This text has been written for me by my son Jason
I want to thank him for helping me and also thank Rand who
graciously allowed me to link to her Site against Spam
Conquering Mail Spam
The Quest for Clean Mail
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Introduction: On the events that surrounded my mother's recent ordeal, I have decided to create this guide on how to defeat spam. This was inspired by a spam letter that reached sizes that were not healthy, resulting in lag and lots of wasted time downloading it. What is Spam?: Spam is unsolicited messages or advertisement. Often sent by commercial interests trying to HOOK people into buying their product. It is also created by twisted people who try to have fun, creating HOAXES on the net. There are various methods of acquiring your name to be added to spamlists. Some of the more common methods are: *People you know send you a copy of the e-mail to warn you of some * disaster or free goodies *Internet Cookies *Visiting commercial sites and leaving your name and e-mail for information *Guestbooks Not all of these are always going to result in SPAM, actually, only a SMALL percentage of this will....But with millions of people on the Internet, this is bound to happen. When people send you an e-mail and it has many people's e-mail copied, this is a first sign that it may be spam. Unless you are a part of a mailing list (and expect this kind of mail), the first thing to do is examine what it is... DO NOT REPLY TO IT...If it contains news of stuff that is free and not going to be free for long, IT IS likely SPAM. If it contains news of stuff that is absolutely FREE, it is likely SPAM. If it contains NEWS of a mega-virus or something like that it is probably SPAM too> Here is an example of spam: "It is true, this is directly from mirabilis.com. If there is not 3000 replies by the end of the week, ICQ will not be free anymore and everyone will have to pay for it. Send this to everyone you know that has ICQ..." This is utterly fake.... Why? Well first of all, Mirabilis would not let others announce this for them, they would do it officially and in a formal e-mail. They would not ressort to this kind of thing. Same thing for free stuff In doubt of viruses, you can always go to sites like McAfee who provide shareware virus scanners (and the best ones in my opinion) and download the latest version of their software. You can be sure if there is a new virus, these people WILL KNOW! Another SAD example of spam is SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW, SEARCH FOR MISSING CHILD...It is sad to say, but unfortunately, this is often spam. This kind of spam relies on people's good nature to forward it, clogging up the internet highways. Use your judgement in these cases... The MISSING CHILD ones are ALMOST ALWAYS AUTHENTIC KIDS MISSING< but the person who does that, does not always do it to find the child. You have to remember that there are 2 kinds of spammers. The commercial one, who is JUST doing his job,(hence, don't hate the poor slob, hate the company) and the amateur one. The amateur one is a irrespoonsible and stupid person who thinks only of getting a cheap thrill by being able to boast to others that he DID something that was morally wrong and got suckers. How to avoid Spam * First of all, you must make sure you DO NOT REPLY TO ALL... It will only create more spam, making a vicious cycle. If you must reply, reply only to SENDER, not all recipients. * Place your browser to warn you before accepting cookies. It is normallly described in the help section. Most commercial sites will send you those...but some sites, especially those relating to pornography MIGHT retain your e-mail address in the cookie to spam you at a later time * Don't forward e-mails to friends when it is writtten to many people. This is one of the most common ways to spread it. * Be careful of guestbooks....Although 99.9999999% of them are harmless it still can be used as a source to SPAM...because I have seen it happen once. Webpages of dubious nature might result in this. * Use Mail filters in your e-mail. You can set your e-mail to filter out your mail. For Netscape: -Go into the menu of your messenger mailbox -EDIT->Mail Filters -NEW -give the filter a name (example SPAM CLEANER #1) -cleaning method A This method works when you have been spammed already by someone and want to stop it. UNWANTED WORDS should be a few words SPECIFIC to the e-mail, like free pornor the likes. This will filter out any message that has free porn in the message...it can also filter out free porno or free pornography. -cleaning method B This method works best for those who use e-mail for professional usage You give those you want to email you a CODE to remember and to include in the e-mail. For example if my code is MicroSUX, any e-mail that does not have MicroSux in it will not come to me. Make sure you GIVE all your friends and clients the CODE. For those using something else thatn Netscape, like Microsoft Mail or the likes, please consult your HELP FILE. these is also a [More Button]...that allows you to make more complex filters. You should have someone you know try to e-mail you trying to pass something that would trigger the spam filter to make sure it works. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is nothing much that can be DONE legally. It was proposed at the U.S. Senate to outlaw SPAM, but I have not heard anything since I read that in the newspaper. Canada has not given out any legislation concerning this form of cyber-harassment yet. If people send spam that is Life-threatening, of the nature of *YOU ARE GOING TO BE HURT* or of *YOU WILL DIE*, then you should contact the police and ask them what to do. If you find the SOURCE of the MAIL, you MAY complain to the ISP (the ones who provide Internet access to people) of the spammer. If the spammer who first sent the e-mail is located at let us say ispamforfun@fakeisp.net, send an e-mail to abuse@fakeisp.net. Most ISP's maintain an abuse department. You can always go to check at the ISP homepage also, in this case it would be http://www.fakeisp.net/ If you have a page on the net If you have a page on the internet, there is something you can do to help stop these spammers from getting too much enjoyment out of picking up e-mail address off your page. On every page you write add this code:
It is not visible on your page but what it does it when spammers SPAM SPAMMER ISP COOKIE WEB BROWSER WEB PAGES GUESTBOOKS Jason Terlecki is not affiliated in any way to McAfee, Netscape, Microsoft or Mirabilis or any of their products. The lack of mention of TM or © or any LEGAL symbol in the document is not meant to challenge their rights in any way, but simply because this is only an information document used for non-profit ends to help people out. If any of the above parties are offended by this, please CONTACT ME and DON'T SUE right away. Jason Terlecki is not responsible for any resulting data loss or damage to any computer in the world resulting from information in this document. Jason Terlecki is not responsible for LOSS of income due to the fact people are protecting themselves against commercial SPAM with information from this document. Jason Terlecki is not responsible for abused hamsters in Hungary. And long live Keno, my toy lizard. |
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