By Suzi Batta
Spam is a term that serves a dual purpose. It refers to canned luncheon meat. In Internet terms, spam means unwanted email. Bulk unsolicited commercial email is annoying and time consuming, but it's a fact of life.
Most spammers send emails in bulk with their mass distributed commercial message. Your invitation to partake in the latest get-rich quick scheme, a link to some pornographic Web sites or the latest round is the individual emails from Nigeria. They desparately need to send you money or else their government is going to confiscate it. You get a nice commission for being so kind as to safeguard their millions of dollars. This scam has been around for quite some time and it's resurfacing in your email box. Don't believe the hype - if it sounds too good to be true, it's spam.
Some spammers use software tools to harvest email addresses from the Internet. If you post to bulletin boards, have your email address displayed on a Web site, or got on someone's mailing list that forgot to blind carbon copy the mail, chances are you got on a spam list.
You may be able to block know spammers from your email program. In AOL you can select keyword 'spam' go into your preferences and block 'known' spammers or set up your own list by 'blocking' individual senders. If you are using Eudora, this mail program has filters that you can set up and add the email addresses of those you don't want to receive email from. The most user friendly is Outlook (full version) where you can turn on your 'Junk Email' feature. You still have to add each sender to the junk mail list but once you do it automatically deletes the mail from those senders. Spammers use multiple email aliases and keep sending their message under different guises, so totally ridding yourself of all spam is nearly impossible.
When you reply to an email sent by a spammer it generally confirms that your email address is active, so they sell your email address to other spammers, hence more junk mail. Your best bet is the delete key. To cut down on the amount of spam you receive you may want to reserve your primary email account for friends and family. If you are able to, set up a secondary email account specifically for public posting.
Spam confusion - not every email is spam. If you signed up for a mailing list, that means you opted-in to receive email alerts, notifications or newsletters. Some people classify everything as "spam" mail. You may have signed up for an email list and forgot about it. Many lists are automated, they are called listservs. You can subcribe/unsubcribe yourself by sending a blank email to the list owner. Listservs are controlled by a computer that is programmed to recognize specific commands. Sending an email with a signature file attached, or free services like Yahoo, that includes an advertisement at the bottom of the email, may cause problems trying to remove yourself from a such a list. Having mail forwarded from a previous address to your current email is also a problem when trying to remove yourself from a list. It is a good idea to look at the full header of the email to find out which address the email is being sent to. Then send that email address to the list owner for removal.
A simple request to be removed from a legitimate company's mailing list usually suffices. There is no need to threaten a list owner to get your name taken off their mailing list. Most companies do not want to hold you hostage on their list, especially if you do not want to be there.
Below are a list of Web sites that offer spam control, advice and tips, bureaus to report complaints and spam abuse.
Resources:
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE)
Spam/UCE-Fighting Resources
List Management Guidelines
Mail Abuse Prevention System
Anti-spam links and information
Spamtastic