Antispam Blogs

Yourself! To Win The War Against Spam!

2009-04-23T04:28:00.001-07:00

VriesUnfortunately, fighting SPAM has become an ever increasing challenge in every day online life! :(

Even with the passage of the CAN-SPAM legislation which took effect in the United States in January of 2004 (see http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html ), ,this does not seem to have diminished the volume of *spam* at all (as you may also see in the article "CAN-SPAM legislation proving useless against spam" at: http://www.newstarget.com/001412.html ) and appears to have simply "pushed the spammers offshore" :(

I, personally, used to receive over 200 spam messages just overnight while I slept in just one of my email boxes! :(

However, by helping you Arm Yourself with the proper tools and techniques, in this article, we hope to help you Win the War against SPAM!

Although, there are many differing opinions regarding the definition of what is and what is not SPAM, we do not wish to enter into that debate in this article. Rather, we will define SPAM simply herein for the purpose of this article to mean "any unwanted email message".

So, if you didn't ask to receive "an unwanted email message", of whatever kind, then ...
How did these "spammers" get your email address in the first place to sent it to you?

Well, there are many, many ways in which spammers can get "a hold" of your email address :(

Every time you post a message in an open forum wherein your email address is "visible", there are those spammers that go and "farm" these email addresses from these public forums and send spam to them.

Every time you register your email address at a site that does not "promise" not to share it with or sell it to someone else, that site may be selling your email address to a spammer.

If you have your email address explicitely stated in any of your web pages, even just in the HTML and perhaps not "visible" on the page as such, e.g. in a field, there appear to be spammers who go and "farm" email addresses straight out of your web pages' HTML and send spam to them too.

Once one of them has got it they seem to tend to share, sell, etc. your email address with even more spammers and on and on it goes.

So, does that mean you should stop posting messages in public forums, registering at web sites and/or making your email address available through your web sites?

NO! ... Absolutely Not!

Why should we relinquish the battlefield to the *spammers*?
When by Arming Ourselves with the right tools and techniques, we can Win the War against SPAM!

So, how do we Arm Ourselves against SPAM?

As the saying goes ....
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", right?

So, let's start Arming Ourselves by discussing the ways in which we may prevent spammers from getting a hold of your email message in the first place.

You may wish to limit your posting of messages in open forums wherein your email address is "visible". You can disguise (or "munge") your e-mail address when you post it to newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards, or other public forums For example, you can give your e-mail address as "wh0Am1@example.c0m" by using the number zero instead of the letter "o" and "1" instead of "I". This way, the reader can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use cannot. And you may wish to only register your email address with web sites, etc. whom "promise" not to share it with or sell it to anyone else.

However, again, I "bristle" at the thought of letting the spammers win and in any way curtailing my online activities and/or force me to relinquish any benefit of our wonderful online / virtual world due to their unscrupulous behaviour! ;[

Preventing spammers from "farming" your email address(es) out of the HTML of your web pages is a much easier weapon to weild to prevent unscrupulous spammers from getting a hold of your email address(es) in the first place.

There exist some very nice and easy to use tools that will help you encrypt your email address such that you may include it (encrypted) in the HTML for your web pages, your visitors may still click on your email links to mail to you and spammer won't find it to "farm" for their spam mailing lists! One such email address encrypter that we use regularly and recommend is the HTML E-mail Link Encrypter, which is one of the many webmaster tools and utilities you may get as part of your copy of the Fast Selling Software (see below).

Despite our best efforts at prevention, it is still highly likely that some spammer somewhere will eventually get a hold of your email address and start spamming you, and as we mentioned before, once one spammer has got you on their spam list :( ....

Thus, despite all of our preventative measures, it is unfortunately most likely an inevitability that you will receive some spam sometime.

Therefore, we also need to arm ourselves with the weapons to combat spam whenever it "shows its ugly face", right?

Even though the spammers may have gotten a hold of your email address, there are weapons we may employ such that you don't even ever have to see most of it! :)

Some of these "weapons against spam" employ an intermediate email box wherein any email message sent to your email address from an unknown sender receives an automatic "challenge/response" message requiring them to go to a site, where they must verify themselves as a legitimate email sender, rather than some kind of "spam-bot", e.g. by typing in a "verification password". Then you receive only those messages from verified senders from this intermediate email box. IOHO, one of the best of these type of "challenge/response" intermediate email box systems, which we use, have been pleased with and therefore recommend, is Spam Arrest, for which you may find out more information and try it for yourself for Fr^ee via the information and link in the resource box below.

These type of "challenge/response" intermediate email box systems are great for eliminating spam from "spam-bots" and/or when the sender and/or reply-to email addresses are not "real people". However, there are still some spammers that will "pass the challenge" and then you will have to manually go up and "block" those senders from your seeing any further messages from them.

Similarly, if you own your own domain / web site(s), some web host providers offer spam blocking/ filtering that you may use for your domain. Some of these types of spam blockers / filters also allow you to enter regular expressions to determine all of the senders addresses and/or messages containing a particular "string", matching the regular expression "pattern" entered, to block. These types of spam blocking/ filtering are great to combat spammers who use multiple sender and/or reply to email addresses that change frequently and/or randomly (and probably automatically generated), but from a common domain and/or with a definable pattern. However, these types of spam blockers/ filters often require that you log into your domain / web hosting account and add a filter for each spammer's set of sender addresses and/or matching message text to be blocked.

Therefore, an even better weapon we have found, use and recommend, for "stemming the flow" of spam, is a PC / client based application called MailWasher, which is one of the many very helpful and beneficial tools in Vcoms SystemSuite for which you may find out more information in the resource box below.

MailWasher is great because it allows you to quickly and easily distinguish "friends from foes (spammers)", "bounce" unwanted email messages and "blacklist" the spammers such that you don't have to hear from them again!:) ... and all from your PC! When you "bounce" a spam message the sender of it receives an automatic response indicating that your email address was "not found / invalid". Therefore, rather than receiving verification of a valid email address, as from a challenge/response system or removal request, the spammer is more likely to believe your email address is invalid and remove you from their spam list! ;) When you "blacklist" a spammer in MailWasher, it automatically "tags" all of their messages to be automatically "bounced" and then deleted. Further, MailWasher allows you to combat spam on any number of your email addresses, again all from one place / application.

We have effectively employed all of these weapons against spam and have successfully reduced the previous torrent (of over 200 spam messages per night in one of my mailboxes) to a mere tickle and are definitely on the way to Winning the War against SPAM! :)

We hope this all helps you all Win the War against SPAM! :)

- Michael S. DeVries

Even with the passage of the CAN-SPAM legislation which took effect in the United States in January of 2004 (see http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html ), ,this does not seem to have diminished the volume of *spam* at all (as you may also see in the article "CAN-SPAM legislation proving useless against spam" at: http://www.newstarget.com/001412.html ) and appears to have simply "pushed the spammers offshore" :(

I, personally, used to receive over 200 spam messages just overnight while I slept in just one of my email boxes! :(

However, by helping you Arm Yourself with the proper tools and techniques, in this article, we hope to help you Win the War against SPAM!

Although, there are many differing opinions regarding the definition of what is and what is not SPAM, we do not wish to enter into that debate in this article. Rather, we will define SPAM simply herein for the purpose of this article to mean "any unwanted email message".

So, if you didn't ask to receive "an unwanted email message", of whatever kind, then ...
How did these "spammers" get your email address in the first place to sent it to you?

Well, there are many, many ways in which spammers can get "a hold" of your email address :(

Every time you post a message in an open forum wherein your email address is "visible", there are those spammers that go and "farm" these email addresses from these public forums and send spam to them.

Every time you register your email address at a site that does not "promise" not to share it with or sell it to someone else, that site may be selling your email address to a spammer.

If you have your email address explicitely stated in any of your web pages, even just in the HTML and perhaps not "visible" on the page as such, e.g. in a field, there appear to be spammers who go and "farm" email addresses straight out of your web pages' HTML and send spam to them too.

Once one of them has got it they seem to tend to share, sell, etc. your email address with even more spammers and on and on it goes.

So, does that mean you should stop posting messages in public forums, registering at web sites and/or making your email address available through your web sites?

NO! ... Absolutely Not!

Why should we relinquish the battlefield to the *spammers*?
When by Arming Ourselves with the right tools and techniques, we can Win the War against SPAM!

So, how do we Arm Ourselves against SPAM?

As the saying goes ....
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", right?

So, let's start Arming Ourselves by discussing the ways in which we may prevent spammers from getting a hold of your email message in the first place.

You may wish to limit your posting of messages in open forums wherein your email address is "visible". You can disguise (or "munge") your e-mail address when you post it to newsgroups, chat rooms, bulletin boards, or other public forums For example, you can give your e-mail address as "wh0Am1@example.c0m" by using the number zero instead of the letter "o" and "1" instead of "I". This way, the reader can interpret your address, but the automated programs that spammers use cannot. And you may wish to only register your email address with web sites, etc. whom "promise" not to share it with or sell it to anyone else.

However, again, I "bristle" at the thought of letting the spammers win and in any way curtailing my online activities and/or force me to relinquish any benefit of our wonderful online / virtual world due to their unscrupulous behaviour! ;[

Preventing spammers from "farming" your email address(es) out of the HTML of your web pages is a much easier weapon to weild to prevent unscrupulous spammers from getting a hold of your email address(es) in the first place.

There exist some very nice and easy to use tools that will help you encrypt your email address such that you may include it (encrypted) in the HTML for your web pages, your visitors may still click on your email links to mail to you and spammer won't find it to "farm" for their spam mailing lists! One such email address encrypter that we use regularly and recommend is the HTML E-mail Link Encrypter, which is one of the many webmaster tools and utilities you may get as part of your copy of the Fast Selling Software (see below).

Despite our best efforts at prevention, it is still highly likely that some spammer somewhere will eventually get a hold of your email address and start spamming you, and as we mentioned before, once one spammer has got you on their spam list :( ....

Thus, despite all of our preventative measures, it is unfortunately most likely an inevitability that you will receive some spam sometime.

Therefore, we also need to arm ourselves with the weapons to combat spam whenever it "shows its ugly face", right?

Even though the spammers may have gotten a hold of your email address, there are weapons we may employ such that you don't even ever have to see most of it! :)

Some of these "weapons against spam" employ an intermediate email box wherein any email message sent to your email address from an unknown sender receives an automatic "challenge/response" message requiring them to go to a site, where they must verify themselves as a legitimate email sender, rather than some kind of "spam-bot", e.g. by typing in a "verification password". Then you receive only those messages from verified senders from this intermediate email box. IOHO, one of the best of these type of "challenge/response" intermediate email box systems, which we use, have been pleased with and therefore recommend, is Spam Arrest, for which you may find out more information and try it for yourself for Fr^ee via the information and link in the resource box below.

These type of "challenge/response" intermediate email box systems are great for eliminating spam from "spam-bots" and/or when the sender and/or reply-to email addresses are not "real people". However, there are still some spammers that will "pass the challenge" and then you will have to manually go up and "block" those senders from your seeing any further messages from them.

Similarly, if you own your own domain / web site(s), some web host providers offer spam blocking/ filtering that you may use for your domain. Some of these types of spam blockers / filters also allow you to enter regular expressions to determine all of the senders addresses and/or messages containing a particular "string", matching the regular expression "pattern" entered, to block. These types of spam blocking/ filtering are great to combat spammers who use multiple sender and/or reply to email addresses that change frequently and/or randomly (and probably automatically generated), but from a common domain and/or with a definable pattern. However, these types of spam blockers/ filters often require that you log into your domain / web hosting account and add a filter for each spammer's set of sender addresses and/or matching message text to be blocked.

Therefore, an even better weapon we have found, use and recommend, for "stemming the flow" of spam, is a PC / client based application called MailWasher, which is one of the many very helpful and beneficial tools in Vcoms SystemSuite for which you may find out more information in the resource box below.

MailWasher is great because it allows you to quickly and easily distinguish "friends from foes (spammers)", "bounce" unwanted email messages and "blacklist" the spammers such that you don't have to hear from them again!:) ... and all from your PC! When you "bounce" a spam message the sender of it receives an automatic response indicating that your email address was "not found / invalid". Therefore, rather than receiving verification of a valid email address, as from a challenge/response system or removal request, the spammer is more likely to believe your email address is invalid and remove you from their spam list! ;) When you "blacklist" a spammer in MailWasher, it automatically "tags" all of their messages to be automatically "bounced" and then deleted. Further, MailWasher allows you to combat spam on any number of your email addresses, again all from one place / application.

