Spam e-mails

Most people despise spam e-mails. Spam is such a recurring problem that e-mail software is continually re-written to filter them out from regular e-mail. Most people know better than to take the infamous offer from a Nigerian man at the First Bank of Nigeria who just can't figure out a better way to get money out of his country than to reach out to a complete stranger. Most people know better than to reply to the e-mail with a request the sender to stop offering herbal extracts. However, most people accept that spam is simply an accepted part of e-mail, as if it were an obligatory facet of the online community.

Part of the problem with e-mail is the low cost. Computers, electricity, and Internet access is relatively cheap compared to the opportunity to scam thousands of dollars out of thousands of people. Another problem is that e-mail addresses are accessed somewhat easily by those motivated to gather them. We can assume this is done by hackers stealing identities from mainframe computers at large corporations. Unfortunately the far more likely perpetrator is yourself or someone that loves you. Anytime someone forwards an e-mail to others they are helping to generate free lists of e-mail addresses someone else can harvest for spam operations.

There are reliable website online devoted to debunking electronic myths passed along by e-mail forwards, such as my personal favorite Snopes.com. If people truly enjoy those comical e-mails or other things they want to share with a list of contacts the best method is to put the list of e-mail addresses in the Bcc: field instead of the To: section of the e-mail header. This will assure that any future recepients of the e-mail will not receive a list of e-mail addresses other than the senders. That is a nice gesture to help preserve the e-mail addresses of your friends but will not protect your own nor prevent your friends from including you in their forwards. Therefore the tried and tested tactic is using separate e-mail addresses is very popular. If you have a friend that loves to tell everyone he or she knows that Bill Gates is giving away money to strangers because they use the Internet or that gas would be cheaper if we all bought it from one gas station, then give him or her a different e-mail address from the one that you want protected from spam.

Likewise, another tactic that is almost free for spammers is to use programmers that search websites for e-mail addresses. These target on the infrequently used character "@" (it's called an asperand). Some users try to circumvent that by replacing "@" with "AT" whenever forced to post an e-mail address online. Of course, the aforementioned method of an alternate e-mail address is better if you have to post an e-mail address online.

Despite all these measures, an e-mail address that has never been used can receive spam. This is because spammers write programs to generate e-mails to series of addresses. They take the risk of guessing wrong millions of times because it costs them nothing and they guess right many times.

Of course every e-mail provider tries its best to reduce the burden on their software that spam creates. It is up to us to enable the stronger spam filters they offer. After a spam e-mail is received you should never open it. E-mail can be sent with a receipt confirmation pinged to them if you open the e-mail. This is why the subject lines attempt to be as obtuse as possible to tempt you to believe that perhaps "it's me Dave" could be that guy Dave from elementary school you have not heard from in a decade. When in doubt, do not open an unsolicited e-mail - if it's from a long lost friend he or she can try again. I don't even delete e-mails from my junk filter, I let the e-mail provider sweep them out of my view as they age out instead. I don't want to run the risk that the spammer receives a notification that is was me instead of the spam filter that deleted their e-mail.

The FTC website devoted to spam has it's own tips but I disagree with some of them. I don't reply to a spam e-mail asking that they remove me from their mailing list - that is only asking for the spammer to send more because the spammer realizes it is a valid e-mail address and someone read the spam e-mail. I don't forward an e-mail to the FTC nor complain to my Internet Provider - they already know the issue a million times over.