Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at "lurkers," people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.
E-mail spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. E-mail spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. E-mail spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.
One particularly nasty variant of e-mail spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private e-mail discussion forums). Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
The main problem with spam is that it inundates our mailboxes and robs us of time and control over our mail. At the very least it’s annoying, at best it negatively impacts our productivity and drains our resources. Also, there are now various laws that regulate and/or prohibit spam. For instance, on January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act, went into effect in the US. This law puts specific requirements on senders of commercial e-mail, including providing a valid physical postal address, honoring unsubscribe requests within a specific time frame. The downside of the law is that it pre-empts stronger state laws and places enforcement in the hands of the FTC, state Attorney's General and ISPs. Check out other state and federal laws at http://www.spamlaws.com/.
Use Spam Filters. There is available an array of both hardware and software filters that will help you to remove spam before it ends up in your inbox. For instance:
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at "lurkers," people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.
E-mail spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. E-mail spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. E-mail spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.
One particularly nasty variant of e-mail spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private e-mail discussion forums). Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
The main problem with spam is that it inundates our mailboxes and robs us of time and control over our mail. At the very least it’s annoying, at best it negatively impacts our productivity and drains our resources. Also, there are now various laws that regulate and/or prohibit spam. For instance, on January 1, 2004, the CAN-SPAM Act, went into effect in the US. This law puts specific requirements on senders of commercial e-mail, including providing a valid physical postal address, honoring unsubscribe requests within a specific time frame. The downside of the law is that it pre-empts stronger state laws and places enforcement in the hands of the FTC, state Attorney's General and ISPs. Check out other state and federal laws at http://www.spamlaws.com/.
What You Can Do About Spam
There is a good chance that your school already has installed a spam filtering solution. Following are other methods for reducing spam in case you have other e-mail accounts you want to protect and/or you can practice in addition to the mechanisms already in place: Use Spam Filters. There is available an array of both hardware and software filters that will help you to remove spam before it ends up in your inbox. For instance:
• Microsoft Outlook 2003 now comes with a Junk e-mail filter, read more here. For Outlook express, click here.
• SpamAssassin is generally regarded as one of the most effective spam filters, especially when used in combination with spam databases. Even simple text-matching alone may, for most users, be sufficient to correctly classify a majority of incoming mail.
• Qurb has received PC Magazine's Editors' Choice Award three years running (2003-2005), and also won their Best of 2003 award.
Report Abuse. There are steps you can take to assist the US government with enforcing existing laws that are broken by spammers. • Spam that is fraudulent - offering products that don't work or don't exist, pyramid schemes and so on - - can be sent to the US Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov.
• Spam that promotes stocks can be sent to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission at enforcement@sec.gov..
• Spam containing or advertising child pornography is illegal in most of the world under existing law. In the US, you can report suspected criminal activity to the Federal Bureau of Investigation via this form. You can also file child-pornography-specific reports with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children here.
Also ... • Just hit delete. If you're only getting a few spam messages a day, the best solution is probably to just chill out and hit delete. Yes, it's annoying. And no, it's not right. But it's just not worth the effort to banish spam unless it's really impacting your ability to use e-mail effectively.
• Don’t forward chain letters or other urban legends.
• Before subscribing to a listserv or newsletter, check out the privacy policy.
• Don't respond to spam.
• Don't post your e-mail address in "plain" form anywhere on the Web. Instead, you can disguise your e-mail address by writing it in a convoluted way so that humans can still read it, but bots can't. For example, instead of writing "russ@example.com", use "russ AT example DOT com".
• Keep a "private" e-mail address which you share only with close friends and family. Never use this private e-mail address on any site.
• Use a feedback form on your website instead of providing a contact e-mail address.
• DON'T follow "remove me" instructions. While reputable e-mailers will offer you a way to get off their e-mail lists, spammers just use their "remove me" instructions to validate your e-mail address as "live," thus paving the way for even more spam. So, no matter how much spam annoys you, don't bother responding -- it just makes the problem worse.
• Watch out for pre-checked boxes. When you buy things online, companies sometimes pre-select check boxes to indicate that it's fine to sell or give your e-mail address to responsible parties. Clear the check box if you don't want to be contacted.
• Use the internal Rules or Junk e-mail filter provided by your e-mail software to automatically delete or quarantine emails with certain words or phrases, or from certain e-mail addresses, so that you don’t have to even become aware of them. For example, to learn more about this feature in Microsoft Outlook, click here. For your Yahoo! Mail account, go here. For Microsoft Hotmail,
0 comments:
Post a Comment