We have effectively employed all of these weapons against spam and have successfully reduced the previous torrent (of over 200 spam messages per night in one of my mailboxes) to a mere tickle and are definitely on the way to Winning the War against SPAM! :)

We hope this all helps you all Win the War against SPAM! :)

- Michael S. DeVries

Michael S. DeVries is the Moderator of The Virtual Consulting Discussion List (http://www.TheVCF.com/vcdl.phtml) and Principal of The Virtual Consulting Firm (http://www.TheVCF.com).
You too can Arm Yourself with these weapons and Win the War against SPAM!, at: http://www.thevcf.com/vccenter.phtml#SPAM.

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Spam!

2009-04-14T03:02:00.000-07:00

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, and I (like many men) am in a state of near panic. Because I'm married, I need to come up with some kind of Valentine's Day gift for my wife that conveys the feelings I have for her in the most romantic way possible.

The only problem is that I (like many men) don't have a romantic bone in my body. Not one. My sense of romance, if it was ever there to begin with, has withered and died along with my youthful ideals, dreams of six-pack abs, and my long-range jump shot.

This poses a very big challenge for me since my wife has a keenly developed sense of romance. Like a blind person who has a tremendous sense of hearing and smell, my wife, who has been forced to live in a romantic vacuum, can sense the romance in everything. She points out beautiful sunsets and old people staring into each other's eyes. Sappy birthday cards make her cry. She wants to hold hands with me while walking in the mall. It's sickening.

But, because I love her (and I'm afraid of the repercussions), I have to try and pull a decent Valentine's Day present out of my backside. So this year, I've decided to use the awesome power of spam email to help me narrow my search. After spending several anxious seconds combing through my Deleted box in email, I plucked some candidates out for this year's Valentine.

American Blinds, Wallpaper, and More: Nothing says "I love you" like a nice set of vertical blinds. Or perhaps that crazy fruit print wallpaper that my wife had on her kitchen walls back in the 70s. In perhaps the weakest marketing move in recent memory, American Blinds, Wallpaper, and More is pitching their products as Valentine's Day gifts. For those of you desperate enough to consider this, I can suggest a few good divorce attorneys, or perhaps a good motel for the night.

Atari TV Classic 10 Games in One: The next entry into the Valentine's Day email sweepstakes is this fine video game on a joystick. Basically, you plug the joystick into your TV and choose from 10 "classic" Atari games. Just picture this . . . The lights are dimmed, the candles are burning, and there's a blanket in front of the fire. A bottle of Dom Perignon (hey, if I'm going to fantasize, I'm going all out) is chilled and open nearby. I lean over to my wife and whisper gently in her ear, "hey honey, want to play Space Invaders."

The Golf Warehouse: I golf. My wife doesn't. Not a good idea if for some reason I ever decide to have another child. Although, it would give me an opportunity to try out all the golf innuendo jokes wasted on my golfing buddies. "Honey, check out my new wood with the stiff shaft." Or, how about, "Just make a smooth stroke."

NFL Shop: Unfortunately, the thought of me in a Patriots game jersey - and nothing else - sickens even me.

Human Sex Pheromone: The subject line for this email was, "Don't Be Alone for Valentine's Day," which seems to be a very popular theme for the Internet. And with this Human Sex Pheromone, I can drive my wife wild! After 13 years of marriage, I'm not worried about driving my wife wild. I'm worried about pissing her off. And, with my luck, they'd substitute the human sex hormone for the Sasquatch sex hormone.

Which brings me to . . .

Valentines day sale: V,iagra-Diet-more: "Make this years valentines day special," is the text in the email (the punctuation mistakes are theirs, not mine). According to these fine folks, for Valentine's Day I can "lose weight, quit smoking, and enhance sex." Further, they offer "Great prices on V/i/a/g/r/a," as well as "Pain medications Skin Herpes- Hair" (again, their spelling and punctuation). Now we're talking!

I guess I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board in the search for the perfect Valentine's Day gift. And you know what? My wife is worth it. She puts up with me on a daily basis, and has even gone through the pains of childbirth twice. So I guess I'll have to expand my Valentine search beyond the confines of my email inbox.

I guess I'll have to search the Internet now. Do you think my wife would like one of those Mini-RC racecars or the Perfect Pasta Pot?

The only problem is that I (like many men) don't have a romantic bone in my body. Not one. My sense of romance, if it was ever there to begin with, has withered and died along with my youthful ideals, dreams of six-pack abs, and my long-range jump shot.

This poses a very big challenge for me since my wife has a keenly developed sense of romance. Like a blind person who has a tremendous sense of hearing and smell, my wife, who has been forced to live in a romantic vacuum, can sense the romance in everything. She points out beautiful sunsets and old people staring into each other's eyes. Sappy birthday cards make her cry. She wants to hold hands with me while walking in the mall. It's sickening.

But, because I love her (and I'm afraid of the repercussions), I have to try and pull a decent Valentine's Day present out of my backside. So this year, I've decided to use the awesome power of spam email to help me narrow my search. After spending several anxious seconds combing through my Deleted box in email, I plucked some candidates out for this year's Valentine.

American Blinds, Wallpaper, and More: Nothing says "I love you" like a nice set of vertical blinds. Or perhaps that crazy fruit print wallpaper that my wife had on her kitchen walls back in the 70s. In perhaps the weakest marketing move in recent memory, American Blinds, Wallpaper, and More is pitching their products as Valentine's Day gifts. For those of you desperate enough to consider this, I can suggest a few good divorce attorneys, or perhaps a good motel for the night.

Atari TV Classic 10 Games in One: The next entry into the Valentine's Day email sweepstakes is this fine video game on a joystick. Basically, you plug the joystick into your TV and choose from 10 "classic" Atari games. Just picture this . . . The lights are dimmed, the candles are burning, and there's a blanket in front of the fire. A bottle of Dom Perignon (hey, if I'm going to fantasize, I'm going all out) is chilled and open nearby. I lean over to my wife and whisper gently in her ear, "hey honey, want to play Space Invaders."

The Golf Warehouse: I golf. My wife doesn't. Not a good idea if for some reason I ever decide to have another child. Although, it would give me an opportunity to try out all the golf innuendo jokes wasted on my golfing buddies. "Honey, check out my new wood with the stiff shaft." Or, how about, "Just make a smooth stroke."

NFL Shop: Unfortunately, the thought of me in a Patriots game jersey - and nothing else - sickens even me.

Human Sex Pheromone: The subject line for this email was, "Don't Be Alone for Valentine's Day," which seems to be a very popular theme for the Internet. And with this Human Sex Pheromone, I can drive my wife wild! After 13 years of marriage, I'm not worried about driving my wife wild. I'm worried about pissing her off. And, with my luck, they'd substitute the human sex hormone for the Sasquatch sex hormone.

Which brings me to . . .

Valentines day sale: V,iagra-Diet-more: "Make this years valentines day special," is the text in the email (the punctuation mistakes are theirs, not mine). According to these fine folks, for Valentine's Day I can "lose weight, quit smoking, and enhance sex." Further, they offer "Great prices on V/i/a/g/r/a," as well as "Pain medications Skin Herpes- Hair" (again, their spelling and punctuation). Now we're talking!

I guess I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board in the search for the perfect Valentine's Day gift. And you know what? My wife is worth it. She puts up with me on a daily basis, and has even gone through the pains of childbirth twice. So I guess I'll have to expand my Valentine search beyond the confines of my email inbox.

I guess I'll have to search the Internet now. Do you think my wife would like one of those Mini-RC racecars or the Perfect Pasta Pot?
Chuck Smith is the brain from which Chuck Smith's Brain Sediment
falls. Chuck has led a sheltered life in high tech, and is not
often let out of his wife's sight. Visit his site to subscribe to the twice monthly Chuck Smith's Brain Sediment ezine.
http://www.brainsediment.com
mailto:subscribe@brainsediment.com

Cellular Spam?? You bet!

2009-04-02T03:29:00.000-07:00

Cellular spam is no joke!

"Man, I'm so sick of getting spam messages on my email."
"No sooner do I set up a new account, but the spammers find me again!" "It's enough to make me give up using email!"

Does this sound like a familiar refrain? Could it be you, or a family member, or friend?
Think we're talking about your email account at home? Well, think again

Remember the days when you only had to worry about getting calls at dinner or bed time from telemarketer?
Childs play! Spamming of your email account? Mere pranks.

You might say, "What's the big deal?" I'm glad you asked, but I'm sure it would have come to you.
When spammers hit your online mailbox with spam, it uses up your time. That's the only currency wasted.
But, with cell phone text-messaging spammers they're spending your money to send you their messages!
That's right your paying for their advertising!

And, it's not restricted to the U.S. In Europe things are even worse, where an estimated 65% of the customers
complain of getting five or more spam messages a week, and this after the EU put digital privacy rules into place to curtail the problem.

Each cellular service provider has its own policy. You'll need to check with them to find out what recourse you have.

Cellular spam is no joke!
"Man, I'm so sick of getting spam messages on my email."
"No sooner do I set up a new account, but the spammers find me again!" "It's enough to make me give up using email!"

Now, meet the text messaging spam on your cell phone. Yep, you heard it here.
The same people who brought us the joy of spam, now bring us "Son of Spam"! This is unsolicited text messaging to your cell phone.

You might say, "What's the big deal?" I'm glad you asked, but I'm sure it would have come to you.
When spammers hit your online mailbox with spam, it uses up your time. That's the only currency wasted.
But, with cell phone text-messaging spammers they're spending your money to send you their messages!
That's right your paying for their advertising!

And, it's not restricted to the U.S. In Europe things are even worse, where an estimated 65% of the customers
complain of getting five or more spam messages a week, and this after the EU put digital privacy rules into place to curtail the problem.

In our country, the Can-Spam Law is supposed to address the problem, and all of the providers are aware of it as well.
In fact, many say they will refund any time used as a result of unwanted text messaging.

Each cellular service provider has its own policy. You'll need to check with them to find out what recourse you have.

Arnie Jacobsen is an educator, entrepreneur, and freelance writer offering tips and insights for those interested in

Free Cell Phones, and
Cellular Phone Accessory.

