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Spam, spam, spam....
As of May, 2004 64% of all email
traffic is SPAM!
If you have email, you know what spam is.
Brand new accounts can have spam in them before you even log into it for the
first time. How does that work?
To understand the 'what' of Spam we need to
first understand the 'why. Spammers have grown to become over half of the
email traffic on the net. The reason it's so popular is that it basically
costs a spammer nothing to send tens of millions of emails, and they can do it
many times a day if they want. And, it works. As amazing as it
sounds, some people buy that stuff.
The first spammer was a law firm in Arizona
(see below). They
posted messages to 6,000 Usenet news groups to promote their ability to get
green cards for workers in this country. Of course, most of the people
took great offense that the message was not on the topic of the group and from someone they didn't know trying to sell
them something they certainly didn't need. Even though the firm had the
wrath of the Internet community come down on them, they ended up selling their
services to over 100 people at $1,500 each. Someone bought the product
making it a viable way to market.
How do the spammers get my email address?
Well, there are several ways. Some buy
lists that have been compiled of active email addresses. Much like the
junk mail industry has done for eons. So, when you sign up for ANYTHING on
the Internet beware that you will probably be on a list. Especially if you
sign up for some free service. Nothing is free. If they can sell
your email address for a dime they have a viable business plan.
Some spammers will use a names dictionary.
They have a list of domains, like aol.com, tempe.gov, etc. and they send to
every known name at those domains. So,
adam@aol.com, mary@tempe.gov, and so
on will be sent a message. You can image that 99% of those will bounce
because they are bad addresses. But, remember, they work by the numbers.
Send 10 million out and if only 10,000 make it, and only 1% of those buy their
product they just sold 100 bottles of pills (or whatever). This is where
the massive amount of Internet traffic comes from. For each failed message
there is a bounce that is sent back from the domain it was sent to...basically
doubling the traffic. And, to top that off, the spammer can keep track of
what didn't bounce and bingo, they have a list of all the good users at that
domain to use again or even sell that list.
How do you keep from getting spam?
That's the big question. It's not
really possible to reduce it to zero, but there are things you can do to slow it
down. Any company or product that claims they can cut spam 100% is not
being honest with you.
Some ISPs (Internet Service Providers) such
as MSN and AOL have some pretty good filters. Even the smaller companies
are starting to install them as a service and also to help protect their own
bandwidth from the resource hog that spam has become. There are programs
you can get that will check your email account and remove what it considers spam
before you even see it. These usually run the risk of removing some good
emails too so be careful.
What about those links at the bottom of a
spam that lets me 'opt out' of their list?
This is tricky and may or may not work.
Sometimes, if the spammer is actually a reputable company, they will actually
stop sending you email. Many times they may stop but still sell your email
address to others anyhow. And sometimes they actually take your request as
a confirmation that indeed there is someone at that email address and can sell
your information for a higher price as a known good address.
I received an email from a friend and it
turned out to be a spam message! How did that happen?
The latest technique used by spammers is to
send their messages with return addresses you might know or trust. You are
far more likely to open a message from a friend than from an unknown person.
They know that and of course it's working for them. We have found a LOT of
people get email from what appears to be our employees here at tempe.gov when in
reality it's not.
How do the spammers know who my friends are,
or who I might trust?
Now we are talking about someone who probably
has a virus that is designed to harvest just that kind of information from their
machine. Imagine a virus that doesn't hurt the machine in any noticeable
way. It's function is to scan the users address book and all of their
email looking for any email addresses it can find. There is one from your
spouse, your daughter, the Tempe water department answering your question from
last week, and one from Ebay about telling you that you won an auction.
The program sees all of these addresses and keeps track of them. It'll
then either send the addresses to a central server that sends spam or may even
send the spam directly from the infected machine making it even harder to trace
later.
So, your machine, assuming it has this virus,
could send a spam to each of the people in your address book and even people who
have sent you email and it would look like it came from you! Or it might
send a message that appears to be 'from' one person in the address book 'to'
another in the book. Or, it could have been sent from their main spamming server
but still using the information from your machine. This is far more common
than we might hope. So, if someone tells you that you sent them a spam or
a virus it's highly possible it was sent with your address as the return but you
didn't send it. Much like you could do with regular mail.
So, a good virus checker is important in the
fight against spam but you'll find that spyware can be just as bad so make sure
you check out that information.
More information about spam:
http://spam.abuse.net/
Some of the more popular spam filters are:
(we are not endorsing any product)
http://us.mcafee.com/
http://www.symantec.com
For your enjoyment we have a copy of the
first spam ever sent via the Internet. And it was from a couple of lawyers
in Arizona!
-----
From: Laurence Canter (nike@indirect.com)
Subject: Green Card Lottery- Final One?
Newsgroups: alt.brother-jed, alt.pub.coffeehouse.amethyst
View: Complete Thread (4 articles) | Original Format
Date: 1994-04-12 00:40:42 PST
Green Card Lottery 1994 May Be The Last One!
THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED.
The Green Card Lottery is a completely legal program giving away a
certain annual allotment of Green Cards to persons born in certain
countries. The lottery program was scheduled to continue on a
permanent basis. However, recently, Senator Alan J Simpson
introduced a bill into the U. S. Congress which could end any future
lotteries. THE 1994 LOTTERY IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE PLACE
SOON, BUT IT MAY BE THE VERY LAST ONE.
PERSONS BORN IN MOST COUNTRIES QUALIFY, MANY FOR
FIRST TIME.
The only countries NOT qualifying are: Mexico; India; P.R. China;
Taiwan, Philippines, North Korea, Canada, United Kingdom (except
Northern Ireland), Jamaica, Domican Republic, El Salvador and
Vietnam.
Lottery registration will take place soon. 55,000 Green Cards will be
given to those who register correctly. NO JOB IS REQUIRED.
THERE IS A STRICT JUNE DEADLINE. THE TIME TO START IS
NOW!!
For FREE information via Email, send request to
cslaw@indirect.com
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