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| help with spam (junk email). |
| why is it called spam? isn't that some sort of processed-pork-type-food(tm)?
the term spam originated from a monty python skit, in a restaurant
that only served spam. the customers (some rowdy vikings) sang to the
glories of spam at the top of their lungs and drowned out the conversation
at the restaurant...a comparison to the spam of the internet drowning out
the real conversations taking place.
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why me? (or how on earth did they get my email address?)
spammers have many tools they use to collect email addresses from the
internet. they find addresses and add them to lists, then charge
people and companies to use the lists and sell the lists to each other.
the major ways spammers find email addresses are listed below:
1. harvesting email addresses from webpages and newsgroups. spammers have
programs which automatically look at webpages and sift through newsgroups
for things which look like email addresses. (they usually search for an
"@" symbol, and take the text before and after it.)
 we recommend
not putting your email address on a website as text. a not-so-perfect hack to get around
this is make the text an image. when posting to newsgroups you might want to mangle
your email address up a bit, try "me[at]NOSPAMcybercom[dot]net," instead of "me@cybercom.net."
2. registering a domain. when you register a domain you are required to
provide an email address associated with the domain for contact purposes. this email
address goes into a public database. spammers have programs to query the database, and
pull out email addresses. we recommend using a separate email address, perhaps one
at this new domain, such as "webmaster@mydomain.com" as your domain contact address.
This will not keep the address off of lists, but it will keep your actual private address
private. Generic addresses like "webmaster@..." and "sales@..." will generally get added to spam
lists very quickly anyway.
3. web-based surveys. most of the "fill out this form to win $20,000" schemes
are just a ploy to collect email addresses to spam. most surveys in general
are ways to collect your personal information so people can sell it to advertisers.
4. order/contact forms. even seemingly reputable companies (your phone company,
your bank, the online store where you bought your last matching pink flamingo coffee mugs) will
spam you themselves, or sell your email address to spammers under the pretense of
"information we think our customers might find useful." companies make tons of
money selling your personal information to advertisers.
most companies also assume that if you buy something from them, or contact
them in general, it gives them the right to keep contacting you (amazon, ebay)
with advertisements about their products.
usually hidden in contact/order forms is a check-box (usually automatically
checked -- watch out for this one), that says "uncheck this box if you
would not like to be contacted by us regarding special offers."
if you miss the box accidentally or are already on one of these lists you
can usually get off of them easily. there are usually directions on
removing yourself at the bottom of the email.
**note, we recommend you reply to these emails from companies you know,
but NEVER reply to other spam, more about that below.
5. chat rooms. if you use IRC, make sure your real email address is not listed.
you might want to mangle it up a bit, me-at-cybercom-dot-net-NOSPAMPLEASE.
(note: you don't need to include your email address in your preferences to join IRC)
a good way to check if your email address is listed is do a "/who YourNick"
and check what gets sent back to you.
6. mailing lists. if the mailing list's user-list is public, it's a great
ready-to-use list of spam-able email addresses! we suggest checking if the user
list is public or private before joining a mailing list, or possibly using
a different email address. if you have a registered domain, just add an alias
for that list, such as listname@mydomain.com, so you can more easily get rid of the
address in the future if it becomes a spam target.
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| remember not to reply
don't reply to spam. the spammers would never give you a real email address
to reply to so you could yell at them and tell them how much you hate them.
most likely they will supply a fake address, and your message will bounce.
less likely, but worse, they will supply a real email address, with a
program reading the email, and when you reply they add you to the
"this is a real email address - we got a reply" list, and you'll get sold
to someone else and get even more spam. wheee!
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how can i stop all this annoying spam?
we've set up a spam tagger here at cyber access, with plenty of anti-pork
product ability! say no to spam! the tagger searches many things in the email,
including fake headers, known spam subjects and text that is commonly used in spam.
for a list of the things our tagger checks for please click here.
the tagger works on a point system, accumulating points based on the search
results and then rating your email. if the tagger thinks your email is spam,
it will add "*** SPAM [07.50] ***" to the email's subject and deliver it to your
inbox. (the numbers are the point rating the spam got). you can then either leave
it as is, or set up a filter with your
email client to automatically move it to a different folder.
all cyber access customers have this spam tagger automatically turned on. if for some
reason you'd like us to turn it off, please email us.
remember: this is a script, it's not perfect, and the spammers are learning from
this type of script. some spam will get through. we've seen some clever ones.
we will do our best to stay one step ahead of them for you.
this page was written to help prevent you from getting on the lists. if the spam
tagger isn't enough for you, consider changing your email address to another
name to start over fresh. we can do that for you at no charge.
oink!
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