SPAM, Spam & more SPAMGillian Tarawhiti

2009-03-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

by Gillian Tarawhiti, Community Training Centre, http://www.millionairerippleeffect.com
For the new and possibly the old netpreneurs SPAM is the common term for electronic 'junk mail' - unwanted messages sent to a persons' email account or mobile phone.
The SPAM act (CAN-SPAM ACT, EUROPEAN SPAM ACT, AUSTRALIAN SPAM ACT) identifies SPAM as unsolicited commercial electronic message(s). The act covers email, instant messaging, SMS (mobile phone text messaging) and MMS (mobile phone graphic messaging).
Under the SPAM act all commercial electronic messages must meet the following conditions. Any message that doesn't meet all three of these conditions is defined as SPAM.
1.You must have CONSENT
2.You must IDENTIFY yourself
3.You must provide a way to unsubscribe
If we use this forum as an example of all three, you will find that in order to gain access to this forum in terms of posting. You had to complete a registration that in part advised that you agreed to certain terms and conditions. In doing so you EXPRESSED CONSENT.
By registering to this forum you have also IDENTIFIED yourself beit as a non-de-plum
In terms of unsubscribing, every email that you receive from this forum has a unsubscribe in it, also you have an 'ignore' facility which in part as the same effect.
COMMERICIAL ELECTRONIC MESSAGE
To decide whether an electronic message is 'commercial', the Act looks at all of the following:
the content of the message
the way in which the message is presented; and
any links, phone numbers or contact information in the message
RAMIFICATIONS OF SPAM TO YOU!
If you have been accused of SPAM activities you will be asked to prove that you have not committed the offence. If you are unsuccessful in that approach you IP (Internet Provider) will withdraw all services to you i.e. close your website.
If you are using an autoresponder to hold your subscriber list and are sending messages via that service, your autoresponder will automatically suspend your account unless you can prove your innocence.
Penalties for breach of the Act range up to $1.1 million per day; the legislation also allows for the making of orders for spammers to relinquish profits and pay compensation to spam victims.
So in short, there are 3 things that can keep you in the clear of such violations.
1.Get Consent - Expressed or Inferred
2.Identify yourself
3.Provide a way for people to unsubscribe from receiving further emails
Before I finish this article, I would like to add that this is just a brief overview of the act and that it would be in your best interest to actually read and implement the practices.
by Gillian Tarawhiti, Community Training Centre, http://www.millionairerippleeffect.com
For the new and possibly the old netpreneurs SPAM is the common term for electronic 'junk mail' - unwanted messages sent to a persons' email account or mobile phone.
The SPAM act (CAN-SPAM ACT, EUROPEAN SPAM ACT, AUSTRALIAN SPAM ACT) identifies SPAM as unsolicited commercial electronic message(s). The act covers email, instant messaging, SMS (mobile phone text messaging) and MMS (mobile phone graphic messaging).
Under the SPAM act all commercial electronic messages must meet the following conditions. Any message that doesn't meet all three of these conditions is defined as SPAM.
1.You must have CONSENT
2.You must IDENTIFY yourself
3.You must provide a way to unsubscribe
If we use this forum as an example of all three, you will find that in order to gain access to this forum in terms of posting. You had to complete a registration that in part advised that you agreed to certain terms and conditions. In doing so you EXPRESSED CONSENT.
By registering to this forum you have also IDENTIFIED yourself beit as a non-de-plum
In terms of unsubscribing, every email that you receive from this forum has a unsubscribe in it, also you have an 'ignore' facility which in part as the same effect.
COMMERICIAL ELECTRONIC MESSAGE
To decide whether an electronic message is 'commercial', the Act looks at all of the following:
the content of the message
the way in which the message is presented; and
any links, phone numbers or contact information in the message
RAMIFICATIONS OF SPAM TO YOU!
If you have been accused of SPAM activities you will be asked to prove that you have not committed the offence. If you are unsuccessful in that approach you IP (Internet Provider) will withdraw all services to you i.e. close your website.
If you are using an autoresponder to hold your subscriber list and are sending messages via that service, your autoresponder will automatically suspend your account unless you can prove your innocence.
Penalties for breach of the Act range up to $1.1 million per day; the legislation also allows for the making of orders for spammers to relinquish profits and pay compensation to spam victims.
So in short, there are 3 things that can keep you in the clear of such violations.
1.Get Consent - Expressed or Inferred
2.Identify yourself
3.Provide a way for people to unsubscribe from receiving further emails
Before I finish this article, I would like to add that this is just a brief overview of the act and that it would be in your best interest to actually read and implement the practices.

Gillian Tarawhiti, is Founder and CEO of Community Training Centre, an Australian-based Internet Marketing firm that works with individuals and organisations
2004 Permission is granted to reprint this article in print or on your web site so long as the paragraph above is included and contact information is provided to www.millionairerippleeffect.com.

The Economics of Spam

2009-03-19T06:24:00.000-07:00

Tennessee resident K. C. "Khan" Smith owes the internet service provider EarthLink $24 million. According to the CNN, last August he was slapped with a lawsuit accusing him of violating federal and state Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes, the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and numerous other state laws. On July 19 - having failed to appear in court - the judge ruled against him. Mr. Smith is a spammer.

Brightmail, a vendor of e-mail filters and anti-spam applications warned that close to 5 million spam "attacks" or "bursts" occurred last month and that spam has mushroomed 450 percent since June last year. PC World concurs. Between one seventh and one half of all e-mail messages are spam - unsolicited and intrusive commercial ads, mostly concerned with sex, scams, get rich quick schemes, financial services and products, and health articles of dubious provenance. The messages are sent from spoofed or fake e-mail addresses. Some spammers hack into unsecured servers - mainly in China and Korea - to relay their missives anonymously.

Spam is an industry. Mass e-mailers maintain lists of e-mail addresses, often "harvested" by spamware bots - specialized computer applications - from Web sites. These lists are rented out or sold to marketers who use bulk mail services. They come cheap - c. $100 for 10 million addresses. Bulk mailers provide servers and bandwidth, charging c. $300 per million messages sent.

As spam recipients become more inured, ISP's less tolerant, and both more litigious - spammers multiply their efforts in order to maintain the same response rate. Spam works. It is not universally unwanted - which makes it tricky to outlaw. It elicits between 0.1 and 1 percent in positive follow ups, depending on the message. Many messages now include HTML, JavaScript, and ActiveX coding and thus resemble viruses.

Jupiter Media Matrix predicted last year that the number of spam messages annually received by a typical Internet user is bound to double to 1400 and spending on legitimate e-mail marketing will reach $9.4 billion by 2006 - compared to $1 billion in 2001. Forrester Research pegs the number at $4.8 billion next year.

More than 2.3 billion spam messages are sent daily. eMarketer puts the figures a lot lower at 76 billion messages this year. By 2006, daily spam output will soar to c. 15 billion missives, says Radicati Group. Jupiter projects a more modest 268 billion annual messages by 2005. An average communication costs the spammer 0.00032 cents.

PC World quotes the European Union as pegging the bandwidth costs of spam worldwide at $8-10 billion annually. Other damages include server crashes, time spent purging unwanted messages, lower productivity, aggravation, and increased cost of Internet access.

Inevitably, the spam industry gave rise to an anti-spam industry. According to a Radicati Group report titled "Anti-virus, anti-spam, and content filtering market trends 2002-2006", anti-spam revenues are projected to exceed $88 million this year - and more than double by 2006. List blockers, report and complaint generators, advocacy groups, registers of known spammers, and spam filters all proliferate. The Wall Street Journal reported in its June 25 issue about a resurgence of anti-spam startups financed by eager venture capital.

ISP's are bent on preventing abuse - reported by victims - by expunging the accounts of spammers. But the latter simply switch ISP's or sign on with free services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Barriers to entry are getting lower by the day as the costs of hardware, software, and communications plummet.

The use of e-mail and broadband connections by the general population is spreading. Hundreds of thousands of technologically-savvy operators have joined the market in the last two years, as the dotcom bubble burst. Still, Steve Linford of the UK-based Spamhaus.org insists that most spam emanates from c. 80 large operators.

Now, according to Jupiter Media, ISP's and portals are poised to begin to charge advertisers in a tier-based system, replete with premium services. Writing back in 1998, Bill Gates described a solution also espoused by Esther Dyson, chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"As I first described in my book 'The Road Ahead' in 1995, I expect that eventually you'll be paid to read unsolicited e-mail. You'll tell your e-mail program to discard all unsolicited messages that don't offer an amount of money that you'll choose. If you open a paid message and discover it's from a long-lost friend or somebody else who has a legitimate reason to contact you, you'll be able to cancel the payment. Otherwise, you'll be paid for your time."

Subscribers may not be appreciative of the joint ventures between gatekeepers and inbox clutterers. Moreover, dominant ISP's, such as AT&T and PSINet have recurrently been accused of knowingly collaborating with spammers. ISP's rely on the data traffic that spam generates for their revenues in an ever-harsher business environment.

The Financial Times and others described how WorldCom refuses to ban the sale of spamware over its network, claiming that it does not regulate content. When "pink" (the color of canned spam) contracts came to light, the implicated ISP's blame the whole affair on rogue employees.

PC World begs to differ:

"Ronnie Scelson, a self-described spammer who signed such a contract with PSInet, (says) that backbone providers are more than happy to do business with bulk e-mailers. 'I've signed up with the biggest 50 carriers two or three times', says Scelson ... The Louisiana-based spammer claims to send 84 million commercial e-mail messages a day over his three 45-megabit-per-second DS3 circuits. 'If you were getting $40,000 a month for each circuit', Scelson asks, 'would you want to shut me down?'"

The line between permission-based or "opt-in" e-mail marketing and spam is getting thinner by the day. Some list resellers guarantee the consensual nature of their wares. According to the Direct Marketing Association's guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to "opting-in" - a marketing strategy known as "opting out". Most experts, though, strongly urge spam victims not to respond to spammers, lest their e-mail address is confirmed.

But spam is crossing technological boundaries. Japan has just legislated against wireless SMS spam targeted at hapless mobile phone users. Four states in the USA as well as the European parliament are following suit. Expensive and slow connections make this kind of spam particularly resented. Still, according to Britain's Mobile Channel, a mobile advertising company quoted by "The Economist", SMS advertising - a novelty - attracts a 10-20 percent response rate - compared to direct mail's 1-3 percent.

Net identification systems - like Microsoft's Passport and the one proposed by Liberty Alliance - will make it even easier for marketers to target prospects.

The reaction to spam can be described only as mass hysteria. Reporting someone as a spammer - even when he is not - has become a favorite pastime of vengeful, self-appointed, vigilante "cyber-cops". Perfectly legitimate, opt-in, email marketing businesses often find themselves in one or more black lists - their reputation and business ruined.

In January, CMGI-owned Yesmail was awarded a temporary restraining order against MAPS - Mail Abuse Prevention System - forbidding it to place the reputable e-mail marketer on its Real-time Blackhole list. The case was settled out of court.

Harris Interactive, a large online opinion polling company, sued not only MAPS, but ISP's who blocked its email messages when it found itself included in MAPS' Blackhole. Their CEO accused one of their competitors for the allegations that led to Harris' inclusion in the list.

Coupled with other pernicious phenomena, such as viruses, the very foundation of the Internet as a fun, relatively safe, mode of communication and data acquisition is at stake.

Spammers, it emerges, have their own organizations. NOIC - the National Organization of Internet Commerce threatened to post to its Web site the e-mail addresses of millions of AOL members. AOL has aggressive anti-spamming policies. "AOL is blocking bulk email because it wants the advertising revenues for itself (by selling pop-up ads)" the president of NOIC, Damien Melle, complained to CNET.

Spam is a classic "free rider" problem. For any given individual, the cost of blocking a spammer far outweighs the benefits. It is cheaper and easier to hit the "delete" key. Individuals, therefore, prefer to let others do the job and enjoy the outcome - the public good of a spam-free Internet. They cannot be left out of the benefits of such an aftermath - public goods are, by definition, "non-excludable". Nor is a public good diminished by a growing number of "non-rival" users.

Such a situation resembles a market failure and requires government intervention through legislation and enforcement. The FTC - the US Federal Trade Commission - has taken legal action against more than 100 spammers for promoting scams and fraudulent goods and services.

"Project Mailbox" is an anti-spam collaboration between American law enforcement agencies and the private sector. Non government organizations have entered the fray, as have lobbying groups, such as CAUCE - the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

But Congress is curiously reluctant to enact stringent laws against spam. Reasons cited are free speech, limits on state powers to regulate commerce, avoiding unfair restrictions on trade, and the interests of small business. The courts equivocate as well. In some cases - e.g., Missouri vs. American Blast Fax - US courts found "that the provision prohibiting the sending of unsolicited advertisements is unconstitutional".

According to Spamlaws.com, the 107th Congress discussed these laws but never enacted them:

Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001 (H.R. 95), Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act (H.R. 113), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 718), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 1017), Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act (H.R. 1846), Protect Children From E-Mail Smut Act of 2001 (H.R. 2472), Netizens Protection Act of 2001 (H.R. 3146), "CAN SPAM" Act of 2001 (S. 630).

Anti-spam laws fared no better in the 106th Congress. Some of the states have picked up the slack. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The situation is no better across the pond. The European parliament decided last year to allow each member country to enact its own spam laws, thus avoiding a continent-wide directive and directly confronting the communications ministers of the union. Paradoxically, it also decided, three months ago, to restrict SMS spam. Confusion clearly reigns. Finally, last month, it adopted strong anti-spam provisions as part of a Directive on Data Protection.

Brightmail, a vendor of e-mail filters and anti-spam applications warned that close to 5 million spam "attacks" or "bursts" occurred last month and that spam has mushroomed 450 percent since June last year. PC World concurs. Between one seventh and one half of all e-mail messages are spam - unsolicited and intrusive commercial ads, mostly concerned with sex, scams, get rich quick schemes, financial services and products, and health articles of dubious provenance. The messages are sent from spoofed or fake e-mail addresses. Some spammers hack into unsecured servers - mainly in China and Korea - to relay their missives anonymously.

Spam is an industry. Mass e-mailers maintain lists of e-mail addresses, often "harvested" by spamware bots - specialized computer applications - from Web sites. These lists are rented out or sold to marketers who use bulk mail services. They come cheap - c. $100 for 10 million addresses. Bulk mailers provide servers and bandwidth, charging c. $300 per million messages sent.

