Blog and Diary Web sites
Cyber 911 Tiplines E-mail spam
What is spam and what can I do about it?
Spam is a common term for unsolicited e-mail, often referred to as "UBE" ( Unsolicited Bulk E-mail), "UCE" (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail) as well. Spam is e-mail unsolicited by the recipient(s) sent for the purpose of selling goods or services. Often, spam is used to advertise dubious or outright illegal multi- level marketing (MLM) schemes, make money fast schemes (MMF) and pornography as well as other products.
Outlook Express, Eudora and other e-mail software can be configured to perform limited filtering on incoming e-mail or there are many standalone filters available for this purpose. Either way, you will still have to retrieve your e- mail from your server, even if you filter it straight to your recycle bin. Doing so still requires your time, and for some people, money, downloading unwanted e- mail. In some areas, Internet access is not cheap, requires a toll call, or may even be charged on a per-minute basis.
If you decide to filter spam be careful not to filter e-mail you do want. It's a good idea to browse your deleted items folder before emptying it, just in case.
Frequently, spammers change the titles of their e-mail to make it appear legitimate in order to get past mail filters. You can filter e-mail by the sender's address, but don't filter out all e-mail from that domain or you may find that desired e-mail is being heaved into the deleted items folder.
Most return addresses, including presumed removal addresses, are fake and a response or request for removal can only confirm to the spammer that your address is a good one for future mailings. This may not only result in more e-mail from that spammer, but thousands of others once the spammer has sold your e-mail address to others.
Why do spammers use fake reply or removal addresses? Because they KNOW they will receive thousands of complaints otherwise.
What is a SpamBot or Spider and why should you care?
A SpamBot or Spider is a program that actively searches the Internet (web, chatrooms & newsgroups) gathering e-mail addresses for their owner. They are very specialized in their task and their easiest finds are generally on the web and message boards where people create a hyperlink to their e-mail address for the purpose of making it easy for others to contact them. Doing so also makes it easy for the SpamBots.
Posting messages to a newsgroup using your real reply-to address either in the message header or in your signature is yet another easy find for such SpamBots.
Preventing your address from being spidered
If you wish to post messages to newsgroups & avoid such troubles, edit your newsreader configuration so that your e-mail address is incorrect. Instead of your reply-to address being abc@xyz.net, edit it to show ABC@w-xyz.net , ABC@xyz.not, noSpam-abc@xyz.net or some variation thereof. Either remove your e-mail address from your signatures, or enter them in such a way that SpamBots will not recognize them as an e-mail address. For example, instead of your e- mail address appearing as ABC@xyz.net, show it as ABC(at)xyz.net, or ABC(at) xyzdotnet. Doing this means that a human will have to read and interpret your e- mail address, - not - a SpamBot or spider.
Don't post messages to bulletin boards using your real e-mail address. Either enter a phony address as shown above or get a throwaway e-mail account somewhere like Hotmail or Yahoo! mail and use that address when posting messages. If you use a throwaway account, use it only for such messages and be prepared to dump it for a new one when that inbox begins filling with spam.
If you have a Web page or Web site, don't post your e-mail address as a mail-to:ABC&xyz.net hyperlink. It's a bit more work, but use a form instead to act as an intermediary so that your e-mail address is never revealed or else use a throwaway as shown above.
Some Web page and Web site owners have begun 'salting' or 'poisoning' their pages with hidden abuse desk e-mail addresses such as abuse@yourdomain.com, or postmaster@yourdomain.com. Doing this has mixed results as it can cause your page to show up in searches unrelated to your site's purpose or theme and if there are other e-mail addresses on your page(s) they will be spidered along with the spam addresses.