Electronics
Spam
Introduction
Sick of spam clogging up your inbox? Here's how to fight back.
Our guide explains how to avoid spam, how spammers get your email address and how you can block unwanted email.
Overview
Spam is a modern plague, flooding inboxes with unsolicited "junk" email, promoting everything from dodgy get-rich-quick schemes, to Nigerian scams, to pornography sites. It costs businesses, ISPs, and you, the receiver.
It's a serious problem for millions of email users worldwide, and the stakes are high.
Why is spam such a problem?
There's the annoyance factor - sorting through a cluttered inbox looking for legitimate messages. There's the time wasted - important if everyone in an organisation spends 20 minutes or so a day dealing with spam. There's the chance of missing and accidentally deleting an important email.
ISPs and telecommunications companies also suffer, as they have to provide twice the bandwidth (throughput) to cope with the added load of spam. Extra staff have to be devoted to keeping up with spam issues, and dealing with irate customers.
Possibly worst of all is the prospect that out of frustration, people will turn away from the most efficient mass communication system ever devised.
Types of email
Because you can't always be certain whether an email falls into the category of spam, there are different "grades" of email.
Black email is undoubtedly spam - the obvious examples are get-rich-quick schemes, dodgy products, and pornography.
Grey email is less obvious, and depends, in part, on the attitude of the recipient. Imagine you dealt with a travel agency, and afterwards they kept bombarding you with special offers? For some that would be really annoying, but others might be happy to be kept informed.
White email is undoubtedly not spam.
Why do spammers do it?
You might think that most people would ignore the ridiculous offers and products - and you'd be right. But, spam costs very little to send. If a spammer sends out 100 million spams, and only 0.01 percent of recipients respond, that's still 10,000 sales.
Spammers make money. They are also very determined - even launching attacks to overwhelm and bring down anti-spam web sites.
Eight ways to block spam
1. Don't buy anything promoted in a spam
Even if the offer isn't a scam, you are helping to finance spam.
2. If your email program has a "preview pane," disable it
This prevents the spam from reporting to its sender that you've received it.
3. Get a separate throw-away email address
Use one email address for family and friends, another for everyone else. That way, if the latter starts to be bombarded with spam, you can discard it and get a new one.
Your ISP may offer a second email address, or you can pick up a free one from a webmail provider.
You could also use a disposable forwarding-address service like www.SpamMotel.com.
4. Use an Internet provider that filters spam
Some ISPs are now filtering out spam before it even gets to your inbox. If you get lots of spam, find out whether your ISP has any filtering features in place. Compare this with the service offered by other ISPs.
5. Install spam-blocking software
A number of such programs are available. Mailwasher, a New Zealand-based program, is free to download, and has been recommended by several Consumer members. Visit the Mailwasher site for more details.
Our report on Security suite software has more information on spam-blocking software.
6. If you receive a spam that promotes a brand, complain
Find the company behind the brand, and send them a letter of complaint by postal mail, which makes more of a statement than email.
7. Use filters to divert spam
If your email program offers "rules" (also known as "filters"), set up one to divert spam. Rules can identify messages with certain properties, or containing key words, and automatically diverts them to a separate folder. But note: while this can catch most spam, it may also catch some legitimate emails, so you may need to check your "spam" folder once in a while.
8. Install a firewall
This is particularly important if you have broadband internet access. This prevents a spammer from planting software on your computer to turn it into a spamming machine. An unsecured computer can be especially attractive to spammers. See our report on Security suite software.
Six mistakes to avoid
1. Don't post your email address on a public Web page
This includes your own (or employer's) website, and other sites such as eBay. If you must post an address, you can thwart spammers' harvesting software by using "janedoe at isp.co.nz," not "janedoe@isp.co.nz." Or display your address as a graphic image, not text.
2. Don't use your regular email address in a chat room
Instead, use a different screen name. If it attracts too much spam, discard it.
3. Don't use an easy-to-guess email address
Don't create an email address with the same spelling as your name, such as "Jim.Smith@isp.co.nz". Instead, choose a harder-to-guess one with embedded digits, such as "Jim8mith2@isp.co.nz".
4. Don't click on an email's "unsubscribe" link
That informs the sender that your address is active. Don't do it unless you trust the sender.
5. Read privacy policies
Don't disclose your address to a site without checking its privacy policy. And don't forget to uncheck "check boxes" that grant the site or its partners permission to send you anything nonessential.
6. Don't forward chain letters, petitions, or virus warnings
All could be a spammer's ploy to collect addresses. See Virus hoaxes for more information.
How they find you
Here are four common ways in which spammers get your email address:
Public Web pages
If your address appears on a public Web page, spammers can automatically "harvest" it using widely available software. Ads for one product say that it collects thousands of addresses hourly and is "so simple a 12-year-old could learn how to run it in 15 minutes."
Chat rooms
Use your email address in these groups and you're a target. When Consumer Reports used a newly minted email address in several chat rooms, they received their first spam within 25 minutes.
"Dictionary" attack
Some spammers send email to many addresses using combinations of names and numbers, such as John101, John102, etc. To determine how different types of email address attracts spam, Consumer Reports created short addresses and longer, harder-to-guess ones with five large Internet providers. Within six to 12 weeks, spammers had found some of the short addresses but none of the long ones.
Online registration
Disclosing your address when shopping online can unwittingly bring spam. The riskiest sites are those with no privacy policy, a statement that tells you what information the site collects on you and with whom it may share it. But even a site that posts a policy can be risky if the policy allows for sharing your address with unnamed "partners".