As spam recipients become more inured, ISP's less tolerant, and both more litigious - spammers multiply their efforts in order to maintain the same response rate. Spam works. It is not universally unwanted - which makes it tricky to outlaw. It elicits between 0.1 and 1 percent in positive follow ups, depending on the message. Many messages now include HTML, JavaScript, and ActiveX coding and thus resemble viruses.

Jupiter Media Matrix predicted last year that the number of spam messages annually received by a typical Internet user is bound to double to 1400 and spending on legitimate e-mail marketing will reach $9.4 billion by 2006 - compared to $1 billion in 2001. Forrester Research pegs the number at $4.8 billion next year.

More than 2.3 billion spam messages are sent daily. eMarketer puts the figures a lot lower at 76 billion messages this year. By 2006, daily spam output will soar to c. 15 billion missives, says Radicati Group. Jupiter projects a more modest 268 billion annual messages by 2005. An average communication costs the spammer 0.00032 cents.

PC World quotes the European Union as pegging the bandwidth costs of spam worldwide at $8-10 billion annually. Other damages include server crashes, time spent purging unwanted messages, lower productivity, aggravation, and increased cost of Internet access.

Inevitably, the spam industry gave rise to an anti-spam industry. According to a Radicati Group report titled "Anti-virus, anti-spam, and content filtering market trends 2002-2006", anti-spam revenues are projected to exceed $88 million this year - and more than double by 2006. List blockers, report and complaint generators, advocacy groups, registers of known spammers, and spam filters all proliferate. The Wall Street Journal reported in its June 25 issue about a resurgence of anti-spam startups financed by eager venture capital.

ISP's are bent on preventing abuse - reported by victims - by expunging the accounts of spammers. But the latter simply switch ISP's or sign on with free services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Barriers to entry are getting lower by the day as the costs of hardware, software, and communications plummet.

The use of e-mail and broadband connections by the general population is spreading. Hundreds of thousands of technologically-savvy operators have joined the market in the last two years, as the dotcom bubble burst. Still, Steve Linford of the UK-based Spamhaus.org insists that most spam emanates from c. 80 large operators.

Now, according to Jupiter Media, ISP's and portals are poised to begin to charge advertisers in a tier-based system, replete with premium services. Writing back in 1998, Bill Gates described a solution also espoused by Esther Dyson, chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"As I first described in my book 'The Road Ahead' in 1995, I expect that eventually you'll be paid to read unsolicited e-mail. You'll tell your e-mail program to discard all unsolicited messages that don't offer an amount of money that you'll choose. If you open a paid message and discover it's from a long-lost friend or somebody else who has a legitimate reason to contact you, you'll be able to cancel the payment. Otherwise, you'll be paid for your time."

Subscribers may not be appreciative of the joint ventures between gatekeepers and inbox clutterers. Moreover, dominant ISP's, such as AT&T and PSINet have recurrently been accused of knowingly collaborating with spammers. ISP's rely on the data traffic that spam generates for their revenues in an ever-harsher business environment.

The Financial Times and others described how WorldCom refuses to ban the sale of spamware over its network, claiming that it does not regulate content. When "pink" (the color of canned spam) contracts came to light, the implicated ISP's blame the whole affair on rogue employees.

PC World begs to differ:

"Ronnie Scelson, a self-described spammer who signed such a contract with PSInet, (says) that backbone providers are more than happy to do business with bulk e-mailers. 'I've signed up with the biggest 50 carriers two or three times', says Scelson ... The Louisiana-based spammer claims to send 84 million commercial e-mail messages a day over his three 45-megabit-per-second DS3 circuits. 'If you were getting $40,000 a month for each circuit', Scelson asks, 'would you want to shut me down?'"

The line between permission-based or "opt-in" e-mail marketing and spam is getting thinner by the day. Some list resellers guarantee the consensual nature of their wares. According to the Direct Marketing Association's guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to "opting-in" - a marketing strategy known as "opting out". Most experts, though, strongly urge spam victims not to respond to spammers, lest their e-mail address is confirmed.

But spam is crossing technological boundaries. Japan has just legislated against wireless SMS spam targeted at hapless mobile phone users. Four states in the USA as well as the European parliament are following suit. Expensive and slow connections make this kind of spam particularly resented. Still, according to Britain's Mobile Channel, a mobile advertising company quoted by "The Economist", SMS advertising - a novelty - attracts a 10-20 percent response rate - compared to direct mail's 1-3 percent.

Net identification systems - like Microsoft's Passport and the one proposed by Liberty Alliance - will make it even easier for marketers to target prospects.

The reaction to spam can be described only as mass hysteria. Reporting someone as a spammer - even when he is not - has become a favorite pastime of vengeful, self-appointed, vigilante "cyber-cops". Perfectly legitimate, opt-in, email marketing businesses often find themselves in one or more black lists - their reputation and business ruined.

In January, CMGI-owned Yesmail was awarded a temporary restraining order against MAPS - Mail Abuse Prevention System - forbidding it to place the reputable e-mail marketer on its Real-time Blackhole list. The case was settled out of court.

Harris Interactive, a large online opinion polling company, sued not only MAPS, but ISP's who blocked its email messages when it found itself included in MAPS' Blackhole. Their CEO accused one of their competitors for the allegations that led to Harris' inclusion in the list.

Coupled with other pernicious phenomena, such as viruses, the very foundation of the Internet as a fun, relatively safe, mode of communication and data acquisition is at stake.

Spammers, it emerges, have their own organizations. NOIC - the National Organization of Internet Commerce threatened to post to its Web site the e-mail addresses of millions of AOL members. AOL has aggressive anti-spamming policies. "AOL is blocking bulk email because it wants the advertising revenues for itself (by selling pop-up ads)" the president of NOIC, Damien Melle, complained to CNET.

Spam is a classic "free rider" problem. For any given individual, the cost of blocking a spammer far outweighs the benefits. It is cheaper and easier to hit the "delete" key. Individuals, therefore, prefer to let others do the job and enjoy the outcome - the public good of a spam-free Internet. They cannot be left out of the benefits of such an aftermath - public goods are, by definition, "non-excludable". Nor is a public good diminished by a growing number of "non-rival" users.

Such a situation resembles a market failure and requires government intervention through legislation and enforcement. The FTC - the US Federal Trade Commission - has taken legal action against more than 100 spammers for promoting scams and fraudulent goods and services.

"Project Mailbox" is an anti-spam collaboration between American law enforcement agencies and the private sector. Non government organizations have entered the fray, as have lobbying groups, such as CAUCE - the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail.

But Congress is curiously reluctant to enact stringent laws against spam. Reasons cited are free speech, limits on state powers to regulate commerce, avoiding unfair restrictions on trade, and the interests of small business. The courts equivocate as well. In some cases - e.g., Missouri vs. American Blast Fax - US courts found "that the provision prohibiting the sending of unsolicited advertisements is unconstitutional".

According to Spamlaws.com, the 107th Congress discussed these laws but never enacted them:

Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001 (H.R. 95), Wireless Telephone Spam Protection Act (H.R. 113), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 718), Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (H.R. 1017), Who Is E-Mailing Our Kids Act (H.R. 1846), Protect Children From E-Mail Smut Act of 2001 (H.R. 2472), Netizens Protection Act of 2001 (H.R. 3146), "CAN SPAM" Act of 2001 (S. 630).

Anti-spam laws fared no better in the 106th Congress. Some of the states have picked up the slack. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The situation is no better across the pond. The European parliament decided last year to allow each member country to enact its own spam laws, thus avoiding a continent-wide directive and directly confronting the communications ministers of the union. Paradoxically, it also decided, three months ago, to restrict SMS spam. Confusion clearly reigns. Finally, last month, it adopted strong anti-spam provisions as part of a Directive on Data Protection.

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He is the the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

CAN-SPAM Rules for Internet Marketers

2009-03-17T01:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.TheEzine.net

On January 1, 2004, the "CAN-SPAM Act", short for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003", took effect. Marketers who send any form of commercial email as defined by the act will need to comply with CAN-SPAM rules in order to avoid legal consequences. The act was designed to reduce unsolicited commercial messages, sent both as email and to wireless devices such as cell phones.

There is of course much debate about how effective this law will prove to be in stopping spam. After all, spammers can easily send their messages from email servers located overseas, in locations beyond the effective reach of US enforcement efforts. Many marketers feel that spam will continue flooding us as ever, while legitimate, opt-in marketers, who want to comply with the law, will have to jump through time-consuming and sometimes expensive extra hoops to be able to send email. In fact, many believe that the act will lead to an upsurge in spam regardless, because it seems to be legal as long as it meets the requirements of the act.

For marketers to comply with the law, they need to follow some simple guidelines provided for in the legislation. Virtually all marketers who run email lists are already in compliance with most of the law. Generally, any business communicating with existing customers or prospects by mail must include in their emails a valid return email address that is active for at least 30 days after commercial email is sent; a physical mailing address, valid and NOT a P.O. Box; and a way for recipients to opt-out of future mailings. In addition, the subject line must not be misleading or deceptive, state in some way the message is an advertisement or commercial in nature, and the marketer must honor opt-out requests. Again, probably none of that is too much different from what you're already doing, except perhaps for the addition of the physical mailing address.

If you send mail from one of the online mailing services, chances are they've already asked you to make necessary changes to comply with the act. But if you run your own autoresponder, have you remembered to add your physical mailing address so that it will be placed on every email you send out? Have you added it to any one-time messages that you may send from the autoresponder accounts that may be included in your hosting account? Have you added it to any scripts that you have that generate email?

If you receive any opt-out requests, you must stop sending email to the requesting account within 10 business days. Again, for marketers using autoresponder software, that usually happens immediately, so no worries there. You may also not sell or lease email addresses of those who opt-out of your mailings without their consent.

Certain email is exempted from the CAN-SPAM regulations. For example, email that is transactional in nature, or that is a "relationship" message, may not be covered. This would include, for example, sales receipts, announcements of product bug patches, change of membership login information, etc. Still, to be safe, it may be best to make sure all of your email communication is compliant. CAN-SPAM is vague about the rules as they apply to existing and inactive business relationships, and when such relationships end.

Now that you're aware of the act's requirements, you'll want to review every email you send, from every site you own, to comply with the act and avoid the severe civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. This article isn't intended to be legal advice - see a professional for that.
http://www.TheEzine.net

On January 1, 2004, the "CAN-SPAM Act", short for "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003", took effect. Marketers who send any form of commercial email as defined by the act will need to comply with CAN-SPAM rules in order to avoid legal consequences. The act was designed to reduce unsolicited commercial messages, sent both as email and to wireless devices such as cell phones.

There is of course much debate about how effective this law will prove to be in stopping spam. After all, spammers can easily send their messages from email servers located overseas, in locations beyond the effective reach of US enforcement efforts. Many marketers feel that spam will continue flooding us as ever, while legitimate, opt-in marketers, who want to comply with the law, will have to jump through time-consuming and sometimes expensive extra hoops to be able to send email. In fact, many believe that the act will lead to an upsurge in spam regardless, because it seems to be legal as long as it meets the requirements of the act.

For marketers to comply with the law, they need to follow some simple guidelines provided for in the legislation. Virtually all marketers who run email lists are already in compliance with most of the law. Generally, any business communicating with existing customers or prospects by mail must include in their emails a valid return email address that is active for at least 30 days after commercial email is sent; a physical mailing address, valid and NOT a P.O. Box; and a way for recipients to opt-out of future mailings. In addition, the subject line must not be misleading or deceptive, state in some way the message is an advertisement or commercial in nature, and the marketer must honor opt-out requests. Again, probably none of that is too much different from what you're already doing, except perhaps for the addition of the physical mailing address.

If you send mail from one of the online mailing services, chances are they've already asked you to make necessary changes to comply with the act. But if you run your own autoresponder, have you remembered to add your physical mailing address so that it will be placed on every email you send out? Have you added it to any one-time messages that you may send from the autoresponder accounts that may be included in your hosting account? Have you added it to any scripts that you have that generate email?

If you receive any opt-out requests, you must stop sending email to the requesting account within 10 business days. Again, for marketers using autoresponder software, that usually happens immediately, so no worries there. You may also not sell or lease email addresses of those who opt-out of your mailings without their consent.

Certain email is exempted from the CAN-SPAM regulations. For example, email that is transactional in nature, or that is a "relationship" message, may not be covered. This would include, for example, sales receipts, announcements of product bug patches, change of membership login information, etc. Still, to be safe, it may be best to make sure all of your email communication is compliant. CAN-SPAM is vague about the rules as they apply to existing and inactive business relationships, and when such relationships end.

