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Wham, Bam, No Thank You, Spam
How to keep from getting spammed— sort of
BACK TO LEAD STORY:
The War Against Spam
For more information, visit one of several anti-spam Web sites, including:
Junkbusters:
www.
junkbusters.com/Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail:
www.cauce.org/
So how do you keep from getting stalked by the bad boys of the Internet?
Your address can't be picked up from your daily e-mails to your best friend in Iowa, but it is available in any public forum--and spammers know how to get it. There are programs that roam the Internet plucking e-mail addresses listed on Web sites, Usenet newsgroups, customer directories on AOL and Compuserve and any of the interactive forums on Salon magazine or The New York Times, for example.
Once spammers compile lists, they can sell them--often via spam.
This means the more you leave your name on the Internet, the more vulnerable you are. The result is what anti-spammers call the "chilling effect," meaning the people who are most likely to use the Net will stop logging on because every visit makes them more likely to be prey and their e-mail boxes become too clogged.
Harvesters are hungry. They'll scavenge any e-mail addresses they can find, not caring whether they are old or obsolete. It doesn't cost much more to send a million spams than it does to send 100,000.
But according to Junkbusters, a consumer advocacy group that started out fighting printed junk mail and has now taken on spam, there are things you can do.
IF YOU'VE BEEN SPAMMED:
* Do not reply. One sure way to guarantee you'll get more junk mail is to ask to be removed from a spammer's mailing list. Spammers use the shotgun approach to direct marketing and expect most of the e-mail addresses to be wrong. Once they receive a response, they know they've got a live one and can create a marketable list.
* For Washington residents only: Forward the spammer to the attorney general at http://www.wa.gov/ago/junke-mail/. You can also register with the AG's office, which will officially put spammers on notice that you're a Washington resident and protected from fraudulent bulk mail.
* Forward the spam to your ISP. Teleport, for example, takes all spam complaints and tries to track down the senders. Most ISPs will dump anyone who sends out bulk e-mails.
* You can take matters in your own hands by decoding the hieroglyphics at the bottom of every e-mail. Find out which service provider it came from and complain directly to that ISP. Most legitimate ISPs will dump a spammer. There are some, however, derisively nicknamed spamhauses, that don't care who they carry.
IT'S EASIER TO KEEP FROM GETTING SPAMMED THAN TO GET OFF A LIST. TO PROTECT YOURSELF:
* Keep yourself unlisted in the membership directory of your online service. Don't put in a member profile on AOL, for example. Sure, long-lost friends won't be able to find you as easily, but neither will the spammers.
* E-mail addresses published on Web sites usually have a nifty feature whereby readers can point and click to send an e-mail. But the program language for such links unwittingly alerts harvesting programs. The solution is to list addresses without making them live links. It's a hassle for people trying to reach you because they have to manually type in your address.
* Choose an e-mail address that begins with a letter late in the alphabet. Many e-mail lists are sorted in alphabetical order, and spammers often terminate sessions before they are completed.
* Disguise your e-mail address if you post to Usenet or chat rooms. You can do this in your e-mail program. Most commonly, people change their return address to something like wentz@spamsucks.wweek. com. This gives the harvesting program an invalid address. The downside is that it requires a bit of sophistication for people to reply to your real address. --PW
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Willamette Week | originally published November 11, 1998
