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UNINVITED guests are often a problem. They show up at your doorstep without so much so as by your leave and are often an inconvenience. The worst part of it is that you really don't know how to get rid of them. Often, such "guests" that arrive in your e-mail boxes are called spam mail (spam for short). You know the story-you start off all excited about having hooked on to e-mail. Soon you start getting some e-mail from advertisers and the like. Initially, you are curious and open it often. Soon it becomes a chore and if you are not careful, your e-mail box is full a short while later… "you have exceeded the allotted limit". What is spam? Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message in an attempt to send the message to people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. In other words, spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail sent to "Current Occupant". A major difference between the junk mail we get (the paper variety) and spam is that the former costs the advertiser money and causes just inconvenience to the recipient. In the case of the latter, it causes inconvenience and costs the recipient money to receive it. Excessive spamming also causes the networks to slow down. How did the term spam
come about? According to Denis Howe, editor of the The Free On-line
Dictionary of Computing: the word was coined as the winning entry in
a 1937 competition to choose a name for Hormel Foods Corporation's
"spiced meat" (now officially known as "SPAM luncheon
meat"). Correspondent Bob White claims the modern use of the term
predates Monty Python by at least 10 years. He cites an editor for the Dallas
Times Herald describing public relations as "throwing a can of
spam into an electric fan just to see if any of it would stick to the
unwary passersby." |
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Receiver pays What kind of message would be spammed? Most spam is commercial advertising. Though regular businesses have fallen to the allure of spam (it's easy to fall for someone who promises that "We will put your product or service instantly into the hands of millions!"), often it is for dubious products and services - get-rich-quick schemes, or services with doubtful legality. Two popular topics are debt reduction and pornographic services. What makes it so popular is the fact that spam costs the sender very little to send since most of the cost is paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender. How? The receiver typically uses a phone connection to get to the Internet, so he pays for time spent in downloading the spam, and of course it costs the Internet service provider to transmit such mail, a cost that is ultimately passed on to the consumer. No wonder, many irresponsible businesses see e-mail as a vast free medium to send their message to Internet users, typically the upper end of the demographic profile which has the most buying power. How do you spam? The techniques of sending spam are simple. You get a mass mailing program — here are several of them around — and that's almost all you need. The other thing is, of course, addresses, which again are not very difficult to get. Spammers typically use a highly scalable, customisable system for discovering resources on the Net through a technique called "harvesting" to gather e-mail addresses from servers. They often use bots(from robots), type of autonomous software that operates as an agent for a user or a program or simulates a human activity. As you know, programs are tools and can be used for good or bad purposes. Spiders or crawlers are the most popular programs on the Net since they are used for providing information to search engines. Another kind, called knowbot, collects information by automatically gathering certain specified kinds of information from the Net, and can be configured to collect e-mail addresses. Typically, spammers themselves use fraudulent addresses to avoid being traced and, in fact, there are "professional" spamming agencies that offer their services to businesses. Spamming is a 90's phenomenon; at least it got irritating during that decade and has only increased since then. You have to keep in mind that spammers get your e-mail addresses from various fora-they could get the address while you are chatting online, if you have posted notes to message boards or newsgroups, are enrolled in mailing lists, etc. You also leave your e-mail addresses when you create a customised member profile on a Website or if you are a Webmaster of a site. Prevention As usual, prevention is the best cure. This is one time that multiple identities save the day. Savvy Net users often have different identities for chatting in various chat rooms. They maintain a separate one for e-mail, in which they expect important messages. Remember the old saying that you are known by the company you keep? Turns out that it's still quite true in the cyber world as well. Most of the discussion groups and chat rooms are legitimate, though it is always a good idea to check their privacy policy. At the same time, be warned that most pornographic sites, which offer you free e-mails everyday, often sell the e-mail addresses and other personal details they garner in this way. Privacy policies Almost all legitimate sites that ask for your personal information post a statement detailing their privacy policy, which explains what they will do with the information they collect from you and, more importantly, what they will not do with it, i.e., not give it or sell it to anyone, etc. Do read it. In case a site does not have a privacy policy posted prominently, think twice about posting information on it. As a rule, do not reply to any spam. Just delete it. Since spammers are unreliable to begin with, you may well expect them to use an unsubscribe request as a confirmation of your address! Thus you could well be the target of more spam. Spam in your inbox No matter what precautions you take, spam makes its way into your inbox. What do you do then? The first thing is to delete it. Most of the spam have easy-to-figure out headings that make it easy to spot them and delete them without opening the messages. However, spammers are smart and these days you have more sophisticated variety. A current one is a mail sent out purportedly by Seema, with the subject "Finding a match for Snehal". It is a spam mail though it reads like the letter of a loving Aunt asking "How is Vikram bhaiya?" and discussing the problems in finding a match and her finding a good Website for this purpose. It is even signed Seema auntie! Blocking spam While you would normally read such a mail before deleting it, you would not have any problem in deleting one with the subject "Five lakh Indian e-mails" or "Are you single and ready to mingle" or "Want cash?" The last one might make you pause before you hit the delete button! You can use various software to block spam from reaching your POP inbox. These include Spamkiller, Spambuster, MailWasher, MailTalk and Mailsweep for IBM-compatible computers; and Mail Beacon, Spamtrasher, POP monitor, etc., for Apple Macintosh computers. Most Web-based mail services also offer spam blocking services. Hotmail is the favourite target of spammers, and it allows you to block as many as 250 addresses. Similar services are also available for Yahoo! users. Many ISPs also provide some sort of e-mail blocking feature. For POP accounts, other than using the software, you may also choose to complain to the ISPs through which the spammers have sent the message. Most of the legitimate ISPs take diligent actions to prevent such misuse of their facilities. Of course, there are legal remedies,
which are discussed separately. Let's put the whole thing this way,
e-mail is here to stay, we all need it and use it, just like with
regular mail. We need to take common-sense measures; use technological
tools to help us and our mailboxes can be free from uninvited guests.
Unlike the guests who come at our doorsteps uninvited, we can at least
dispose of the computer variety instantaneously. |
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