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Basic
Email Know How - Spam Facts
This
section deals with general topics about e-mail. It is
a good resource to learn more about e-mail concepts and practices.
Sections
in this category:
Spam
FAQ
Unsolicited
Commercial Email (UCE), commonly known as spam, junk
email or Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE), is one of the most common
forms
of email abuse. Usually it consists of solicitations for multi-level
marketing
schemes, get rich quick schemes, pornography, or mailing lists of
email
addresses. Very few, if any, of the people who receive this sort
of email
are interested in the products or services being advertised.
Why
is it called spam
The
commonly accepted
origin of the term "spam" is in reference to the
Monty Python skit chorus of "Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam. . . ",
a song that
was used to drown out other conversation. The analogy is that
UCE
drowns out normal discussions on the Internet.
send spam
because they think they can make money at it. The most
effective way to stop UCE altogether is to make sure that it’s not
profitable.
The problem
is that UCE is so cheap. If out of emailing 20,000 people, only
one person
buys something, it may have been a successful afternoon for the
spammer. It
costs a spammer very little to send out huge amounts of email.
It’s not
even addressed to me. Why is it still coming to me?
Spammers regularly
fake the “headers” of UCE. They do this to try to conceal
where
the email is coming from. If an email arrives in your mailbox, it
has been
addressed to you even if it doesn’t “appear” to be.
How did
they get my email address?
There are many
ways spammers gather email addresses. Some examples are:
-
B
searching web pages for posted email addresses.
-
By
searching USENET (newsgroups) postings for the “From:” addresses.
-
From
contest entries or other forms, either online or in paper formats.
-
Purchased
from other companies (note: Please see 4 below)
-
Randomly
generating addresses at a particular domain name
(i.e. somename@YourdomainName.com;somename1@YourdomainName.com;
someame3@YourdomainName.com),
then seeing if they can deliver to that
address.
No, Sanborn Web Designs
has not and does not sell, trade or barter information
regarding its clients email addresses.
It says to be
removed from their list to reply to them. Should I do this?
In general you should
not reply to UCE if you don’t recognize the company it is from,
for two reasons:
- Faked email address.
- Often times the
spammer will modify the headers of the email so that you don’t
know where it’s coming from. In this case your email will either
be returned to
you because the address doesn’t exist, or your mail will be delivered
to someone
else and not the spammer
- Information-collecting
address
- If you email them
to be removed, and the email goes back to them, this will verify
that your email address is valid. They often turn around and use
your email
address on all their lists and sell it to other spammers.
- Filtering
spam. You can setup your email program to filter email that does
not
have your email address
in the “To:” field, or filter based on other rules. Various
email programs do this in
different ways.
Reporting spam:
- One of the most
effective ways to fight UCE is to report it to the spammer’s ISP.
The ISP
can then investigate and take action to ensure that the UCE stops.
This
makes it
more difficult for spammers because they will have to find a new
way to
send out
their spam. As a result it makes it less profitable for them.
- A great
tool for reporting UCE is SpamCop. This is a free service that
determines
the source of the message,
as well as assisting you to send complaints to the
appropriate people regarding
the offending message. We have found this service
to be a quick and efficient
method of dealing with spam. You can sign up (for free)
to this service by going
to http://spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
. After you complete
the signup procedure, it
will send you to a page that you can add to your favorites
and use each time you wish
to report spam.
- Don’t forget,
when reporting spam you always need to include the Full
Headers.
- It says to be
removed from their list to reply to them. Should I do this?
- In general you
should not reply to UCE if you don’t recognize the company it
is
from, for
two reasons:
- Faked email address.
- Often times the
spammer will modify the headers of the email so that you don’t
know where
it’s coming from. In this case your email will either be returned
to you
because the
address doesn’t exist, or your mail will be delivered to someone
else
and not
the spammer
- Information-collecting
address
- If you email them
to be removed, and the email goes back to them, this will verify
that your email address is valid. They often turn around and use
your email address
on all their lists and sell it to other spammers.
- Filtering
spam.
You can setup your email program to filter email that does not
have
your email address in the “To:” field, or filter based on other
rules. Various email
programs
do this in different ways.
Spam seems to be getting
more prevalent, how does Sanborn Web Designs
plan to deal with this in the future?
Sanborn Web
Designs realizes the impact that spam has on our customers, and
is
committed to reducing the
amount of spam delivered to our clients. Our server hosts
have examined a wide variety
of systems intended to filter out spam before it arrives in
your mailbox, and all have
some level of risk of removing legitimate mail as well as spam.
Also, when you set up your
email you are using the "server authentication" process
this assist us in keeping spam
from running thru our mail servers. In general, the systems
that are best at getting rid
of spam also are the most likely to
filter out legitimate mail.
As
a company, Sanborn Web Designs doesn’t feel comfortable with deciding
which mail
you want and
which you don’t. We do want to let you decide whether you want additional
filtering applied
to your mail before we deliver it to you, and we’re working to build
tools
that will
allow you to make that decision.
We have included
some Web sites below that provide more information and allow you
do
more investigation:
http://spamcop.net
http://spam.abuse.net
http://spam.abuse.net/others/sites.asp
http://mail-abuse.org
 
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