To stop unwanted email (spam):
It is very hard to effectively combat junk electronic mail. It costs nothing to send out a few million email messages, so there is no disincentive for people to do so. Most SPAM mailers forge the headers, email return address and sending machine name because they are sick of reading the thousands of inevitable complaints. The offers to remove your name from a list are generally untrue, and often result in your name getting added to yet another list. Many internet providers have policies against SPAM, and will take action. Unfortunately some providers either don't care or are SPAM-friendly. There are ways you can reduce exposure and complain:
- Never never never reply to a SPAM email.
- Complaints: SPAMers like to forge email. They forge email, and send it using innocent computers. The war of forgery has reached a level where the average person can't sort out who or where mail actually came from. If you want to complain, use the services of a system like SpamCop to process the mail.
- Stamp out Get Rich Quick schemes: If you suspect fraud, send a copy of the mail to the National Fraud Information Center. If it relates to selling stocks, send to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Secure your web page: If you include a "mailto" link, as below, expect to get junk mail. Remove the "mailto" and force people to manually enter the email address. State your email address in a way readable only to humans (e.g.. "recycle" at machine "obviously.com").
- Secure your computer: If your PC is running a mail server (such as Sendmail or Exchange) it may be used by spammers. Spammers often hijack innocent machines. Check yourself at ORDB.
- Use care with newsgroup postings: Post to a newgroup these days and you can be sure of getting both target SPAM (sports messages for posting in a sports group) and untargeted email. You can use an obviously false return address on postings: most news programs let you set this to whatever you want. Include your real email address (coded as above) in body of the message.
- Complain to your Senator or Representative: Laws will be needed to regulate the eventual legitimate email advertising industry.
|
posted by Clint at 3:08 PM
Comments on "Stop Junk Mail - Part 4"
post a comment