Now that you're aware of the act's requirements, you'll want to review every email you send, from every site you own, to comply with the act and avoid the severe civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. This article isn't intended to be legal advice - see a professional for that.

John Calder is the owner/editor of The Ezine Dot Net.
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Getting the satellite TV deals that suit you the best

2009-03-09T03:59:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, hundred of satellite TV scam websites had pop up as satellite TV become one of the best sellers in the town. Buying satellite TV online become more and more risky as consumers always find themselves trapped in fake or overrated deals. Scammers, fraud deals, high shipping costs, late installation, bad customer services, outrages cancellation fees …getting your satellite TV systems can be quite a nightmare.

If you wonder how you can avoid all these hassles and get the right satellite TV deals, here’s what I suggest:

Get the right satellite TV providers
Get the right satellite TV programming package
Get the right satellite TV retailers

Getting the right satellite TV providers

Dish Network and DirecTV are currently the majors in United States satellite TV business. These two satellite TV providers offer around the same deals and they both are equally popular. What differ these two satellite companies are their monthly subscription fees, start up cost, as well as their programming choices.
In term of monthly subscription fees, DirecTV is more expensive than Dish Network. DirecTV basic programming package starts at around $40 while Dish Network cost around $30 monthly for the standard packages.

As you can see from their promotional campaign, common Dish Network deals offer free satellite TV system up to 4 rooms, free basic Dish Home Protection Plans, free shipping, free standard installations, free HD upgrades, free DVD player, and DVR that records up to 100 hours. While offering around the same thing, DirecTV normally charged a small amount of shipping fees if you order more than two satellite TV systems.
Programming channels are more or less the same for both Dish Network and DirecTV. However, DirecTV is much more popular among sports fans as they offer some attractive premium sport packages like NFL Sunday Ticket that Dish Network doesn't have. On the other hand, the advantage with Dish Network is that you get more International and HD ready channels.

Getting the right programming package

If you are going after Dish Network, standard programming packages are American’s Top 60, 120, 180, and Everything Pak; DirecTV standard programming packages are DirecTV Total Choice standard, Plus, and Premier. I will not get in depths in this discussion as the article is not meant for promoting any one of these packages. If you are not sure on which programming package to go for, I suggest you to compare them side by side. When selecting satellite TV programs, be aware that you should get what is right for you. Avoid getting extra programming package that you have no enough time to enjoy it.

Getting the right satellite TV retailers

A relaible satellite TV retailer is most crucial in getting a good satellite TV deal. Picking up the right retailer can earn you a bargain in the deal; however bumping into an inexperience retailer or scammers will definitely bring nightmares to you.

Often, satellite TV scammers claim that they offer the best satellite dish deals and promotions. They might offer fake promise on their deals, extremely low monthly subscription rates, next-day installation, and unlimited number of free satellite systems to lure satellite TV shoppers. But once customers signed up, they find hidden activation fees, high shipping costs for free extras, installation dates continuously missed or pushed back, as well as outrageous cancellation fees.
In order to avoid such hassles, I suggest satellite TV shoppers to shop only from reputable retailers. The Internet gives us the convenience to research about the satellite TV retailers. Learn about the background of those retailers before you key in your credit card info: Are they an authorized retailer? Are they in business for long enough? Are they offering secure order page if they offer online purchase? How is the customer feedback on their services? Do they provide customer services via phone calls? Is the order 100% guaranteed with full refunds?

For more details, check out some third party reviews on satellite retailers at this page:

Conclusion

Without doubts, satellite TV deals are very good bargains if you manage to get things right. Low monthly subscription costs, high picture quality, wide programming selections, and lots of freebies for first time customer. However, consumers are advised not to spend within means and should avoid unnecessary purchase. Do not get more satellite TV systems than you need just because retailers are giving them for free, you might end up paying extra monthly subscriptions for something that you don’t use.

Teddy LC., expert writter on consumer products reviews. Check out his latest satellite TV related website and get recommendations on DirecTV or Dish Network deals, review Dish Network and DirecTV retailers, and other issues on

Stuffing the Spammers!

2009-03-02T00:13:00.000-08:00

I'm really, truly fed up with spam. Every day when the spam arrives and Norton Security moves it into the Norton Anti-spam folder of my Outlook email client, I wonder how anyone can be so incredibly stupid as to waste their time sending me such garbage.

Let's face it; I never read it. I never buy anything from unsolicited sources or do anything as a result of spam. I detest it! And God knows I don't need viagra, however many times it's offered.

What fool would send anyone a message about a mortgage application approval when he has owned his house for years?

What fool would write offering me a peep at her new porn site? I'm not interested in porn ... I prefer the real thing. Offer me something tangible and I may get excited.

I guess you probably feel the same.

Unfortunately, the plague of spam isn't going to fade away any time soon, although authorities (at least in Australia) have started taking legal action and imposing hefty penalties for spamming. Hallelujah!

As a last resort, I decided to make my own small contribution to reducing the spam plague. If each of us does something, the cumulative effect will be damaging to the spammers. Here's what I did. I've collected thousands of email addresses that arrived in spam messages and ended up in my blacklist. I decided I'd give those people using automatic harvesting software an opportunity to suck up all those addresses and reuse them.

I've dedicated quite a few pages on my site that have nothing but the email addresses from the blacklist. That is, the addresses of the spammers, most of which are false and don't lead to anyone ... at least not to anyone who can read (otherwise I'd include an obscene message).

When the spam harvesting software goes through my site, it won't find a single working email address in my site proper, but it will stumble on a goldmine of addresses and load them into it's database. It will be stuffed full of email addresses, none of which work. The spammers will pay to send them out and they'll bounce somewhere, hopefully right back to them.

Imagine what would happen if we all did that? There would be so many dud addresses floating around that harvesting would be a waste of time. the spammers would all go away and do something legitimate ... perhaps.

You and I would get some relief from these annoying intruders in our email inboxes.

If you are in a position to load your site with a few thousand dud email addresses, why not give it a go and Stuff the Spammers?

First released May 2005. Copyright Robin Henry 2005

Robin Henry is an educator, human resources specialist and Internet marketer whose firm, Desert Wave Enterprises, helps individuals and businesses improve their performance by using smart processes, smart technology and personal development. He lives at Alice Springs In Central Australia. Visit Desert Wave Enterprises.

How To Identify Spam

2009-02-20T23:26:00.000-08:00

Most of us have opened our email program and found, alongside correspondence from people that we know, offers for products from commercial web sites. Some of these emails we expect. We have asked to be notified of sales and other opportunities or joined a mailing list offered by the company.

Many times, however, the offers are from companies that we have never done business with and may have never even heard of. This is Spam, unsolicited bulk email, and can quickly lead to a massive overload of your inbox.

Identifying Spam as soon as it occurs is the first step to preventing it from happening again. Once your email address is in circulation with these companies, you are well on your way to a very nasty problem. Advertising from legitimate companies is one form. The rest are for illegal services, pornographic material, questionable products, and fraudulent schemes. It is invasive and many times illegal. Spam is the worst form of junk mail and a typical reason why many people have to change their email addresses.

In best cases, the clue can be found in the subject line. If you are offered quick money or a chance to find your long lost high school classmate, you can probably guess that it is Spam.

You may be amazed that, as you read your email, that these companies claim a right to send you this email because you have a relationship with one of their partners or affiliates. All that this may mean is that they bought your email address from another company with dubious privacy policies. It is still Spam.

Spammers will try to trick you. Unfortunately for us, Spammers only need a response rate, by some estimates, of 0.0001% in order to be profitable. This means that they will use practically any measure to get you to open it before hitting the delete button. You may receive an email from Grandma or one asking for help in the subject line. Before you know it, you are reading their advertisement, if only out of curiosity.

Check the dates and times on any email that you are unsure of. These companies know that many email programs will sort the inbox by the earliest mail sent. As a result, they place false send dates and times on their Spam hoping that you will open them first.

The worst has to be the ones that seem to come from companies that you know and trust. They may claim to be from your internet service provider in the subject line or have a similar address to that companys name. It may look like it is from the accounts payable department of a major law firm.

Spammers count on your curiosity and hope that you will respond. Even if you dont buy anything, they now know that your email address is connected to a live person and, if nothing else, can sell that address to someone else.

Read the To and From fields in any questionable email that you receive. If the To field is empty or filled with an anonymous address, then you have Spam. An anonymous address is typically something like freeoffer@happydays.com.

An address from someone that you do not know through an account at hotmail, yahoo, or msn is probably Spam. These are anonymous, easy to get accounts that spammers use and then discard when they are done. By the time the Service Provider has been made aware that spam is originating from these accounts, the spammer is gone.

Scrambled, random addresses (X12YT853@yahoo.com) from accounts like these are definitely not to be trusted regardless of the content.

Finally, if the email contains a story in which you are asked to do anything to help anyone, check the story out online. There are several great websites like truthorfiction.com that will help you sort through any potential scams or hoaxes perpetuated through email.

These stories can range from silly pranks to dangerous fraud schemes and may need to be reported to the proper authorities before someone, like you, finds their bank account drained.

Lewis Leake is the webmaster of eMailCash.com. There you will find articles, resources, books and product reviews on eMail Marketing Strategies and Tactics. You will also find a number of articles on SPAM and how to prevent it. Get Your FREE Mini-Report Spam and It's Consequences!

What To Do When You Get Spam

2009-02-13T02:02:00.000-08:00

When you go to your mailbox and find pieces of junk mail mixed in with important correspondence, you throw it out. It is a mild nuisance and you probably dont even give it a second thought. Unfortunately, most people do the same when spam arrives in their inbox. They just delete it.

While that does get rid of an individual email, more needs to be done to control what can become an overwhelming problem. Liken spam to cockroaches; see one in your cabinet and you know that you likely have an infestation that needs to be dealt with swiftly.

To begin with, do not respond to the spam ever. There are usually two ways that spam recipients make this mistake. First is the opt-out clause that appears at the bottom of the email. It appears to be a legal statement giving you the right to remove yourself from this mailing list. Unless you legitimately authorized the company to send you mail, in which case this is not spam, do not follow this link. Most often this link is simply a way for the spammers to identify your email address as valid. Now they can sell your address to other spammers and thank you for making their work easier by continuing to send you the spam you didnt want in the first place.

The second manner in which this error occurs is when, out of total frustration, you reply to the sender with a firm statement of your disgust. This usually happens when the spam is pornographic material and despite your best efforts, keeps appearing in your inbox. Sometimes the reply will not work because the senders email address is a fake one and it will just bounce back to you as undeliverable. Count yourself lucky because the alternative means that they now have a confirmation of your address.

Next, read the email header. The header contains the full path of computers through which the email passed to get to you. Most pieces of email pass through at least four computers the spammers, their ISP, your ISP, and finally yours. Since the stated from address is usually a fake one, this is the most reliable way to track down the spammers ISP, at the very least.

Each computer that the spam travels through will add lines to the header stating who they are, who the mail came from, and where they are sending it. Headers can seem complicated, but in most cases you will be able to at least recognize other ISPs. If your mail is through Yahoo and you see juno.com in the mix, then you know that you can report the spam to Juno.

When reporting spam, you will need to cut and paste the full header path into the email to give the experts the opportunity to track down the offender. To read an email header, you typically just right click on the email and then choose properties, options, or header depending on which email program you are using.

Finally, forward the spam to a number of authorities. The first would be the spammers ISP. If you cannot tell who that may be, send the spam to your ISP. Additionally, several websites are available to help you report spam, like spamcop.net.

Second, forward the spam to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. While they will not take action on your behalf, they will add the spam to a database compiled on known UCE (unsolicited commercial email).

If the spam is a 419 Scam, or Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud, fax a copy of the email and its headers to the United States Secret Service. You will know this spam when you read it an exiled African leader of some sort needs your help and bank account information. These scams have defrauded many and need to be taken seriously.

Now you may delete the spam.

Is Your Computer A Spam Zombie?

2009-02-11T05:40:00.000-08:00

Do you know your computer could be responsbile for sending spam without you even knowing about it?

Over the past few years you've all become familiar with the terms spam, spam filter, whitelists, blacklists and a whole myriad of other terminology associated with the problem of spam. You now have to add a new and extremely worrying phrase to that list - spam zombie.

