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Dealing With Spam

by Charles LeBer
    What is Email Spam?
  • Emails you did not ask for that were sent in bulk from senders you do not know
  • Simply put..Emails you do not want
    Spam Sent Goes up 2% in February 2006
  • 22 billion spam sent in February.
  • That is 73% of all email sent
  • Virus emails = 1.5% of all emails
    Why is Spam a Problem?
  • About 70% of email is spam
  • We waist time getting rid of it
  • ISPs increase resources to handle it.
  • We are all fed up with it!
    Why Spam is sent
  • Because it is cheap to send out.
  • Send out a million spam, get 0.05% buyers and you have 500 sales.
    Why spam finds you
  • Dictionary/Telephone Book Attack Millions of users share one common domain name. At a large ISP, it's enough to combine the domain name with a random user name. example – charlie@sympatico.ca Use a long & difficult name charlietalkstoomuch@sympatico.ca
  • Brute Searching Force Spammer’s robots scan web pages following links in web forums, chat rooms. Spammer joins forum. Use a disposable address Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail
  • Worms infesting your computer Spammers cooperate with hackers, make virus worms that scan your address book, web cache and files for email addresses. Then you send out send their bulk spam emails. This makes you a PC Zombie.
  • Use virus scanning, be wary of attachments, software up-to-date
    How to limit spam
  • Report spam to your ISP
  • Try automated e-mail filtering on OE or Mail Box Dispatcher
  • Ask friends to BCC
  • Never reply, or click on an "opt-out" link, or unsubscribe
  • If a web site requests registration to allow useful operations, use a disposable address
    How to Have No Spam
  • A drastic measure that may be short lived is to… Change your email address to a more longer and complicated one. Most ISPs will let you do it for free, some charge a small fee.
  • - You could also change your ISP
    A Bad Way to limit spam
  • “Email postage" systems want email senders to pay 1 to 5 cents/email. Makes it too expensive to send a large number of messages. Bill Gates promoted this
  • BUT….
  • - Spammers already use other people's computers to spam, would offload the postage charge onto others.
  • - You could use web-based email such as Google Mail or Hotmail – can’t be tracked
    Watch out for Checkboxes
  • When you sign up for something, there is often text saying: "YES, I want to be contacted by third parties concerning products…." The checkbox next to that is often already checked and your email address will be given to someone.
    Some Good News
  • - ISPs are using anti spam programs to remove spam. Plan is to remove 17% this year. but some legitimate email is labeled spam or deleted before you get it. and you may have to contact your ISP to have an email sender put on your White List
    Spam Filters
  • - Difficult to setup, as spammers find new ways to get to you. A friend could send you an email with a spam type subject = spam You have to be a math professor to get it to work. A self learning spam filter is better. The best filter is YOU!
    To Sum Up
  • Use complicated name
  • Virus checker & Anti spyware up-to-date, ask friends to BCC
  • Report spam, try a filter
  • Get a disposable address.
  • Never reply & watch checkboxes
    And consider this neat program, A Program to Beat the Spammers
    Mail Box Dispatcher 2.3
  • This is a free program from Anti-Spam-Tools.Com
  • Deletes unwanted mail right at the ISP’s server before downloading.
  • Preview some of the text of each email
  • Self-learning detector helps you to recognize spam messages.
  • Spam filtering by senders, recipients and 'bad phrases'.
    Install Mail Box Dispatcher and follow setup instructions.
  • Start the program
  • Click on "tools" then "Options"
  • Click "Message Browser" and select what you want to display. (I use - From, Subject, Message Browser prompts, To, Size and Date.)
  • Click "Apply" and then "OK"
  • Click "Refresh List" to see emails on your Internet Service Provider's site.
  • Decide if you want them to download or not. Click on an email to highlight it and look at the Message preview area to see any text in the message. Look at the subject, From, Size and any other columns to help decide wether you want to delete them forever at the ISP's site.
  • To delete an email forever, (no trash folder) click on the leftmost "Action" block beside the unwanted email.
  • When finished click "Process". The deleted emails will dissapear.
  • Bring up Outlook Express or your other email client and you will get the emails you want.
Charlie Le Ber