Nobody likes receiving spam
and having to spend time dealing with it.
Even with sophisticated filtering and avoidance
mechanisms discussed in my previous articles
entitled "Use A Spam Filtering Tool
To Manage Spam And Save Hours Everyday"
and "7 Steps To Effectively Take Control
Of Your Inbox And Reduce Spam", these
unwanted spam messages keep on appearing.
By understanding how the system works, we
can effectively take steps to significantly
reduce the amount of spam that we receive
daily.
What we have to understand is that email
marketing is by far the most effective way
to promote products and services on the
internet today. The basis of this system
it to collect as many email addresses as
you can and repeatedly send email messages
out to them. There is a legitimate way to
do this and then there is the way spammers
do it.
The legitimate way is to collect email
addresses only from people who volunteer
it to you on a website in return for some
information that you offer. In addition
to this every email sent out must include
a link or instructions on how to unsubscribe.
I would take it one step further and say
that unsubscription must be instantaneous.
Having to wait for a few days is unacceptable
with the software tools available today.
Following this method, you will only receive
email messages that you have opted-in for
and as soon as you are not getting any value
out of it, you unsubscribe.
The spammers mode of operation is to collect
email addresses by any and all means available.
This could be by building software spiders
to crawl websites 24 hours day looking for
email addresses on any page. Usually they
search for the HTML tag "mailto:"
but as users have stopped hyperlinking in
response, the spiders are getting more sophisticated
and are putting together text like "john
dot smith at domain dot com" into the
proper valid email address "john.smith".
Some websites list all their employees contact
emails on one page and is a prime target
for spam. Harvesting guestbooks where emails
are displayed is also a very common practice.
Other methods are more malicious and involve
virus-like or worm software being installed
on your computer and feeding the names in
the address book back to a spam server that
collects them.
Spammers trade email addresses for money.
This is why the system is out of hand -
it is an income producing activity. Every
email address has a value to it and no matter
how little the value, putting together a
list of 100,000 can provide a neat income
for a spammer. Most spammers have spam lists
many times larger than this.
Spammers also include the unsubscribe link
at the bottom of spam emails. These links
when clicked and actioned, tells the spammers
that this email address actually got through
to a live person and that email address
is now moved onto a much higher value list
and is traded for more money. Those of us
who have actioned these links have found
the flood of spam coming in to vastly increase
within only days.
So now to the question of how to use this
knowledge to reduce the spam you get?
First, understand that everytime you give
out your email address to a website, that
it can potentally be sold and traded. Therefore,
if you are unsure about it, use an email
address that is not your primary one. Webmail
services like Hotmail and Yahoo Mail are
perfect for this. You only get the messages
when you want them and log into those services.
I've used a Yahoo Mail address for this
for years now. Everytime I log in there
are more than a thousand messages but the
one that I want to look at is at the top.
I never have to delete these messages, Yahoo
takes care of it automatically. The only
requirement is that I log in to the service
within a set period usually 90 or 120 days
to keep the account active.
Once you are comfortable that the site
concerned is legitimate, you can then change
your email address to your primary one.
On the other hand, if you start getting
spammed, then you do nothing, let the spam
emails build up and get deleted automatically
by the system.
In my article entitled "7 Steps To
Effectively Take Control Of Your Inbox And
Reduce Spam" I discuss an elegant way
to safely give out email addresses and shut
them down in case they get spammed. This
is by far the most effective method that
I have used.
Other things to watch out for?
Spammers are facing tougher times and they
are finding it harder to get new email addresses.
While this is a good sign that means the
general public are getting more educated,
it does mean that we have to be careful
of where our email addresses are shown or
advertised. For example, magazines and newspapers
often are great places for a spammer to
collect email addresses. This is a much
slower method but if we think about it,
these email addresses are of much higher
value because somebody has paid money to
advertise and so it is bound to be a real
address. This means that we have to think
laterally in order to stay ahead of the
spam game.
Last but not least, we can surely help
significantly reduce the problem by not
responding to any spam email message whether
it is by clicking on a link, replying to
the email or unsubscribing using a supplied
link. If you really must look at the site,
just type in the domain name part of it
into your browser and leave out everything
after the domain name. This will take you
to the site without the spammers tracking
identification code.
Together we can surely put a dent in this
system by understanding it and staying one
or a few steps ahead of spammers.
About the Author
Balraj Dhaliwal is an Internet Consultant
for BSD Domain Registry, a well respected
and liked domain and hosting provider because
of its no nonsense simple approach to getting
things done. Visit BSD Register at http://www.BSDRegister.com
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