Blocking Spam Emails

Anyone with an email address will be the victim of spam sooner or later. Email spammers harvest email addresses from newsgroups, mailing lists, personal webpages, directories and umpteen other places. They also just guess at email addresses using common combinations of letters and numbers and send out thousands of emails daily to those addresses in the theory that some of them will be real, active email accounts. Even brand, spanking new email accounts which have never been used for any purpose can become the target of spammers in this way. Spam is as such somewhat unavoidable but as a savvy internet user there are a few things you can do to prevent or at least cut down on amount of spam you receive.

Beginners Guide To Avoiding Spam

The Rise Of Unsolicited Email Marketing

To put the spam problem into focus let me share a few statistics with you:

• In 2004 it is estimated that around 50% of all emails sent on the internet are unsolicited commercial spam. In 2001 this figure was just 7%. (Brightmail Report, July 2003)

• By 2007 the volume of spam emails is expected to rise to 70% or higher (Radicati Group Report, February 2003)

• 20% of spam emails are said to be pornographic in nature. (Brightmail Report, July 2003)

• Around 80% of children report receiving objectionable, unsuitable emails on a daily basis. (Symantec Corporation, June 2003)

• An average home computer will receive around 3000 spam emails a year and will spend 10-20 minutes a day dealing with spam. (Symantec Corporation, November 2002)

• AOL and MSN block over 2.4 billion spam emails daily. (Seattle Times, June 2003)

How Do Spammers Get Email Addresses?

There are numerous tools at the spammers disposal to harvest your email address for spamming purposes and most of them are avoidable if you are net smart.

• 1) Harvesting email addresses from message boards, newsgroups and forums.
  Email harvesting tools can scrutinise throusands of page from message forums etc. and pluck email addresses out from the code to be added to spam lists. When posting on message boards etc. ensure your email address is not displayed in your profile, message signature or elsewhere where it is accessible.

• 2) Personal/Commercial Websites
  Using similar tools, if your contact email address is displayed anywhere in the code of your website an email spammer can harvest it using automated tools specially desgned for the purpose.

• YOU Give It To Them!
  Have you ever noticed how many sites want you to give them your email address in exchange for a free download, competition entry or other freebie. These sites want to contact you later which is what they want your email address for and as you gave it to them, they're not spamming you so long as they let you opt out again.

  Have you noticed those little boxes hidden further down at the bottom of the page though? The ones with a checkmark in them saying things like "check here to opt in to receive offers from our partners"? Check this and some companies take it as carte blanche to sell your email address to anyone who wants it...and they're dong it with your permission!

• They got lucky
  Some spammers simply autogenerate thousands of email addresses and play a game of "hit and hope" by sending emails to these autogenerated email addresses and hoping a few of them might actually belong to real people. Everyone gets hit in this way eventually but they're usually one-offs.
• YOU let them know you are home
  A spammer plays the game of hit and hope mentioned above and adds in an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email tempting you to opt out of receiving further unsolicited emails from the company. Hey guess what? Spammers just lurve active email accounts and by visiting the unsubscibe link you've just told them that not only is this account a real one, but it's also got an active owner who opens up spam emails! The moral of this story - unsubscribe from things you have subscribed to but block or filter spam!

Once your email address has been harvested and collected, typically by one of the above methods, your email address is added to commerical spam email lists which are then bought and sold to spammers everywhere. These lists contain many thousands or millions of email addresses and frankly, once on one, you'll not be finding your way off again in a hurry.

Avoiding Spammers

Avoiding getting onto such a list in the first place then needs to be your main priority. There are plenty of spam blocking and filtering software programs out there but they are only around 70% effective and it is estimated around 1 in 8 of all emails filtered is an actual legitimate email message from a family member of opt-in newsletter or other subscription list the receiver would actually desired to receive. Blocking spam is a solution to a problem once it has gotten out of hand but you're going to do your best to stop it getting there...

Take another look at the above ways in which spammers harvest email addresses. Avoiding falling foul of all of the above tricks is a simple matter of being net savvy and using a little common sense. You DO NOT have to stop partaking in some of your favourite online past-times such as entering competitions, playing free games, using message boards etc. just be smart about it and you'll not get spammed.

The Number One Best Piece Of Advice For Avoiding Spam

...is to simply accept that it's going to happen BUT make sure the majority of it doesn't cause you problems. Here that tip...

• Set up a separate free email account or two for all those online registrations which require your email address before you can proceed. Included in this are things like forums, competition entries, fre software registration etc. None of these need your email address for anything other than marketing purposes (and sending lost passwords) so give them an email address they can use....your dedicated junk mail address! There are loads of free email accounts online so the choice of junkmail addresses are almost limitless. We recommend a Yahoo account as you get a reasonable large amount of storage space and the spam blocking and filtering controls are pretty good compared to the competition. A free email account used solely for signing up for the kinds of places you are liable to get spam or general trash emails from, makes your personal account you use for correspondence with friends and family a far less spammier place.

