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Issue #132: January 31, 2010

I had a great time meeting and talking to so many of you at last week’s computer expo.  An open Q&A session such as we had is a clear indictor of what’s on the mind of my readers, and as usual, what I heard was “e-mail and SPAM”.  So, here is The Geek’s Advice for avoiding SPAM. 

First of all, everyone who uses a computer or handles an e-mail address needs to begin to view e-mail addresses as private data in need of protection.  Think of them like an unlisted phone number.  If you had a list of unlisted phone numbers, you wouldn’t call everyone on that list, and give each person every other person’s number, would you?  Well that’s exactly what you’re doing when you send out an e-mail to a bunch of people and you use the TO: field.  By doing so, you expose private information to everyone to whom you send the e-mail, and possibly to everyone to whom those people might forward it.  Instead of placing the names in the field marked “TO:” use the one marked “BCC:” instead.  Your e-mail software has one – you just need to learn how to find it.  Using BCC: will result in each person getting a copy of the e-mail with only their own address visible.  By the way, for this to be effective you must also delete all the e-mail addresses that are in the body of the message from previous forwarding attempts.

Second, do not enter your e-mail address into any online web forms, nor allow your family and friends to do so either.  An example of such a form would be a cutsie little page where someone has put up a graphic of a Christmas tree or something, and there’s an interactive feature that lets you decorate it while you listen to music.  Such sites always have at the end a page that says “Send this link to your friends” and provides spaces for you to enter e-mail addresses.  Such sites are often set up with the sole purpose of harvesting e-mail addresses to be placed on SPAM lists and sold.

Third, never, ever acknowledge a SPAM e-mail by replying to it, or clicking any “Unsubscribe” links it may contain.  Spammers buy lists of e-mail addresses not knowing whether the addresses are valid or not, but confirmed valid addresses are worth more money to them.  By acknowledging a SPAM e-mail, you are confirming that your address is valid and active, and by doing so, increasing the likelihood that you’ll receive more SPAM.

One often-asked question is “I routinely block the e-mail address of people who send me SPAM, but I keep getting the same e-mail from different people.  How can I stop this?”  The unfortunate answer is that you can’t.  Blocking by address is probably the single least-effective method of preventing SPAM.  Remember that spammers know what you’ll try and do to block their e-mails, so most of them will only send SPAM from a given e-mail address one time, then abandon that address and get another.  You can block addresses if you want to, but it won’t help much.

So what can you do?  Well, if the SPAM you’re receiving is so bad that it interferes with your regular use of your e-mail, you may want to consider abandoning your current e-mail address, and getting a new one.  Prevention is the most effective means of blocking SPAM, so follow the guidelines I set out above, and the chances are good that your address will never wind up in the hands of a spammer in the first place.  Also consider using an e-mail provider that has a good SPAM filter.  One superior example is Google’s Gmail.  For all it’s questionable privacy practices, Google has built one of the best SPAM filters I’ve ever seen.  My Geekmail address is on probably every SPAM list known to man, in large part because it publishes in multiple spots on the internet each week.  I receive countless thousands of SPAM e-mails, but Gmail automatically routes nearly all of them to my SPAM folder.  Only 1 or 2 a week make it through to my Inbox, and those are easily dealt with.


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