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Fighting Spam
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According to Scott McAdams, OMA Public Affairs and Communications Department (www.oma.org):
"Studies show unsolicited or "junk" e-mail, known as spam, accounts for roughly half of all e-mail messages received.
Although once regarded as little more than a nuisance, the prevalence
of spam has increased to the point where many users have begun to
express a general lack of confidence in the effectiveness of e-mail
transmissions, and increased concern over the spread of computer
viruses via unsolicited messages."
In 2003, President Bush signed the "Can Spam" bill, in December of 2003
which is the first national standards around bulk unsolicited
commercial e-mail. The bill, approved by the Senate by a vote of 97 to
0, prohibits senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from using false
return addresses to disguise their identity (spoofing) and the use of
dictionaries to generate such mailers. In addition, it prohibits the
use of misleading subject lines and requires that emails include and
opt-out mechanism. The legislation also prohibits senders from
harvesting addresses off Web sites. Violations constitute a misdemeanor
crime subject to up to one year in jail.
One major point that needs to be discussed about this:
spam is now coming from other countries in ever-greater numbers. These
emails are harder to fight, because they come from outside our
country's laws and regulations. Because the Internet opens borders and
thinks globally, these laws are fine and good, but do not stop the
problem.
So what do you do about this?
Here are the top 5 Rules to do to protect from spam.
Number 1: Do what you can to avoid having your email address out on the net.
There are products called "spam spiders" that search the Internet for
email addresses to send email to. If you are interested, do a search on
"spam spider" and you will be amazed at what you get back.
Interestingly, there is a site, WebPoison.org, which is an open source
project geared to fight Internet "spambots" and "spam spiders", by
giving them bogus HTML web pages, which contain bogus email addresses
A couple suggestions for you: a) use form emails, which can hide
addresses or also b) use addresses like sales@company.com instead of
your full address to help battle the problem. c) There are also
programs that encode your email, like jsGuard, which encodes your email
address on web pages so that while spam spiders find it difficult or
impossible to read your email address.
Number 2:
Get spam blocking software. There are many programs out there for this. (go to www.cloudmark.com or www.mailwasher.net
for example). You may also buy a professional version. Whatever you do,
get the software. It will save you time. The software is not foolproof,
but they really do help. You usually have to do some manual set up to
block certain types of email.
Number 3:
Use the multiple email address approach.
There are a lot of free email addresses to be had. If you must
subscribe to newsletters, then have a "back-up" email address. It would
be like giving your sell phone number to your best friends and the
business number to everyone else.
Number 4:
Attachments from people you don't know are BAD, BAD, BAD.
A common problem with spam is that they have attachments and
attachments can have viruses. Corporations often have filters that
don't let such things pass to you. Personal email is far more "open
country" for spamers. General rule of thumb: if you do not know who is
sending you something, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT. Secondly, look for
services that offer filtering. Firewall vendors offer this type of
service as well.
Number 5:
Email services now have "bulk-mail" baskets. If what you use currently
does not support this, think about moving to a new vender. The concept
is simple. If you know someone, they can send you emails. If you don't
know them, put them in the bulk email pile and then "choose" to allow
them into your circle. Spam Blocking software has this concept as well,
but having extra layers seems critical these days, so it is worth
looking into.
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