Diana the Valkyrie's Guide to the Internet
A hard man is good to beat
Some one just asked me. "How come when I click on your email address, nothing happens? Other web sites, when I click, I can send an email!" Well, the answer is - Spam!
Originally, the word "Spam" was used to mean when someone posted the same article to 20 or more newsgroups. But the word now includes those annoying emails that you didn't ask for, offering you things you don't want. "Spam" is also a trademarked word; Hormel make a canned meat. It's also the main topic in a Monty Python sketch, and most people think that's why the word is used for internet spamming.
Some people think that any commercial posting is spam. It isn't. It's when it goes to a lot of people who didn't ask for it, such as to more than 20 newsgroups. Some people think that if a post isn't commercial, then it isn't spam. No - the subject isn't the issue, the only issue is how many newsgroups it was posted to, or in the case of email, if it was sent unsolicited to a great many people. Really, email spam should be called UCE (unsolicited commercial email), but almost everyone calls it spam.
But why is spam a problem? You can surely just ignore it? No, you can't. If someone I don't know, sends me an email with the subject "In answer to your question", then I have to open the email and look at it. This might take me 10, maybe 20 seconds. Well, that's not much, is it! But suppose I get a lot of spam? Suppose I got 100 spams per day? That's 20 or 40 minutes out of my day. Suppose I got 1000 spams per day? That's hours wasted. In fact, if spam ever reaches that level, email will become useless unless something is done. That's why people dno't like spam. It wastes your time. In some cases, it wastes your time and money, because in some parts of the world, people pay for local phone calls by the minute, so time spent downloading and reading spam, is real money.
Is it legal? Yes. Anyone can send you an email without asking your permission. There's various proposals for legal changes in some countries, to do something about it, but nothing is likely to happen soon; probably never.
Sometimes the emails tell you that you can send them an email to opt out. I never do - it tells them that there's someone reading their emails, and that's got to be good!
I get offers of lists of email addresses; a million emails for $29. And that's the problem - it costs pennies to send out thousands of emails, whereas with junk surface mail, it would cost serious money to send out a million mail pieces. So, people are tempted by the thought of reaching all those people so cheaply.
What can you do to deal with it? Well, the first step, is to try to stay off the spammers lists. That's why my email address isn't clickable on the web site. Spammers use automatic programs to visit web sites to harvest addresses. By giving my email address as a graphic, and not making it clickable, the harvesters can't read it, but humans can.
They harvest email addresses from Usenet postings. They get them from AOL, AOL make it pretty easy, because they give a list of members. Indeed, any time you're on any directory, your email address will get harvested, sold, and you'll get spammed. By the way, just visiting a web site doesn't give away your email address. You have to type it in at a web site for them to get it.
Another good idea, is to create disposable email addresses. You can use Hotmail or similar services to set up an email address that you give in situations where your address might get harvested.
If you do get spammed, you might be tempted to try to take revenge somehow. The important thing to know, is don't send email back to the address that spammed you. That address is, most likely, fake. Or else set up just for that spam. No-one will read anything, no-one cares what you do to it. But there must be some payoff, someone you have to contact. So, you complain to the people who provide that service. If you're asked to sign up on a web site to a make-money-fast scheme, you can complain to the webmaster. Or to the webmaster's Internet Service Provider. If you're asked to phone an 0800 number, or send a fax, you can complain to the telephone company providing that service.
For example, if you get spammed by someone working one of the "Get paid to surf the net" schemes, you can visit the web site, but instead of signing up, you can complain to them that you got spammed by one of their people. If you forward the email that you got spammed with, they can work out who it is, and take them off their list for payment.
You might have noticed that Narella patrols the NewsThumbs for spam, and anything that she thinks is spam, is greyed out. The problem is, that job can't be done perfectly, so some spam isn't flagged as spam, and some good stuff is.
There's software you can get for filtering out spam.
Read some reviews and some useful links