Of course, this doesn't solve the problem of spam, it just shifts it elsewhere and the longer your personal email address is active the more likely it is to start finding its way into the spammers hands anyway. Why? Simple really. You may be extra careful about how you distribute your email address but it's often the case your acquaintances aren't so clued up. They might send you a free e-card for example and your email address may then be abused by the ecard site (remember, they're getting paid for those freebies somehow!) or they may us a recommend a friend link on a website and again, your personal email address may be abused by the webmaster. Spam is sadly unavoidable in the long run but never fear, because more help is at hand!

Spam Blocking In Email Clients

Firstly, before even thinking about anti-spam filtering software you should look at what you can already do without such things. Firstly, if your main email address is the one which you got free with your ISP account, for example, yourname@aol.com for AOl account holders and so on, then you should be able to make use of their unsolicited mail filtering options. Make sure this is activated for your email account and that it is configured to block out spam emails.

Secondly, if you are a user of an email client like Outlook Express or Eudora, there are again things you can do to stop spam causing you a problem without the need to buy or download free spam filtering software. There isn't the space here to go into detail about blocking spam in all mail clients but a quick search through the help files or a look through your favourite search engine will probably tell you what your email client offers in terms of filtering out spam. Most of the time this means moving the most obvious forms of spam to a junk email folder which you can skim through at your leisure to ensure nothing important has slipped in there before dumping it all in one go.

Done the above but still getting too much spam? Then you can start looking into spam filtering software in earnest.

Spam Filtering Software

There are two main types here - those which filter out the email before it even reaches your email inbox and those which catch it when it arrives and deal with it appropriately. Naturally choice one is great so long as it doesn't catch a few important emails by accident and choice 2 is great so long as you don't mind taking that extra step to deal with the spam yourself once it has been filtered off somewhere, like into a separate junkmail folder.

MailWasher (Free or Upgrade) - Possibly the best there is. MailWasher is an incredibly effective and very easy to use solution against the problem of spam. MailWasher deletes junkmail straight off the server so you don't have to download unwanted junk or emails containing potentially dangerous viruses. It can be configured to use your own blacklists, or linked up to sites like SpamCop which compile lists of spammers AND better still, it can bounce back emails to spammers to make them think your email address no longer exists so they'll not bother you again. This is an award winning option which always receives top ratings amongst the computer press.

SpamPal (Free) - Sits between your POP3 email account and filters out emails which come from DNSBL lists. These are areas of the internet which are notorious for sending spam emails but rather than deleting the email out of hand, SpamPal tags them with a special header, which you can then use in conjunction with your email client (such as Outlook or Eudora) to filter the potential junk mail into a special folder to be dealt with appropriately.

What is Being Done about Spam?

In recognition of the problems faced by internet account holders most ISPs now prohibit their users from sending unsolicted commercial email spam and have blocking and filtering services included in their package deal. Be sure to check yours does this and that you have it configured correctly as this will block the most obvious forms of spam mailing.

Also, although governments are notorious for moving at glacial speeds when it comes to this kind of thing, it looks as though some movement is being made in the right direction with the introduction of the CanSPAM act and other general wrist slapping legal action.

There are a number of ideas in motion at them moment such as buy-in permission which only legitimate newsletter subscribers will be allowed into, dedicated domain names only available to legitimate companies so spam domains can be blocked and more ideas, but at the moment it's still all pie in the sky...and frankly if there's a way to block something on the internet, there's always 50 ways around it too so the best solution is to do what you can to minimise spam yourself by taking the precautionary steps outlined above.

More Online Security

Many perceived spam emails are actually viruses being spread either by a friend or family member's home computer, work colleague or business with your email address on file, or just plain being spoofed in a hit and hope attack. These viruses work by installing themselves onto a computer system and then repeatedly emailing everyone in that computer's email address book in the hope of causing further infection. You can protect yourself from these and other internet pests by downloading an using a recommended virus checker program which will scan for viruses and prevent the infection taking place. You may continue to get the virus infected emails until whoever has fallen foul to them cleans it off their computer but will be protected against them so they can not cause your computer harm...and better still, your computer will not start spamming your friends etc. with the same virus! Read more about internet viruses.

In addition, a good firewall will prevent other forms of virus infection from sneaking in through open ports and also prevent spy ware programs from harvesting information about your online activities which spammers use to target junkmail to you 'interests'. Read more about both in our Internet Firewall and Spy ware information sections.