Whenever I think about SPAM, I always have to laugh.
No, I’m not crazy (well, just a little). It’s
because of the old Monty Python routine where the café
customer wants to know which item on the menu contains the
least spam, and is told, “..well, the Spam, Spam, Spam,
Eggs, and Spam, has the least Spam in it”. THAT
Spam makes me laugh, but SPAM makes me mad! How to get
rid of it:
Unsolicited commercial e-mail (SPAM) & real messages by
friends and business associates are the two main groups of
messages that all e-mail users receive.
When you first get started using an e-mail address, it is
not known by very many people, so your chances of getting
much of anything is pretty low.
But then you make an online purchase or post a comment to
an online forum or start sending your new address to everyone
that you can think of…
That’s when the trouble begins! All e-mail users should
have at least two e-mail addresses; one for those they trust
and one for everything else. Once you ‘publish’
your e-mail address to anyone, you no longer have control
of what happens to your address, so only give your private
address to those you know you can trust.
When making an online purchase or posting to a forum or any
other ‘public’ e-mail activity, you should sign
up for and use a ‘free-mail’ account from providers
such as Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com or Google’s upcoming
Gmail.com.
Once the level of junk becomes unbearable on your free account,
discontinue using it and sign up for another one…all
the while, keeping your primary address protected from the
masses.
Another big mistake made by new users is to respond to spam
that claims that it will remove you from the list if you don’t
want to receive future messages. Not only will they not remove
you, they have just gotten you to verify your address so that
it can be sold to other spammers. (If you have done this,
get ready for the blitz!)
Remember, if it’s SPAM, it’s probably a scam!
If you did not personally subscribe to a service in the first
place, then you have no reason to unsubscribe. Spammers don’t
follow rules, regulations or laws because many of them are
not U.S. based, so once they get your address verified, it’s
too late.
I use a 3 prong attack against SPAM.
1. My ISP uses a thing called Spam-Assassin that
rates each email before I get it. It looks for certain
words in the message and then gives the email a score.
I told it I didn’t want any email with a score over
5. So it eliminates all those with a score above that.
2. I use a Free-Ware program that I later purchased
because I liked it so well called “Mail Washer Pro”,
it can found at http://www.firetrust.com. It helps me
fight SPAM in several ways. It keeps an updated list
of email addresses of SPAMers; let’s me easily mark
emails as ‘Friends’ and then makes it easy for
me to delete the rest.
3. I use Outlook and have it set to send any email
from someone that is NOT in my address book to a potential
Spam folder that I can look at later.
Outlook Express users can use a somewhat technical process
to take advantage of this excellent free filter by following
the instructions at: datadr.com/redir.cfm/OEspam or install
another free program from www.spampal.org.
