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Secure Communications
Spam
Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages, usually through email.
Spamming is economically viable because advertisers have no operating costs beyond the management of their mailing lists, and it is difficult to hold senders accountable for their mass mailings. Because the barrier to entry is so low, spammers are numerous, and the volume of unsolicited email has become very high.
The costs, such as lost productivity and fraud, are borne by the public and by Internet service providers, which have been forced to add extra capacity to cope with the deluge. Spamming is widely reviled, and has been the subject of legislation in many jurisdictions.
The people that create spam messages are called spammers.
How do you recognise it?
There are a few indicators, which can help you identify spam (unsolicited bulk e-mails) in your mailbox. If a message fulfils some of the following criteria, it is most likely spam:
• The sender address does not belong to someone you recognise
• You are offered a large sum of money, but you have to provide a small sum first
• You are asked to enter, under various pretences, some of your personal data – bank account numbers, credit card numbers, social security number, usernames and passwords, etc.
• The email is written in a foreign language
• The product or service advertised is far below the normally expected price
• Some of the words are misspelled in an attempt to trick your spam filter.
• Inclusion of large blocks of text or images
How does it work?
Spam exploits the fact that email can be sent anonymously. Spammers hide behind this veil of anonymity to flaunt the law and fill your inbox with unwanted commercial email. Filters attempt to recognize spam by analyzing message content.
What to do?
• Never open or respond to spam. Any response from you will guarantee more spam. It's best to delete spam and empty your recycle bin.
• Only give your e-mail address to those individuals who need it.
• Download or buy anti-spam software from a reputable source.
• Use the e-mail filtering features built into Outlook, Outlook Express, or whatever e-mail software you use.
How can I avoid Spam happening again?
• The best technology that is currently available to stop spam is spam filtering software.
Top Tips
• Techniques to stop spam fall into two categories: Filtering out spam and minimising the exposure of your email addresses.
• Never click on the REMOVE link Spammers add to their emails to you as this can also verify your email address as valid and your address will be added to the list and sold to more Spammers.
• Spammers use special programs that extract email addresses from Web sites and Usenet postings. To avoid ending on a spammer's mailing list when you post to a Web forum or a newsgroup, you can obscure your email address by inserting something obvious into it. If your email address is joe@yahoo.com, Modify it to read ‘joe@yah[delete this]oo.com’ or ‘joe at yahoo dot com’.
• Never reply to spam messages, even when they entice you to reply to "remove" you from their mailing lists. Often the instructions are either bogus, or a way to collect more addresses. Replying confirms to the spammers that your e-mail address is active, and you may receive even more junk mail
• Remove your email address from your website's pages and provide a web based mail form instead. This way spammers can't send robots to your page to harvest email addresses and put them on their mailing lists.
