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Net Gains (Nov 20, 98) |
Dear Lyndon,
I have been getting a lot of junk email since the last couple of months. Most of the time, these emails are addressed to someone else. Now what I want to know here is, how do these emails reach me? I've noticed many such junk mails are from and to the same person. How do they get to me?
Philip
What Philip is facing, and no doubt most of us are facing too
is a sudden increase in the amount of unwanted, unsolicited email
that ends up in our mailbox. Offers for creating webpages for
as low as Rs. 500 per page, or an offer for hosting a website
at dirt cheap rates. Then there are others that give you a porno
URL teasing recipients with a "free membership for 24 hours"
offer. Not that such sites need much goading to get users to visit
them : - )
But seriously though, these emails are a big, big pain in the
neck and moving downwards fast. First of all they take up download
time (if you read your mail remotely after downloading it from
the server). An overdose of these emails could also clog your
mailbox and have authentic emails bounce back. A definite possibility
if you're on holiday or don't check your mail regularly. Junk
email like this is called spam - just like a US food that's disliked
and hated by just about everyone.
Most of the time, people create temporary accounts at free email
service providers like hotmail and yahoo and send the mail from
there and then create another account for their next spamming
session. They have a list of email addresses they bombard with
junk email, and usually put these addresses in the bcc (blind
cc ) section of their email, so that people don't see the entire
list of addresses. That's why Philip got email which was addressed
to someone else's email address - his name was in the bcc section.
Authentic email from reputed services always give users a way
to unsubscribe. For instance I had downloaded some software where
I had to give my email address. They started sending me regular
emails with product updates. Since I was not interested, I followed
the unsubscribe details at the end of their email and promptly
stopped receiving their updates. But spammers misuse this, and
users who respond just let the spammer know that this is a valid
email address, and he keeps sending more unwanted email.
So what's the best way to stop these chappies? Sadly enough, there's no single way that works. However, like you there are millions over the world facing the same problem, and a few are even trying to cut down spam and help others in the same boat - here are a few resources to get you started off:
Abuse.Net (http://www.abuse.net/) is one place where you can
get help - registered users can report spams and they in turn
report those spams to the best reporting addresses for the domain
the email originated from.
If you'd rather do the above on your own, here's information on
how you can best go about it: http://spam.abuse.net/howtocomplain.html
CNet has a how-to guide to stopping spam. Pay attention to this
free lesson at http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Howto/Stop/
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