately, like most legislation that tries to address technological problems, this bill fails to provide any effective solution. It’s so watered down in deference to marketing lobbyists that it actually encourages spammers, requiring that consumers opt out of receiving spam--even if they never opted in to begin with.

Further, any antispam legislation passed will be difficult, if not impossible, to enforce. Major spammers operate from servers in countries like China, Korea, Russia, and Brazil, and have little regard for U.S. laws. These countries harbor "bullet-proof" Internet providers who actively aid and abet spammers with a variety of techniques to help their clients hide their tracks.

So how do you keep your inbox spam-free? There are several steps you can take to reduce spam.

First, never respond to a spam message. In particular, do not click on any link in the message, especially the ones that claim to remove you from the spammer’s list. Doing so will only confirm that you have a "live" e-mail address, and will simply result in more spam.

Second, turn off the display of images, Javascript, or HTML mail if your e-mail program has those features. Spammers are notorious for embedding bugs in e-mail that will report back to the spammer when you open a message.

Third, obtain a free e-mail account from services like Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) or Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), and use that address (rather than your primary e-mail) whenever you sign up for offers or make purchases online.

You can use your e-mail program’s filters to block some spam, but that doesn’t solve the problem as the spam has already been downloaded to your computer. A much better method is to stop it at the source--on your mail server--before it ever hits your inbox.

Corporate mail servers can do this by using a variety of blacklists that filter out known spam sources, although there’s always the danger that a legitimate message may be blocked, too.
In the case of home e-mail accounts, you may have some server-side filtering options through your Internet provider. You can also try server-side blocking tools if you’re more adventurous--a comprehensive list is maintained by the SpamCon Foundation (www.spamcon.org/directories/server-filters.shtml). Of these services, my favorite is SpamCop (www.spamcop.net), which also lets you report spam to the appropriate authorities, helping to maintain the blacklists. On a few occasions, I’ve even had the satisfaction of seeing a spammer’s account being shut down as the result of SpamCop reports.

Start fighting back, and look forward to the day when the only spam you encounter will clog your arteries, not your inbox.