With the net closing in around them spammers are looking for new and more inventive ways to send out their junk email. Spam filters and challenge response systems are becoming progressively more intelligent and blocking more spam each day. What was a spammer to do? The spammers took the next step - infiltrating your PC and using it as a spamming tool.

When most of you think of the word zombie you're reminded of old B movies with groaning zombies chasing the terrified actress through a castle, swamp or whatever low cost setting the movie revolved around. Spam zombies are, however, far more real and far more dangerous.

A spam zombie is when your computer is taken over by a type of virus called a Trojan. Once this Trojan virus is on your computer it sets up an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) application which allows it to begin sending email directly from your PC to tens of thousands of victims. This all happens invisibly in the background and can be difficult to detect for even the experienced computer user.

How do these Trojans get onto your computer? As in most cases they come from porn, warez or similar sites. One of the first spam zombie trojans to appear became available via a link on sites promising viewers free access to a porno webcam. One click later and the Trojan is installed on your computer ready to send out spam. Phatbot and Proxy-Guzu are two of the more common Trojans used for the purpose of turning your computer into a spam zombie.

How can you check if your computer has become a spam zombie? Make absolutely certain that both your anti-virus and firewall software have current detection signatures and have been completely patched and updated. Working online without taking these necessary security precautions is simply asking for trouble.

Internet Service Providers are under huge pressure to quarantine the IP address of any computer which has been turned into a spam zombie. This is done on the basis that the ISP risks their entire IP range being blacklisted or banned by some spam filtering services or companies.

The very least you owe yourself is to run a full virus and spyware scan on your computer today. You might be unpleasantly surprised at what you'll find lurking there.

This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocker software and other anti spam utilties.

The Trouble With Spam Is....

2009-02-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

Reacting to spam won't solve it. Taking a pro-active approach is sometimes all that's needed.

Each day we all face the same challenge. Spam. It doesn't matter if you're a home computer user or the head of IT for a multinational limiting or totally preventing the distribution of junk email to your computer(s) is now a daily chore.

The sheer frustration that spam causes combined with the number of lost man hours adds up to junk email being a very real problem for all involved. You have to filter through all the junk to find your own personal or work email. This on its own is annoying enough. When you consider the security risks from spyware, trojans, diallers and attempted identity theft spam becomes much more than just an annoyance - it becomes a minefield for any computer user.

So what can you do to block spam? The first step each user should take is to simply limit the number of people who know your personal email address. If you have a work email address then just use it for work. For home users only distribute your email address to people you know and trust. This simple move can cut your spam problems by 50%.

But what about all those online forms I need to fill in? No problem. Use a free email service like Hotmail or Gmail for this purpose. Treat it as a throwaway account that you can use as a buffer between your true personal email address and the rest of the world. Let it fill up with junk email and then just login once a week and delete everything you see.

Your password. It's amazing how many people set the password for their email account to abc123 or something similar. These passwords are incredibly easy for spammers to guess and would give them easy access to your mail account. The password for your email account should follow corporate standards of being 6 - 8 characters long and be alphanumeric (a mixture of numbers and letters). Make it longer if you can. Using a weak password is just asking for trouble.

If you're already receiving a ton of spam then you'll need to invest in a spam blocker. There are free spam blockers you can download and also also their paid equivalents. A great spam blocker can cost you as little as $30 and you'll see an immediate reduction in the amount of spam you're receiving.

Over and above installing software on your computer (especially for Mac users as your choices are limited) you could sign up for one of the web based challenge response spam blockers like Mailblocks or SpamArrest. Both of these services are ideal for somebody who's on the move a lot. Also because they're web based there's no software to install so they're perfect for Mac or PocketPC/Palm users.

Taking a pro-active anti spam stance is the next step. If you get junk email from people then check the mail headers and report any offensive email to the hosting company or ISP involved. Never, ever reply to spam directly. This simply confirms to the spammer that your email address is active. Also never click on any hyperlinks in any junk email - this again confirms your existence and can lead to a virus being downloaded directly onto your PC. Filter the spam, report the abusers, delete the remaining junk email.

Spam can be stopped. Not by some corporate giant or genius programmer. It can be stopped by each of you individually. Spammers rely on the widespread availability of email addresses and for people to reply to these emails or click on the links within the emails. The sooner people stop reacting emotionally to spam and simply filter, report and delete the offensive mail itself the sooner the lucrative market of bulk email will dry up for the spammers.

This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews spam blocker software and other anti spam utilties.

Spam Control - The Internet Without It?

2009-01-30T04:49:00.000-08:00

Every single day 30,000,000 emails are sent around the world. 50% of those emails are spam. Blue chip companies and even Governments are taking drastic measures in spam control. The most recent evidence of this is the Canspam Act which was passed by the US Senate early in 2004.

If you look at what most people used the Internet for you'll find the vast majority of online activity is sending and receiving email. Email has become the lifeblood of modern society. An interesting social experiment would be to see what happens to a group of young professional people who suddenly have all means of electronic communication taken away from them. Email has become as much a part of our lives as the electric lightbulb, air transport and mobile phones.

What happens if we don't implement spam control globally? What would happen if all the mail server spam filters and regulations controlling spam were suddenly abolishesd? Chaos online! The online world would grind to a screeching halt as email servers become overloaded with the flood of spam. Global bandwidth would be consumed by as each spammer sends out hundreds of millions of junk emails per day.

Without spam control businesses would be crippled. Critical emails would be lost amongst a deluge of porn, viagra and breast enlargement type emails.

Without spam control home use of email and the Internet in general would suffer from massive delays in sending and receiving of email, a 100x increase in the amount of spam email received. Internet connection speeds would be adversely affected with ISPs struggling to keep their servers online while their bandwidth is being choked by spam.

IT analysts estimate that by 2006 the average internet user can expect to receive at least 1,500 pieces of spam per month. This is a conversative estimate. Agressive action is needed to stem the flood of spam. ISPs supporting spam must have their assests seized. Spammers must be prosecuted and their equipment confiscated. If we do not actively work to control spam then we only have ourselves to blame.

The Internet is a shared resource used by us all. Spam control must increase and improve in efficiency and effectiveness for us to retain control of our virtual lives.

This article was provided courtesy of Spam-Site which tests and reviews spam filters

Will Spam-Blogging Be The Death Of Blogging?

2009-01-26T23:12:00.000-08:00

Spam blogging will force search engines like Google to change their ranking algorithms and eventually assign less value to links from blogs.

Technorati reports that 30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created each day.

According to David Sifry, part of the growth of new blogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs.

What are spam blogs? They are fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.

They contain robot-generated posts made up of random words, with the title linking back to the blogger's own pages.

Many bloggers see them as a way of getting their pages indexed quickly by Google and other search engines.

Sifry estimates that about 20% of the aggregate pings Technorati receives are from spam blogs. Most of this fake blog spam comes from hosted services or from specific IP addresses.

Those in the SEO world are well aware of this. There are even services like Blogburner that encourage creation of spammy blogs and spam-pinging to get your sites indexed quickly.

As a blogging evangelist, I wholeheartedly recommend blogging as an SEO tactic. But I also emphasize that you should use your blog for more than just SEO.

At the Spam Squashing Summit, blog services decided to collaborate to report and combat blog-spamming.

Technorati currently claims to catch about 90% of spam and remove it from the index. They also notify the blog hosting operators.

But I believe that they are fighting a losing battle. As I write this there are software and robots being created that will create spam-blogs more efficiently and in ways that will be harder to detect.

The SEO "black hats" are always far ahead of the technology and safeguards that these services can put in place.

Take down a few spam-blogs and hundreds more will arise.

Blogging evangelist and PR guru, Steve Rubel, sums up this dilemma rather well on his Micropersuasion blog.

He believes that its human nature for people to exploit new technologies, and that it's really up to the search engines to help put a stop to these by undercutting the economics of blogspam, much like they did with nofollow and comment spam.

But the trade-off is that such a move would also reduce any impact that blogs have on search results.

Fact: The more you abuse a technology, the less effective it becomes.

Spam blogging will force search engines like Google to change their ranking algorithms and eventually assign less value to links from blogs.

Unless they put in safeguards to prevent robots from taking over, its safe to assume that blogging will become less effective as an SEO tactic over time.

Of course, the spammers will then just have to find new avenues and means to spam the engines.

But why ruin a good thing in the first place? Blogs are much more than just tools for search engine optimization.

A blog can be a great tool for personal branding and building relationships with your website visitors and customers.

Instead of using blogs for spam, focus on building content-rich sites and getting high-value links to them.

Don't restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging.

Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used.

Priya Shah is the CEO of eBrand360 and publishes an internet marketing newsletter. Her areas of specialization include search engine optimization and business blogging. Subscribe to her free eCourse on Blogging for Marketers

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

There is Gold in that Spam Search Engine Tactics for the 21st

2009-01-13T01:10:00.000-08:00

There is Gold in that Spam Search Engine Tactics for the 21st Century Its not often youll hear anyone praising spam. Until today.There is Gold in that Spam Search Engine Tactics for the 21st Century Its not often youll hear anyone praising spam. Until today. Ok, ok, ok -- we all hate it. When I check my e-mail box for the numerous domains that I own, I have hundreds if not thousands of spam messages. It had gotten to the point that I could not tell between real e-mail and spam. I remember not logging into one account or a week, only to find out when I did that there were over 1,000 e-mail messages of which 995 were spam! First off, what kind of strategies can you use to fight spam? Here are a few that have worked very well for me: 1.DO NOT put your e-mail address on your website in plain text. There are several other ways to give your e-mail address out. The one that seems to work very well is by creating a small GIF or JPG image and placing your e-mail address in there then displaying the image on your website. 2.Make use of FORMS. Rather than have your visitors e-mail the domain, create a form for them and have the form e-mail the domain OR another address. This is a very successful way for visitors to contact you. You could go one step further, and add a verification word to the form so that the form does not get abused. Now that we have talked about two simple ways to fight spam, lets talk about why you may not want to chuck all your spam message away. Am I crazy? Nope, just some common sense niche building techniques at work here. You remember those supermarket tabloids, right? Have you ever leafed through them? Have you ever read the advertising in them? You know, it is pretty expensive to place advertisements in those magazines mainly because of the distribution they have and because people buy them. Now do you think that an individual will pay thousands of dollars per year to advertise in the tabloid, it if was not delivering results? Advertising is only placed in magazines, newspapers and tabloids if they deliver results. Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars (if not more) ensuring that their advertising is delivering the expected results. They track and monitor everything that they do, nothing is left to chance. But you knew all this already. I'm not trying to equate tabloid advertisements with spam -- but I think you get the picture. So how can you find gold in spam? Simple. When you check your message, see if there is one type of message that you are receiving more than the others. Filter past the gambling, and adult entertainment and focus on stuff that you and I could use every day. You will see e-mail advertisements for education, careers, divorce planning, private investigations and several other areas of interest. If you have been paying attention to this, then you now know that maybe you should be targeting those niche areas. I say niche, because if you look at the content of the messages you will see that they are very specific. Some of the education messages I get are for particular schools, or programs like website development, search engine optimization, business management, small business development or entrepreneurship. Same with the career e-mails I get, they are always targeted at a specific profession nursing, truck drivers or other medical related fields. So how can this help you? Supposed you are getting 100 messages per week about careers. You go through these and group them by profession. Once you have done this you notice that 75% of the messages are about nursing. You now have a profession you can target for additional research. You first start performing some preliminary research to see if this niche is worth targeting. If your research shows that it is worth pursuing, then look at what types of phrases are being used and who is in the top 10, 20 or 30 sites providing this type of information. Look at the pure search engine listings, but also pay attention to the paid advertising since this will give you a good idea if you will make money by targeting this niche. Once you have done your homework, and find that this is indeed a field worth pursuing then it is time to start developing your website, and thinking about the type of content you will be offering to your site visitors. You may want to think about offering free courses on nursing, what it is, how someone can become a nurse basically what you would want to know before you decided to pursue this as a career. It is very easy building your business, if you spend a little time and look at the unconventional ways of determining what business you need to get into that is, what niche you should be targeting. A little research and your spam e-mail box could help you make a name for yourself in the world of internet marketing. <h1>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</h1> <div>Mohammed Bhimji is the owner, and developer of Turbo Traffic Engine <A rel="nofollow" href="http://www.turbotrafficengine.com">www.turbotrafficengine.com</A>  an application that makes it easy to develop niche portal websites that are optimized for the search engines.</div>

That's Not Spam, That's My Newsletter!

