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[Replicated with kind permission of Simon Pavitt of Headware] Spam is something that everybody gets to a greater or lesser extent, and the first point to bear in mind about it is that it has not been targeted at you personally, rather sent to your address at random. The spammer has no idea which, if any, part of your body needs enlarging or reducing! The reason for spam is the protocol that is used for sending email. This is the same system that is used for the postal system, in that you can put a letter into any letterbox without having to identify yourself first.
This system worked well when the internet was used by relatively few academics, but is obviously a problem now that email is commonplace. Internet regulators are looking at ways to overcome spam by changing the way the internet works, for example by enforcing a system of authentication or introducing a nominal charging mechanism. But it will be several years before the effects of a practical agreement are felt. So what can you do to avoid getting spam? - It is important to be as careful about who you give your email address to as you are about your phone number!
- Use a different address for work and home – if your home address attracts a lot of spam there are much fewer implications in changing it.
- Be wary of registering for special offers, free services, competitions etc. This applies especially to downloadable add-ons for your computer! Keylogging programs that install surreptitiously can make sense of email address and other private details.
- Do not publish your email address on websites – spammers use software to ‘harvest’ them automatically!
- Don’t add to the spam problem: forwarding hoax virus warnings, urban legends and chain emails can betray yours and others’ email addresses to spammers
- Make sure that when you send an email that you don’t send out messages that contain a long list of other people’s addresses! This provides email addresses to third parties and could be a breach of the Data Protection Act. Instead, use Mail Merge (which sends email one at a time) or include the list of recipients in the BCC field (Blind Carbon Copy), which hides the addresses.
And what can you do to stem the tide of spam once your address is known? - Never respond to it, and if you receive a spam message that is not from a known contact and there is an option to opt-out of future mailings – ignore it. Responding to this just encourages the spammer as they know that your address is genuine!
- Ensure your own email program is not set to automatically preview messages before you open them or send confirmations that you have read a message
- If there is anything consistent about the spam, you can set up filtering rules within your program to automatically delete it for you. Some mail programs are better than others at coping with spam – consider changing or upgrading if yours doesn’t have some protection
- Install an ‘anti-spam’ program. These vary in quality and method of operation, but some of the better free ones include SpamPal, MailWasher, SpamBayes and Spamhilator. Be aware that your spam filter make come back with ‘false positives’ (although there will always be a way of ‘teaching it’ that these messages are not spam or excluding legitimate addresses from the spam check).
- Finally, unless you are based in a large organisation it is likely that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) processes your mail before you get it. Why not approach them for a spam-filtering service, so the worst of the problem is over before you get it? If the ISP cannot offer this service, consider changing – the more demand users have for this service, the more ISP’s will be forced to do something about it.
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