Dealing with Spam. Why is Spam called Spam?

Dealing with Spam

Spam has become a plague, a pox on the Web. Your Webmaster is working to deal with it. When it becomes unbearable, a good solution is to give up your existing email address and use a new one, whenever necessary.

I have had to give up three email addresses that I used for over 10 years. They are: wmdawes@colorpro.com, webmaster@colorpro.com, and bill@dawesbiz.net. To reach me, try regi@Xdawesbiz.net ... but remove the "X". If that doesn't work, try the telephone, or write by snail mail, as they appear at the bottom of this, or any of my pages. If that doesn't work, search for "Reggie Dawes" in Google.

When, for business reasons, it is advisable to expose my customer's email address on the web, I will be following one of the procedures described below.

I've evaluated many tools for dealing with the spammer's robots that scour the Web for email addresses. Some are described later in this report.

I will be posting my latest research on ways to deal with spam and spammers. I have some cardinal rules:

	NEVER deal with any business who spams, no matter how good their proposal seems. These people are thieves.
	Never follow any link to their Web sites. These people are famous for installing spyware on your browser, that will allow them to track the Web sites you have visited and report back to the spammer.
	Never click on any 'unsubscribe' link in their emails. Anyone unscrupulous enough to do spamming is likely just trolling for functioning email addresses, and will sell any found to other spammers.

Spam Filtering Tools

I wrote the following 3 years ago. They may not be available any longer, or perhaps your email program is doing a satisfactory job for you. But skip to "Why is it called Spam" for interesting historical details.

Want some tools to limit your spam, before you take the drastic measure of changing your address? There are HUNDREDS of programs that may help. Some are more trouble than they are worth. Some are very complex, and some wipe out messages I really need. I will describe two, Mail Washer and ERemove. They allow you to start dealing with a mailbox jammed with spam BEFORE you change addresses.

ERemove. This is a simple, clever, elegant program, very easy to set up and use. If you only get 10 or 20 spams a day, this may be all you need. It does not run on a set schedule; rather, you simply run it just before opening your email program. You may examine the headers or preview any message and decide to delete it from the server, before it gets to into your email program. I have used it for years, and still keep it on hand for quick checks. I run it from a floppy when I'm on the road, from any borrowed computer; no need to install it, just copy all the files from your C:\Program Files\ERemove to a floppy and execute it from there. Get complete info and download Version 3 from www.eremover.bizhosting.com.

MailWasher and MailWasher Pro. These also allow you to build and maintain a list of friends and a blacklist. They run unattended, checking your server for new emails, say, once every 5 minutes, and play a sound alert when there is email waiting.

The simulated 'bounce' feature may help you get REMOVED from some spammers' lists. In the Pro version, you can have this chore done by on their remote server. This is best, since if you allow the software to bounce from YOUR server, you will often get 'bounced bounce' messages back from fictitious email addresses. Disable the bounce feature under Accounts in the free version.

I recommend that you download the Pro 'trial' version at www.firetrust.com, buy it for $30 if you like it. If you decide you can survive with the crippleware version, get it at www.mailwasher.net. But I keep eremove.com handy, it's a joy for quickie use.

Why is it called Spam?

In the midst of dealing with this plague on the Web, you deserve a break. Here's a link that shows the script of the Monty Python sketch and plays the Spam song: w3.informatik.gu.se/~dixi/spam.htm.

Concealing Email Addresses

Spammers buy email addresses from some 'free' greeting card sites, or dot-com's that have gone out of business. Be wary when you 'add your address' to an email petition! The Usenet news groups are harvested frequently. So are Web pages! Actually, any time you use your email address, even to send an email to a friend, it is opened up to capture and abuse by the spammers.

On Web pages, your webmasters can disguise email addresses to give you some protection...

If you're familiar with HTML and javascripts, you might try this tool:

If you're a Webmaster, there are ways to put email addresses on your site that will confuse the spammers' email address-harvesting programs.

If you want a link that just underlines certain text, without exposing the email address? Then do this:

This creates " " which, when clicked, opens your email program with my email address in the To: field.

Instead of
send mail to Reggie Dawes
... I could have said
Email regiTAKE@OUTdawesbiz.net
.or regi@Xdawesbiz.net .. a compromise, which might confuse robots a little bit more than it confuses humans.

These are all simple fixes, and not very secure. Here is one that is much more secure, and involves JavaScript. I got it from Tim Williams, an astronomer. You will need to visit Tim's site for complete instructions. Here's how it might look: . (This doesn't work directly in browsers that are not JavaScript enabled, but the solution below takes care of that... I THINK.)