2008-11-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

That's Not Spam, That's My Newsletter!
By Jessica Albon

Copyright 2003, The Write Exposure

For those of us who receive way too many unsolicited emails, Spam filters are a blessing. Switch to the publisher's side of the desk, though, and Spam filters can become problematic.

Before you can keep your opt-in newsletter out of the Spam filter's reach, you have to learn a little about the kinds of Spam filters available. Currently, options range from those installed by an ISP, like Spam Assassin, to those that run with another program, like Microsoft's Outlook, as is the case with cloudmark's SpamNet. Spam Assassin uses a point system to determine whether or not a piece of email is Spam. The more points a particular email collects, the more likely it is to be Spam. SpamNet not only filters based on key words (free!, for instance), but also allows users to submit Spam to then be blocked for other users. Most Spam filters use some sort of blacklist of known Spammers to block emails.

The other component you'll need to be aware of is the blacklist. As mentioned, most of the available Spam filters use one or more of these collections of email addresses and domain names that send out a lot of Spam. Blacklists are primarily compiled by volunteers. In other words, you mail them the Spam you receive in your inbox, they take a look at it and then decide whether or not to add the sender to their list.

Because Spam filters have both a computer component (such as the points system used by Spam Assassin), and a human component (such as the blacklists and the new system from SpamNet), you'll need to make sure your newsletter doesn't raise flags in either camp. Here are some suggestions for avoiding problems.

So your newsletter convinces people

1. Never send your newsletter unsolicited, not even to current or past customers (it's easy enough to ask them if they'd like to be subscribed with a personal email). In fact, it's a risk even to send your newsletter to a list you've purchased no matter what you've been told about the intent of the list's subscribers-can you be sure all of the subscribers expected to receive your email on widgets just because they checked a box saying they were interested in widgets? This will help keep you off the "blacklists" that are available to Spam filters.

2. Provide what you say you will, when you say you will. Don't mislead your audience at the subscribing stage and don't send out emails with manipulative subject lines. Not only is this not good for your reputation, but it may also trigger common Spam filters.

3. Don't type all in caps. A hallmark of the Nigerian Bank Scam, typing all in caps isn't just rude; it may get your newsletter forwarded to a blacklist. Additionally, make sure to capitalize the beginnings of your sentences and otherwise use professional grammar and punctuation. An unprofessional email may be more likely to arouse the suspicions of your readers.

4. Leave them wanting more. If your newsletter is really, really valuable, subscribers who don't get it will miss it. Some ezine publishers have found their ezines are so popular, people who stop receiving the emails actually complain.

5. Make your policy clear. Tell readers how to unsubscribe at your website and in your newsletter. Let them know whom to contact if they have any trouble. And, of course, make sure to follow through immediately.

So your newsletter convinces the computer

6. Steer clear of subject lines that scream SPAM! Words like "free," "limited time," and "money" often trigger Spam filters. Take a look at the Spam in your own inbox for examples of words not to use.

7. Offer directions for "subscribing" and "unsubscribing." Spammers often use the word "remove" in their emails, so you'll want to avoid it at all costs. Plus, in some Spam filters, you actually lose points (the fewer points, the less likely an email is Spam) when you offer subscribing and unsubscribing instructions.

8. Send it from a reputable domain name, or better yet, your own. Free email addresses are often used heavily by Spammers, so you'll want to stay away from them if at all possible.

9. Don't send attachments. Most email readers regard attachments with suspicion anyway and the attachment may trigger Spam filters set up to screen adult material. Both are good reasons to send your entire email in the body of the email. Still not convinced? Many of your readers will have limited inbox space-by avoiding attachments you won't give them an extra reason to delete your newsletter unread.

When you keep up-to-date on the latest Spam filter technology, you may find Spam filters are actually your allies-they may mean your newsletter will have less competition in your reader's inbox.
By Jessica Albon

Copyright 2003, The Write Exposure

For those of us who receive way too many unsolicited emails, Spam filters are a blessing. Switch to the publisher's side of the desk, though, and Spam filters can become problematic.

Before you can keep your opt-in newsletter out of the Spam filter's reach, you have to learn a little about the kinds of Spam filters available. Currently, options range from those installed by an ISP, like Spam Assassin, to those that run with another program, like Microsoft's Outlook, as is the case with cloudmark's SpamNet. Spam Assassin uses a point system to determine whether or not a piece of email is Spam. The more points a particular email collects, the more likely it is to be Spam. SpamNet not only filters based on key words (free!, for instance), but also allows users to submit Spam to then be blocked for other users. Most Spam filters use some sort of blacklist of known Spammers to block emails.

The other component you'll need to be aware of is the blacklist. As mentioned, most of the available Spam filters use one or more of these collections of email addresses and domain names that send out a lot of Spam. Blacklists are primarily compiled by volunteers. In other words, you mail them the Spam you receive in your inbox, they take a look at it and then decide whether or not to add the sender to their list.

Because Spam filters have both a computer component (such as the points system used by Spam Assassin), and a human component (such as the blacklists and the new system from SpamNet), you'll need to make sure your newsletter doesn't raise flags in either camp. Here are some suggestions for avoiding problems.

So your newsletter convinces people

1. Never send your newsletter unsolicited, not even to current or past customers (it's easy enough to ask them if they'd like to be subscribed with a personal email). In fact, it's a risk even to send your newsletter to a list you've purchased no matter what you've been told about the intent of the list's subscribers-can you be sure all of the subscribers expected to receive your email on widgets just because they checked a box saying they were interested in widgets? This will help keep you off the "blacklists" that are available to Spam filters.

2. Provide what you say you will, when you say you will. Don't mislead your audience at the subscribing stage and don't send out emails with manipulative subject lines. Not only is this not good for your reputation, but it may also trigger common Spam filters.

3. Don't type all in caps. A hallmark of the Nigerian Bank Scam, typing all in caps isn't just rude; it may get your newsletter forwarded to a blacklist. Additionally, make sure to capitalize the beginnings of your sentences and otherwise use professional grammar and punctuation. An unprofessional email may be more likely to arouse the suspicions of your readers.

4. Leave them wanting more. If your newsletter is really, really valuable, subscribers who don't get it will miss it. Some ezine publishers have found their ezines are so popular, people who stop receiving the emails actually complain.

5. Make your policy clear. Tell readers how to unsubscribe at your website and in your newsletter. Let them know whom to contact if they have any trouble. And, of course, make sure to follow through immediately.

So your newsletter convinces the computer

6. Steer clear of subject lines that scream SPAM! Words like "free," "limited time," and "money" often trigger Spam filters. Take a look at the Spam in your own inbox for examples of words not to use.

7. Offer directions for "subscribing" and "unsubscribing." Spammers often use the word "remove" in their emails, so you'll want to avoid it at all costs. Plus, in some Spam filters, you actually lose points (the fewer points, the less likely an email is Spam) when you offer subscribing and unsubscribing instructions.

8. Send it from a reputable domain name, or better yet, your own. Free email addresses are often used heavily by Spammers, so you'll want to stay away from them if at all possible.

9. Don't send attachments. Most email readers regard attachments with suspicion anyway and the attachment may trigger Spam filters set up to screen adult material. Both are good reasons to send your entire email in the body of the email. Still not convinced? Many of your readers will have limited inbox space-by avoiding attachments you won't give them an extra reason to delete your newsletter unread.

When you keep up-to-date on the latest Spam filter technology, you may find Spam filters are actually your allies-they may mean your newsletter will have less competition in your reader's inbox.

Is it your job to increase company profits? The Write Exposure offers the resources you need to do just that at http://www.designdoodles.com

Network Marketing, Multi Million Dollar Business or Just a Spam?

2008-11-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

A lot of people has bad image when they heard about Network Marketing. Well, we cant blame them. May be they had bad experiences before. Here are some tips for you before you join any network marketing. Hopefully it will help you.
Four things about MLM that we have to know:

1. Research the company first
You can research the company profile and information from the internet. Look for the information about the company as much as you can and ask your friends or people who knows about this network marketing company. Usually the company that is spam only stays no more than 5 years. The company that is not a spam usually belongs to a Better Business Bureau and US Chambers. The more research you do, the better.
2. Lack of Mentoring
Most of the network marketing company do not provide mentor on how to do the business. Basically they just tell you about the company profile and the level of commission that we could attain. Mentor plays a quite significant role in the business especially for people who knows a little or none about network marketing business. From the mentor, new comer can be guided step-by-step on how to do the business, where to do the promotions and how to take profit from all the marketing tools. In this case look for network marketing companies that provide mentor to you so you will be supported along the way.
3. Full support from the team
Team support also plays an important role in the network marketing business. If members support each other then the business more likely will last longer than just running individually. Members can support each other by sharing the techniques that they have to get leads and so on.
4. Consistent and Hard work
Just like doing any other job, taking this network marketing job also requires hard work but of course you do not need to work 8 hours a day seven days a week. You do need at least to work on the job for 2 to 3 hours a day. If you still have a full time job, just consider this network marketing job as overtime. We also have to be consistent in doing this job. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme so we have to be positive and do it consistently
In Summary, if you want to join any network marketing business just keep in mind the things that I mentioned above. Dig a little deeper about the company and the whole process of how to earn the money and do it with consistency. It is not easy but with a team work, mentor and hard work we could be successful. Anybody can add more inputs, so we can help others before they join any network marketing business.

Yochention Saritoh is an internet marketer and a member of Financial Freedom Society and Elite Team International.
If you want to know more about the business and how you can earn money too from the internet, you can go to http://www.EzInternetIncome.com or http://ffsi.EzInternetIncome.com

Are You Compliant With The Law? Take The CAN-SPAM QUIZ!

2008-10-30T04:06:00.000-07:00

Are You Compliant? Take The CAN-SPAM QUIZ!

Test Your Knowledge of The Law - 22 Questions You Should Know.

ANSWER THESE STATEMENTS: TRUE OR FALSE?

The Can Spam Act went into effect Jan. 1st, but marketers have
90 days to become compliant with the new law.

The Can Spam Act Pre-empts many tougher state anti-spam laws.

You may send commercial email with falsified headers.

You must include your phone number in all commercial emails.

You may send UCE as long as the message contains an opt-out
mechanism, a functioning return email address, a valid subject
line indicating the email is an advertisement, and the legitimate
physical address of the sender.

You must include a privacy policy when you collect subscribers.

You may harvest email addresses as long as the messages you send
contain an opt-out mechanism, a functioning return email address,
a valid subject line indicating the email is an advertisement,
and the legitimate physical address of the sender.

You must have a process for handling unsubscribes within a 15 day
window.

Referencing or including a link to a commercial entity in an
email message is sufficient to make it a commercial email
message.

You must add your postal address to all your marketing emails.

The Can Spam Act is enforced by the Attorney General in the state
wherein the alleged spam originated.

You must not share the address of a person who unsubscribed with
any other entity seeking to send that party email.

It's O.K. to use a misleading subject in your marketing email, as
long as you identify the email as an advertisement or
solicitation somewhere within the body of the email.

The FTC is required to report back to Congress within two years
on the effectiveness of the law and the need, if any, for
modifications.

Wireless spam is not covered by the law.

The new law allows for a $250 fine per non compliant email, and
possible jail time, for intentionally sending UCE with falsified
header information.

All persons in charge of running web servers that relay email
must close all open relays within 90 days of enacted of the law
(Jan. 1st).

Sending commercial email through an open relay is prohibited by
the Can Spam Act.

You must include an unsubscribe mechanism in every commercial
email.

Under the law, businesses knowingly promoted in UCE with false or
misleading header information are also subject to FTC penalties
and enforcement remedies, regardless of whether the FTC is able
to identify the spammer who initiated the email.

All commercial email (except those sent to opt in lists) must
contain ADV in the subject line, to indicate the email is an
advertisement.

All commercial email (except those sent to opt in lists) must be
identified as an advertisement or solicitation.

For answers to these questions, take the quiz online at:
http://www.EmailMarketingSurvey.com/CAN-SPAM-Quiz.html

Copyright 2004, Jim Symonds, EmailMarketingSurvey.com. All
Rights Reserved.

Test Your Knowledge of The Law - 22 Questions You Should Know.

ANSWER THESE STATEMENTS: TRUE OR FALSE?

The Can Spam Act went into effect Jan. 1st, but marketers have
90 days to become compliant with the new law.

