Dealing With Unsolicited Email (Spam)
Introduction
The volume of spam in increasing and in the short term it's only likely to get worse. What can be done about it?
Continue reading for some practical tips.
Step 1 - Avoid Spam
The best way to deal with spam is not to get any. In order to do this it is necessary to understand where the spammers get your email address from.
The Center for Democracy and Training have performed some research which is very enlightening.
http://www.cdt.org/speech/spam/030319spamreport.shtml
(My Apologies. I know this has been posted on AO before, but I can't find the article - If the author can give me the article I'll edit this to pass on the credit)
Basicall, to avoid your email from being harvested for spam do not publish it correctly on websites, usenet news or other publically accessible places on the internet. You can obfuscate your email address in several ways to allow humans to read it, but not the computers that harvest emails:
* Publish an image with your email address in it.
* Add extra text [email protected]
* Spell out your email address a dot person at hotmail dot com
When giving your email address to websites and companies use a disposable/unique email address so that should you begin receiving unsolicited email to that address you know who the source was and you can complain or possibly take legal action. For example when providing an email address for antionline you could set up a hotmail address -
* [email protected]
Or check out this article http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=246924 for an easy way to create disposable email addresses.
Step 2 - Oops, I'm Already Getting Spam - Filtering It Out
Okay, so sometime your email address got out into the wild.
There are a number of ways of filtering this, including using spamassassin (http://spamassassin.org) - Check ouis tutorial http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=242068
For Outlook users check out this tutorial for setting up some excellent filters http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=243128
Step 3 - Taking Positive Action
Spam is on the increase - want to help fight back?
Sign up for Spamcop http://spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
You will then receive a unique email address that you can forward spam to which will allow the fine people at Spamcop to trace spam to it's source and raise the appropriate complaints.
Step 4 - Click Here to Unsubscribe
Don't do this. More often than not this is a link that will allow the spammers to verify that the email address you have used is valid and all that will happen is that you will get more spam.
If the spam has come from a legitimate company then you should be able to mail [email protected] or [email protected] with a suitable complaint, but only do this if you are certain the company is legitimate.
I have found this complaintt very effective:
You have sent me unsolicited email.
Please ensure that I am removed from all contact, mailing and emailing
lists within your organisation.
Further unsolicited email from yourselves will:
1) Signify that you authorise me to take any required action to prevent further unsolicited mail.
2) Result in your domain legitimate.com being added to our site wide banned domains.
3) A complaint being raised with Spamcop.
4) A complaint made to your upstream service provider.
Step 5 - If All Else Fails
This is harsh, but if nothing is working or the task is too daunting you will have to abondon your email address and get another one. Ask your admin, they should be sympathetic if you have a spam problem and then follow Step 1 to keep it clean.
