In
this article we discuss what steps
you can take to prevent spam from
being sent to you.
Some people have all the luck; some
people get all the spam. Is it luck,
or is there something a little more
to it. Today, we are going to discuss
the ins and outs of who gets the
spam and hopefully what you’ll
get out of this article is how to
be less of a target. This will be
our 4th venture into the topic of
junk email, if you’ve been
with us this far you already know
more than the “average Joe”
about how to fight it. If you are
new to this series, you won’t
need to read the others before this
one, but it would be a good idea
at some point to catch up.
“Knowledge is Power”,
an axiom first used over four hundred
years ago by an English Philosopher,
Francis Bacon. I can’t imagine
that he had ever meant for this
to have any negative connotations,
but in our case it does. One of
the things spammers feed on is information,
the newer, more dynamic it is, the
more annoying they become. Have
you ever posted a question on a
message board? Ever asked for assistance
where your question was posted on
a web page? If you have there is
a good chance your email is sitting
out there waiting on the internet
to be read by a spam bot. A spam
bot is a program that programmatically
looks at WebPages for email addresses,
its logs them and keeps on going
looking for more.
Originally spam bots were very unsophisticated,
simply replacing the @ sign in your
email with the word “at”
would confuse them. Unfortunately,
that is no longer the case. Some
of these devious programs can interpret
“John dot Doe at somemailserver
dot com” AS “[email protected]”.
This makes it extremely hard to
post your email in a public forum,
and sometimes this is desirable.
But never fear, we here at spam-blockers
can provide you with a method of
posting your email addresses publicly,
that even the most advanced spam
bots can’t decipher (yet).
Let’s take Johns Email address,
and make it a little harder for
spammers to get. “Hi, if you
would like to send me a message,
send it to my first name dot my
last name at somemailserver dot
com”. Notice how no where
in the response is the term email,
and yet, any human can tell what
his email is. The poor bot doesn’t
even stand a chance; it doesn’t
even know an email address was posted.
Keep in mind; only post your email
address publicly if it is the only
option. Keeping your email completely
off the charts is always the best
practice in stopping spam.
“The Best things in life are
free.” A catchy little tune
written back in the 1920’s
by B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and
Ray Henderson. Apparently they didn’t
have email back then. Ever see a
page offering a free camera, or
a free digital this, or a free digital
that? Well even if you do make it
through the plethora of sign up
screens, newsletter subscriptions,
popup adds, and end up with some
new gadget in route to your home.
That free gizmo probably cost you
20 minutes of your time (today)
and about 30 seconds a day for the
rest of the life of that email address.
And that’s if you’re
really fast at deleting spam. The
short answer, it’s not free
and it’s certainly not worth.
If you want to eliminate spam from
your life avoid those pages like
the plague.
“You can’t have too
many friends”, well I agree,
but I also don’t think you
need to copy them on every email
you send out. If you want to block
spam from making into your inbox,
you need to be careful where your
email address gets listed. Chain
letters are an all to common method
for spammers to inherit hundreds
of email addresses, most of which
are live. If you receive a chain
letter, the damage is already done,
it means no matter what you do with
the message, if a copy of it falls
in to the malicious hands of a spammer,
it will be hard to keep your mailbox
spam free. So when a friend sends
you a chain letter, make sure they
know, by just replying privately
to them, that they are giving out
too much of your personal information.
We have discussed one of the most
important defenses in the war on
spam. The best spam prevention is
not to contract it in the first
place. Stay alert, stay hidden,
stay spam free. In our next installment
we will take a shot at unmasking
these villains, knowing who they
REALLY are will go a long way in
our efforts to stop them. Until
next time, remember to have fun
and take care.
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Spam with our Spam Blocking Software
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