Home“Spam” is the term for unsolicited commercial bulk email, this which started out a very small nuisance on the internet has grown to become something that plagues people every time they check their inbox. This spam fills up inboxes with unsolicited mail for services that no one could ever want. They cost time and money to those that receive them and the cost to the email servers and internet service providers (ISP’s) in then passed on to the consumers in the form of higher bills. Measures have been taken to put and end to this scourge and to prevent future spammers from arising.
Spam is an ineffective way to advertise as it provides people with information about products and services that likely are of use to
no one. Many spammers are unaware of what they are doing and have probably been duped into some kind of “Get-Rich-Quick” scheme. In a article about the commercial uses of spam (from Alchemy Mindworks) it was explained the reason that people spam and how they might be unaware of the damage they are causing:
The most prevalent sort of junk e-mail is commercial advertising. Judging by the content of most of these messages, their perpetrators have all just signed up with an Internet access provider, and were given complimentary copies of one of the many “How to Make Lots of Money on the Internet” books. Some of them are genuinely inconsiderate of the rights of other users of the net ? the bulk of them, however, are merely confused, deluded and ignorant.
These unsolicited emails take time out of someone busy day to either read or get rid off; they become a constant hassle to your everyday routine. Another way that people get on the spam lists in the first place is when spammers get a hold of mailing list for an organization or forum:
One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
Spam can come from anywhere and internet users should be very careful about who they give their email address too.
Ways to get rid of spam are ever rising and slowing down the amount of junk mail that email users receive. For those who use programs to read their emails there are solutions such as SpamCop a highly rated program and the slightly over zealous Spam Hater, both programs not only stop spam but report complaints to the senders of the spam. Online email such as Hotmail also have taken measure to prevent spam in a help file one can learn,
In MSN Hotmail, you have several ways to protect yourself from junk mail: On the page, set up the Junk Mail Filter to redirect spam to your Junk Mail folder.
You can set the Junk Mail Filter to High or Exclusive, and then create a Safe List of addresses that should always send messages to your Inbox… If an offending message still gets into your Inbox, click the check box to the left of the message, and then click Block to stop future messages from that sender from entering your Inbox.
Other measures should be taken as checking out a website or forum for a privacy policy before giving away your email address and when signing up for a service be sure not to check anything that says that you would like to receive “special offers” or “important information” these can be a red flag that the service is linked to potential spammers.
Spam is a nuisance and will hopefully be eliminated or at least slowed down over time. More people learn how to stop or prevent it everyday and hopefully one day it will no longer be in existence. Until then, everyone must take measures to protect their inbox from being crammed full of emails about something no one could ever want.
October 9th, 2009