August 29, 2004 in Business

Take a slice out of spam

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You can completely avoid spam — junk e-mail — by quitting your current e-mail address and setting up to receive e-mail only through a Web-page form. The form doesn’t reveal your new e-mail address to anyone, so spammers can’t add it to their lists.

But what if you can’t use the Web-form approach simply because you can’t give up your current e-mail address or you depend on receiving e-mail newsletters that can’t find their way through a Web form? What if you want less spam without moving to a new e-mail home?

Try these steps to slice away at your spam load:

1. “Munge.” This will stop your e-mail address from getting on new spammer lists. Instead of listing your e-mail address on any Web page as ” me@myisp.com“, change it to “me at myisp dot com” or “meNoSpam at myisp d0t c0m.” You might even use a graphics program to create a picture version of your typed e-mail address and then post that picture on your Web page. Munged addresses are still easy for human eyes to read and understand but much tougher for spammer-robot programs to find and recognize.

2. Hide. When using any chat-rooms, blogs or discussion areas, or when registering anything online that requires an e-mail address for the sending of notices, receipts and such, don’t give out your main e-mail address. Have a second address — many people use one of the free addresses from Yahoo.com — and use that. Spammers love to find new targets in chat and discussion areas. This second address is sure to attract spam. But if you rarely visit it, and never use it for vital banking or other timely connections, you won’t really care. Now and then you can drop by the free address and delete all the piled-up spam.

3. Never OK. Each time you sign up for a newsletter, register for a site or buy something online, watch out for checkboxes. These can be hidden at the end of a form and can be tricky. Some say “Check here if you don’t want great special offers” and others might say “Check here if you do want special offers.” Make sure you’re not saying OK to any offers before you click “Submit” on the form.

4. Never buy. This may sound obvious, but it will help cut your spam if you never buy anything from a spam list. Don’t let them know you’re there and they’re less likely to spam again and to sell your name to others as a hot spamming prospect.

5. Never reply. Don’t trust “unsubscribe” or “reply here to get off our list” choices in e-mail unless you’re dealing with IBM or some other huge, reputable organization. If in any doubt, don’t reply. Organ-enlargement and mortgage-refinancing outfits too often use those clicks as proof that your e-mail address is still alive and eager for more spam.

6. Filter. Your Internet service company is probably already filtering your e-mail to stop the most obvious spam before it reaches your Inbox. Yeah, you’d be getting even more if they weren’t, as hard as that is to imagine. But they won’t filter aggressively because of the danger of “false positives.” Better to let 20 organ-enlargement messages through than to block one important work memo or personal note that happens to mention “organ” for some reason.

You can add your own filtering to catch more of the junk. Most e-mail programs now have filtering built in, or you can buy an anti-spam program to add to your e-mail software. One good filter is built right into the free Thunderbird program (download it from Mozilla.org). It’s also one of the most technologically advanced. This “Bayesian” programming watches your decisions to click “This is Junk” or “This is Not Junk” on e-mails you receive, and will soon understand what you want automatically routed to a Junk folder for later skimming. You could choose just to throw probable junk away without looking, but no filter is perfect and you’d risk tossing vital communications.

Filtering can include “whitelist” and “blacklist” operations where you specify addresses that you will always accept e-mail from and others that you will never accept from. Unfortunately, as spammers often spoof (fake) e-mail addresses, and spam sometimes come from friendly computers that have been turned into “zombies,” a whitelist/blacklist still allows some spam.

7. Challenge/Response. For about $30 a year a company such as Mailblocks.com will sell you a Challenge/Response service to add to your current e-mail box. Any received e-mail message that doesn’t come from a whitelist of acceptable senders is automatically put on hold while a “challenge” e-mail is sent back to the origin. This will contain a test such as asking “how many kittens are in this picture” that only a human can currently solve. (Well, a computer can solve some such problems, but only at a huge cost in processing power and time, which spammers couldn’t afford for each sent message.)

Only if that challenge is answered will the original e-mail be allowed through to your e-mail box. Challenge/response can reduce your official spam count to almost zero, but at a cost. You’ll have to fiddle with the settings to admit desired newsletters and company e-mailings. You’ll still receive some spam that has a “spoofed” or “zombie” address, making it look as though it comes from a friendly, whitelisted computer.

Some official e-mail from your bank or other such institution may not arrive properly — such as if the bank doesn’t use the same sending address each time. And you’ll have to accept that some strangers won’t bother to respond, so you’ll never see their e-mail. That may be a blessing or, if you’re looking for maximum publicity and reach on the Internet for some project, may actually be a curse. You may end up wanting more e-mail and so have to give up on Challenge/Response.

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