How to beat spam in 5 steps
How to beat spam in 5 steps
How prevalent is Spam? 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.”
Hackers are getting more sophisticated.For example, Botnets are
becoming more complex and harder and harder to catch and stop.
Do a search on botnets on the Internet. They really are causing
a whole lot of problems, but it does not stop there. The number
of viruses and malware out there is staggering.
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? Her 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 addressesA 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.
Contibutor http://www.vrelinks.com