"Where are we going ... and why are we in this handbasket?"
While it may sometimes seem that email is going to hell thanks to spam, it IS possible to get out of the handbasket.
What is spam?
Spam is junk email, most of which involves some attempt at fraud or deception. It is sent out in bulk to people the sender does not know, hoping to tap into a gullible audience. Occasionally it is sent by a legitimate company, but most often it is a scam or con game. And there is a lot of it - by all accounts, hundreds of millions of spam sent each year. (At least.)
Why is it called spam?
During World War II, one of the few meats to escape rationing in Britain was a tinned pork product called SPAM. Think of it as a cross between scrapple and the leftover bits that no one wanted to put into a sausage, all in a convenient rectangular tin. Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for Brits to tire of the ubiquitous meat product / substitute.
Fast forward a few years to the comedy troupe Monty Python and their television show Monty Python's Flying Circus, which gathered quite a following in the UK and the USA. One of their sketches involved a customer trying to order breakfast in a restaurant where every menu choice included greater or lesser amounts of Spam. A host of Vikings chanting "SPAM! Lovely SPAM!" in the background soon increases their volume until the chant overwhelms the original conversation.
When a few parties began to flood Usenet newsgroups and email inboxes with commercial messages, it struck fans of the Pythons as a familiar phenomenon, but with marketers instead of Vikings. So the interruptions were named spam. (It made a sort of sense at the time.)
Why do spammers send out so many spam messages?
Unlike physical junk mail, the main cost of sending junk email falls on the recipient, not the sender. The spammer's investment is small: inexpensive tools for mass emailing and CDs full of harvested email addresses. And there is no postage to pay.
With regular junk mail, the sender usually needs a response rate of a couple of percent to make it worthwhile. Spam, on the other hand, is so cheap to send that a response rate of a fraction of a percentage can be a bonanza for the spammers. (Especially since most of them are looking for gullible victims instead of customers.)
The result is that spammers have absolutely no incentive to target their junk email only to people who might be interested. So we all get bombarded by folks looking to make a quick buck.
How did spammers get my email address?
Believe it or not, there is a good chance that you gave it to them - unintentionally, of course. Spammers and their myrmidons use bits of programming called bots or spiders to move around the internet and grab anything that looks like an email address. They can harvest email addresses from many places:
From a web site where you entered it in exchange for something - information, access, freebies, a personalized account, etc.
From chatrooms.
From newsgroups, if you have left any messages.
From your own website, if you have posted the address or a mailto: link.
From anyone to whom you have given your email address.
From dictionary attacks. (This happens mostly to folks on known domains, where the spammers guess at possible account names for the domain and combine the name and the domain into an email address.)
Of course not everyone is a bad guy, and not every web site is out to harvest email addresses for the spammers. But enough of them are to make you think twice before handing over your private information.
How can I cut down on the spam I receive?
There are two approaches to reducing spam, and it's best to combine both.
First there is prevention. This comes down to guarding your email address. You don't have to hand your private email address out to everyone on the net who asks for it.
For those times when you do need an email address to register for a web site but don't plan on ever receiving mail from them, get a throwaway address. There are sources of freebie email addresses that can be used for just this purpose. (Try a Google search on free email account.) Then simply don't read email sent to that address. If you never check the inbox, you never see the spam.
Don't respond to spam, not even to ask to be taken off the mailing list. You'll just confirm that yours is a working email address if you do respond.
If you have your own web site, you will have to consider the tradeoff between security (not handing out your email address) and convenience (providing your email address for visitors). There are ways to obscure the address to make it harder for spambots to harvest, ranging in difficulty and effectiveness from spelling out the address (name at domain dot com) to coding in Javascript or CGI script. Try a Google search on hide email address web.
If you participate in a newsgroup, you can make your email address readable by a human but harder for a bot to decipher. Try a Google search on mung email address.
Second there is diversion. This involves using techniques to block spam before it winds up in your inbox. Spam blocking involves three main approaches:
Whitelists. This is a list of all sources that are considered trustworthy. If someone on your whitelist sends you a message, you always want to receive it. A whitelist is therefore highly individual.
Blacklists. This is a list of all sources that are considered untrustworthy. If someone on your blacklist sends you a message, you always want to block it. There are anti-spam blacklists operated by various volunteer groups on the internet. They do the work of updating the lists as spammers change their accounts. Your part is to choose the blacklists you want to follow and update your system regularly.
Filters. This is a way of dealing with the vast majority of gray in between. Filters use a variety of rules in order to make a determination for each email that comes through: spam or ham? Filters can be remarkably effective in blocking spam, particularly if you train them by feeding them samples of spam (not hard to get) and your own legitimate email. It may take a little while to fine-tune the rules you or someone else sets up for your filter, but once you do, the reward is the return of a manageable inbox, even if you had previously been seeing a hundred spam a day or more.
Spam can be radically reduced, and often virtually eliminated. Try the simple steps on your own. If that's not enough, a small investment in help to set up an anti-spam system can repay you with a much pleasanter and safer email experience. There are even more techniques that can be added to increase security and privacy while keeping spam out. So get out of the handbasket before you arrive you-know-where.
by Evelyne Stalzer
