: [email protected]
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/27744/The_War_on_Spam_pg2.html
The War on Spam
written by Jack Karp on Tuesday, December 18, 2001
Lawmakers are considering regulating mass commercial email, but a law may be years away. We offer tips on protecting yourself now.
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Several state laws regulating spam have recently been struck down by courts as violating the dormant commerce clause of the US Constitution, which prohibits states from placing undue burden on interstate commerce. Meanwhile, no federal law has yet been enacted regulating commercial email. So how can you protect yourself from spam until congress does enact legislation? Here are some ideas.
Maintain a spam email account. Web-based email accounts are free and easy to set up. Get one that is intended specifically for spam. Don't use it for personal and work communications, but give it out when signing up for mailing lists, posting to newsgroups, or shopping online.
Don't give out your real email address. If you don't have a spam email account, leave the space for your email address blank when filling out online registration forms. If the site requires you to enter an email address, you can fill in a phony one. Make an address up, or if you want to be especially sly, supply the email address of your favorite spamming company.
Don't reply. Never reply to spam. Replies are how spammers verify that an email address is active. If you reply to a spam email, you are practically asking to receive more spam.
Don't even open spam. Some spam messages are programmed to contain Web bugs, which notify the messages' sender when an email he or she has sent has been opened. Spammers use these Web bugs to tell that your email address is valid and active. They can do this even if you don't reply to the email; opening one is enough. If you know an email message is spam, delete it without opening it.
Screen for spam. You can program your email client to filter out certain messages, including those that don't have your correct email address, have subject lines in all caps, have a lot of dollar signs or exclamation points, or have words like "unsubscribe," "X-priority," "adv," "bulk email," "authenticated sender," or "make money fast" in the subject lines. You can also note the domains from which you receive a lot of mass email and block messages from those domains.
Get a spam filter. Many ISPs now come with a spam filter that can be added to your existing email client. Earthlink offers one called Spaminator, and Hotmail provides one called InBox Protector. You can also purchase Novasoft's SpamKiller for $30, or download one for free from Spam Bouncer.
Mung. Address munging, also known as spam blocking or spoofing, refers to altering your email address when posting to newsgroups and bulletin boards so that spam bots will either not recognize your email or send spam to an illegitimate email rather than to yours. For example, you can change
[email protected] to cybercrimeATtechtvDOTcom, or to
[email protected] (replace t with z), or even
[email protected]ess. For more information, visit this extensive FAQ on address munging.
Get unlisted. Contact Internet directories such as WhoWhere and 411 and ask them to remove your name, email address, and personal information from their databases.
If you know of any other ways Internet users can avoid spam, let us know. And make sure to watch our look at spam legislation on this week's episode.
You can also find an overview of the current federal, state, and international laws concerning spam at Spam Laws, John Marshall Law School's spam law resource, and junkemail.org.
For more general anti-spam resources, visit suespammers.org, emailabuse.org, SpamCop, the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, and Scam Busters.
Continue to tune into "CyberCrime" and visit our website to keep apprised of new developments in the legislation of spam email.
