"A little planning and some inexpensive software can make spam disappear from your e-mail inbox."

How to avoid those spam e-mails and
not miss the ones you need to read.

E-mail has become an absolutely
awesome way to communicate.

Messages and documents are almost instantly
delivered. People can send and receive e-mail
from practically anywhere in the world.
No longer are the time consuming niceties of
telephone calls always necessary (but let's not
ignore those important communications
altogether).

Now, as Dragnet's Joe Friday used to say,
'just give me the facts ma'am." E-mail is a great
boon to efficiency and productivity.

Now, here's the bad news.
Unscrupulous marketers have, long ago, figured
out the value of e-mail. Their message can reach
millions of people at practically no cost. There's no need to print and mail expensive direct mail promotions. They can forget telemarketing and all the associated payroll and telephone costs. They can simply bombard everyone under the sun with their sales e-mails and play the numbers game. It's nothing for spammers to send out 5 or 10 million e-mails at a time.

This article is about spaming, how it works and what can be done to keep out intrusive e-mail and make sure you get the stuff you really need to see.

Spaming is simply the sending of unsolicited bulk e-mail to people who have not requested it. Spam is the actual e-mail. Spaming is almost as old as the Internet itself. It didn't take long for these unscrupulous marketers to discover a great way to reach lots of people for very little money. Think of it this way. You send out 10,000,000 e-mails advertising a $50.00 product. Only 1/10th of 1% respond to your pitch and only 5% of them actually purchase the product. Let's do the math. That means 10,000 people responded to the ad and 500 people actually purchased the product. 500 out of 10,000,000. That's .0005%. That's also $25,000.00 in sales for every spam e-mail campaign. These people do several each and every day. That's a lot of money. Spammers don't send e-mail to be annoying. They do it to make money and they do.

Despite all the well intentioned legislation, it's very hard to catch spammers. They send e-mails through multiple e-mail servers (many are located outside the United States) so the originating address is hidden. They regularly change these servers, so it is difficult to track their activities. They also use subcontractors who send spam on their behalf and receive commissions for their efforts. They are very technically savvy and, so far, have kept one step ahead of law enforcement and spam trackers.

E-mail addresses are the spammer's holy grail and they obtain them in many different ways. E-mail lists are available everywhere. Everyone has gotten spam e-mails advertising these lists. On the Internet, quantity is in, quality is out. It's just a big numbers game.

How do you get on spam e-mail lists? It's easy. Big Internet companies sell names they have legitimately collected from the unsuspecting who sign up for something at their site. I'm not here to accuse anybody, but two days after I signed up for my Yahoo account, I began receiving an additional 10 spam e-mails a day. The same thing happened after I activated an on-line trading account at an on-line brokerage firm.

There's more. Everywhere you turn, someone is probably trying to obtain your e-mail address for improper purposes. Every time you type in your e-mail address, there is the possibility it can end up with a spammer. Spy ware and ad ware that ended up in your computer can collect your e-mail address and, without your knowledge, send it to the list collectors. Once your address is on one list, it is traded and sold numerous times and eventually ends up on many spam lists.

The only way to stop spam is to make it unprofitable for the spammers to operate. The cynic in me says that probably isn't going to happen in my lifetime, so we all need to be a little more proactive in greatly reducing and even eliminating the amount of spam we receive.

The first rule is, don't be click happy. Be more cautious about what links you actually click and quickly delete e-mails that look the least bit suspicious. Take a few minutes and read privacy statements and simply have nothing to do with companies or even individuals who do not specifically state that your e-mail address will be kept private or never be sold or traded. While some web sites simply don't tell the truth, I've found that an overwhelming majority are honest and reputable. They hate spam as much as you do and don't want their e-mails caught in your spam filters (more on these later). When ordering products on-line or subscribing to newsletters, make sure you UNCHECK the boxes that authorize the business to send you product announcements, updates and more. Not only will you receive more e-mail, but your e-mail address has a very good chance of being sold or traded. Use a second e-mail address for on-line ordering and newsletter subscriptions. Then, if you start getting too much spam, you can delete the address and probably identify the culprit. Make sure to transfer anything you want to receive to your primary e-mail address before canceling. If you can't get a second web site account, try a free account at hotmail. Hotmail is run by Microsoft and you can get a free account at www.hotmail.com. Don't opt out of spam e-mail. Often this is a trick to confirm your e-mail address is still active.

If all that sounds like work, you're correct. In our busy day, good intentions sometimes get pushed aside. That's why we have added e-mail filtering programs to our anti-spam arsenal.

There are two types of these programs. The first type is located on your web site server and called server based anti-spam client programs. The second is installed on your e-mail client programs like Outlook, or Outlook Express and works in concert with them.

Naturally, server based anti-spam programs function on your web site's or Internet Service Provider's (ISP) server and arbitrarily screens and deletes e-mails. These programs work through a filter system that matches key words in incoming e-mails with words often used by spammers. These filters also contain levels. The higher the level, the more e-mails get caught in the filter and sent to the spam folder. These programs also contain banned e-mail addresses or black lists. These lists can be compiled by the anti-spam program, but more importantly, are updated by your web master. These programs also contain white lists. These are e-mail addresses that will always pass through the filters no matter what words are in the message. Black lists are also called enemies lists. White lists can be called friends lists. While they can be set up individually, server based settings usually apply to every e-mail account attached to the web site or ISP. One of the most common server based programs is spam assassin. Spam assassin is an open source program and, therefore, the site is a little techy. If you are interested, the web site is
http://spamassassin.apache.org/index.html.

Client based anti-spam programs work on your PC or work station. They are attached to an e-mail client program like Outlook and screen incoming e-mail messages as they arrive in your inbox. Like their server based cousins, they also filter and use friends and enemies lists. However, there is one difference. The end user has more control over what key words are filtered. They also scan your address book and add the addressees to a friends list. These programs actually allow you to train them by starting with a minimal filter and letting you train the program. This is done by reviewing mail in your inbox and marking the bad guys as spam. In a few days, the amount of spam that actually appears in your e-mail inbox is almost nonexistent. The deleted e-mails are sent to a quarantined folder and later permanently deleted. It's a good idea, every now and then, to scan your quarantine folder to see if wanted e-mails got caught in the filters. If they did, you can simply add the address to your friends list.

I prefer this type of anti-spam program to the server based software. I simply have more control and can tune my e-mail to my individual choices rather than have someone else make those decisions for me. I also am afraid of missing an important e-mail. The PC based e-mail programs give me the flexibility I need to handle my e-mail easily and keep all the spam (and boy do I get a lot) away.

After several trials, we have selected and use the I Hate Spam program from Sunbelt Software. You can check out the features and even download a free trial at their web site www.sunbeltsoftware.com.

Spam is extremely annoying and can certainly clutter up your work day. However, by using these tips and tools you can keep the stress level down to a bare minimum.

We hope you have found this article helpful. If you have any comments or ideas about spam, please contact us at feedback@jamisonwebworks.com.