The Can Spam Act Pre-empts many tougher state anti-spam laws.

You may send commercial email with falsified headers.

You must include your phone number in all commercial emails.

You may send UCE as long as the message contains an opt-out
mechanism, a functioning return email address, a valid subject
line indicating the email is an advertisement, and the legitimate
physical address of the sender.

You must include a privacy policy when you collect subscribers.

You may harvest email addresses as long as the messages you send
contain an opt-out mechanism, a functioning return email address,
a valid subject line indicating the email is an advertisement,
and the legitimate physical address of the sender.

You must have a process for handling unsubscribes within a 15 day
window.

Referencing or including a link to a commercial entity in an
email message is sufficient to make it a commercial email
message.

You must add your postal address to all your marketing emails.

The Can Spam Act is enforced by the Attorney General in the state
wherein the alleged spam originated.

You must not share the address of a person who unsubscribed with
any other entity seeking to send that party email.

It's O.K. to use a misleading subject in your marketing email, as
long as you identify the email as an advertisement or
solicitation somewhere within the body of the email.

The FTC is required to report back to Congress within two years
on the effectiveness of the law and the need, if any, for
modifications.

Wireless spam is not covered by the law.

The new law allows for a $250 fine per non compliant email, and
possible jail time, for intentionally sending UCE with falsified
header information.

All persons in charge of running web servers that relay email
must close all open relays within 90 days of enacted of the law
(Jan. 1st).

Sending commercial email through an open relay is prohibited by
the Can Spam Act.

You must include an unsubscribe mechanism in every commercial
email.

Under the law, businesses knowingly promoted in UCE with false or
misleading header information are also subject to FTC penalties
and enforcement remedies, regardless of whether the FTC is able
to identify the spammer who initiated the email.

All commercial email (except those sent to opt in lists) must
contain ADV in the subject line, to indicate the email is an
advertisement.

All commercial email (except those sent to opt in lists) must be
identified as an advertisement or solicitation.

For answers to these questions, take the quiz online at:
http://www.EmailMarketingSurvey.com/CAN-SPAM-Quiz.html

Copyright 2004, Jim Symonds, EmailMarketingSurvey.com. All
Rights Reserved.

Jim Symonds publishes "Web Secrets Exposed!" Eye popping, and jaw
dropping, sneaky little web design tricks & web marketing secrets
revealed. How'd they do that? We'll show you! Subscribe Now FR*E!
Learn 1001 Sneaky Tips 'n Tricks http://www.WebSecretsExposed.com

Three Faces of SPAMSandi Moses

2008-10-20T03:04:00.000-07:00

Like everybody who will ever read this, I get spam in my e-mail. Mine seems to fall into one of three categories. The first is the Nigerian scam about helping some poor, pathetic soul collect megabucks, supposedly from someone who has died and left a fortune. Im not sure what is worse: that there are people desperate enough to believe those messages, or that there are people despicable enough to prey on the desperate. The net result is the despicable con the desperate into sending money which the desperate will never see again.

The second type comes from people who sound innocent enough. They have a product or a business or a service or something else that is perfectly legitimate. They surf the web, find one of my sites, find the contact us link, and send me information about whatever they have to offer. I suppose, in their minds, it isnt any different than walking down the street or going through the telephone book writing down addresses, and then sending out bulk business mail with the same offer. They could get the same information for more money and less time by buying a mailing list. THAT is perfectly legitimate. Harvesting e-mail addresses off of web sites is NOT. Spam is officially defined as unsolicited commercial electronic mail. The key word is unsolicited. If I didnt ask for it and you send it anyway, it is unsolicited. When people harvest e-mail addresses off of web sites and then send commercial messages, that, by definition, is spam. I report them to my ISP and you should, too.

The third type isnt so innocent. These people, like the second type of people already discussed, surf the web, find sites, and harvest the e-mail addresses from the contact us link. Instead of starting out by sending you what they have to offer, they get devious, sneaky, and just plain under-handed. They send you a message asking for more information about whatever you have to offer on your site. When you graciously respond, it turns out they couldnt care less about what you have to offer. The ONLY thing they want is to confirm your e-mail address so they can start to dump offers on you, hoping you will buy something from them. Nasty trick.

Let me give you an example from one that once came across my screen. It seemed to be from a nice lady with homey graphics and nice colors in her e-mail. If my memory serves me well, she even stated that she was disabled and looking for ways to earn a living off the internet. In my mind, thats a hard combination to resist. A great deal of effort was put into this to make it sound as if she had built an internet community around her site and services. Maybe she did; I dont know. Anyway, I was nave enough to respond with the information she had requested. Soon solicitations for this, that, and whatever business offer, etc. began arriving in my inbox. I finally put two and two together and realized that they were from her, but I was still reluctant to report it as spam, so her messages went quietly into the trash. I mean, she seemed SO NICE! Then I got this huffy message, apparently broadcast to her entire mailing list, about how if people didnt want to receive her messages, why didnt they just unsubscribe, etc. It seems quite a few people had reported her as a spammer and she was getting into trouble. It was time for me to respond, so I told her, bluntly, that what she was sending out WAS spam. It was unsolicited. I never signed up to be on her mailing list, and no doubt the people who had reported her never signed up to be on her mailing list, either. I only responded to a request FROM HER for information and that in no way implied that I wanted to be on her mailing list or that I wanted to receive her offers. She must have gotten the message because I have received nothing else from her.

So how about you? Are guilty of sending out e-mail to people who did not specifically request to receive offers from you or about a business that you represent? If you go around looking for e-mail addresses to harvest for your own purposes, you are guilty of sending SPAM. Instead, post your offers on your web site and market them legitimately. Its the right thing to do. When people fill out your form, they are giving you permission to send them information. Keep a record so you can defend yourself if they ever forget what they did.

If you are on the receiving end of unsolicited offers, go ahead and report them as spam. Dont feel guilty; you are not the guilty party. Just make sure you really didnt sign up for a newsletter or something and then forgot! It is sooooooooooooooo not cool to report spam that really isnt!

Like everybody who will ever read this, I get spam in my e-mail. Mine seems to fall into one of three categories. The first is the Nigerian scam about helping some poor, pathetic soul collect megabucks, supposedly from someone who has died and left a fortune. Im not sure what is worse: that there are people desperate enough to believe those messages, or that there are people despicable enough to prey on the desperate. The net result is the despicable con the desperate into sending money which the desperate will never see again.

The second type comes from people who sound innocent enough. They have a product or a business or a service or something else that is perfectly legitimate. They surf the web, find one of my sites, find the contact us link, and send me information about whatever they have to offer. I suppose, in their minds, it isnt any different than walking down the street or going through the telephone book writing down addresses, and then sending out bulk business mail with the same offer. They could get the same information for more money and less time by buying a mailing list. THAT is perfectly legitimate. Harvesting e-mail addresses off of web sites is NOT. Spam is officially defined as unsolicited commercial electronic mail. The key word is unsolicited. If I didnt ask for it and you send it anyway, it is unsolicited. When people harvest e-mail addresses off of web sites and then send commercial messages, that, by definition, is spam. I report them to my ISP and you should, too.

The third type isnt so innocent. These people, like the second type of people already discussed, surf the web, find sites, and harvest the e-mail addresses from the contact us link. Instead of starting out by sending you what they have to offer, they get devious, sneaky, and just plain under-handed. They send you a message asking for more information about whatever you have to offer on your site. When you graciously respond, it turns out they couldnt care less about what you have to offer. The ONLY thing they want is to confirm your e-mail address so they can start to dump offers on you, hoping you will buy something from them. Nasty trick.

Let me give you an example from one that once came across my screen. It seemed to be from a nice lady with homey graphics and nice colors in her e-mail. If my memory serves me well, she even stated that she was disabled and looking for ways to earn a living off the internet. In my mind, thats a hard combination to resist. A great deal of effort was put into this to make it sound as if she had built an internet community around her site and services. Maybe she did; I dont know. Anyway, I was nave enough to respond with the information she had requested. Soon solicitations for this, that, and whatever business offer, etc. began arriving in my inbox. I finally put two and two together and realized that they were from her, but I was still reluctant to report it as spam, so her messages went quietly into the trash. I mean, she seemed SO NICE! Then I got this huffy message, apparently broadcast to her entire mailing list, about how if people didnt want to receive her messages, why didnt they just unsubscribe, etc. It seems quite a few people had reported her as a spammer and she was getting into trouble. It was time for me to respond, so I told her, bluntly, that what she was sending out WAS spam. It was unsolicited. I never signed up to be on her mailing list, and no doubt the people who had reported her never signed up to be on her mailing list, either. I only responded to a request FROM HER for information and that in no way implied that I wanted to be on her mailing list or that I wanted to receive her offers. She must have gotten the message because I have received nothing else from her.

So how about you? Are guilty of sending out e-mail to people who did not specifically request to receive offers from you or about a business that you represent? If you go around looking for e-mail addresses to harvest for your own purposes, you are guilty of sending SPAM. Instead, post your offers on your web site and market them legitimately. Its the right thing to do. When people fill out your form, they are giving you permission to send them information. Keep a record so you can defend yourself if they ever forget what they did.

If you are on the receiving end of unsolicited offers, go ahead and report them as spam. Dont feel guilty; you are not the guilty party. Just make sure you really didnt sign up for a newsletter or something and then forgot! It is sooooooooooooooo not cool to report spam that really isnt!

Sandi Moses has been involved in internet marketing since
November, 2003. Visit her sites at
http://www.123iwork4me.com
http://www.123-home-based-business-works-4-me.com

Yourself! To Win The War Against Spam!

2008-10-13T04:15:00.000-07:00

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Spam!

2008-07-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

Chuck Smith is the brain from which Chuck Smith's Brain Sediment
falls. Chuck has led a sheltered life in high tech, and is not
often let out of his wife's sight. Visit his site to subscribe to the twice monthly Chuck Smith's Brain Sediment ezine.
http://www.brainsediment.com
mailto:subscribe@brainsediment.com

Spam: Bozo Filters

2008-07-12T03:35:00.000-07:00

A bozo filter is a feature of email and newsgroups clients to
allow you to automatically delete messages which you do not want
to receive. This is typically used to eliminate flame spam
messages so you don't have to see them.

For example, I am subscribed to a number of topics on Yahoo
Egroups. In general these groups have pleasant conversations
among people who stay on topic and don't flame. There are two
individuals, however, who are abusive and make no substantial
contributions and see the need to post flames and sarcastic
remarks regularly. I could just ignore (and delete) these
messages myself, or I could (and have) set up a bozo filter in
Outlook which automatically deletes all messages from their email
address. This ensures that I don't need to read the messages from
these people except as part of a reply to another message (rare).

Using the filters supplied with virtually all modern email and
newsgroup clients, you can seriously cut down on spam and other
unwanted messages. However, to be effective, you have to maintain
your filters on a regular basis. Here's what I do: whenever I
receive an email which is undesirable, I scan it quickly to
identify something which would identify it. This might be the
FROM address, the SUBJECT (some or all of it) or various phrases
within the message body. If the FROM address is strange (which it
often is in spam messages), then it's better to key off the
subject or text body. These identifiers are then added to my
filters. In other words, I tell the email client "if you see this
phrase in the message body, then please automatically delete the
message.

Note that you must be careful that the phrases are specific to
the type of message you want to delete. Otherwise, you will wind
up deleting messages which you actually want to receive. For
example, let's say a common phrase is "sex movies for sale". You
should add the whole phrase to your filter, not a short word like
"sale" which could unintentionally delete messages about other
things.

Note that your filter should move the messages to the trash, and
you should always take a quick scan of the messages in your email
trash can before deleting. This will help prevent you from
accidentally deleting a valid message. Filters are not perfect.

Some good phrases to add to your bozo filters are:

Click here to be removed.
bulk e-mail
bulk e mail
MLM
multilevel
I just found your address by searching through
adult
adults only
If you are under 21
This is a one-time mailing
This is not a spam
million dollars
senate.gov
Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618
Bill 1618 Title III
Since your email address was listed on a related Web site
Claim your prize

Once you've spent some time creating a few bozo filters, you
will begin to realize the power at your fingertips. Using the
filtering components of products such as Outlook and Outlook
express, you can automatically file emails in specific folders,
forward them without your intervention and of course delete spam.
Have fun and use these to help improve your productivity.
allow you to automatically delete messages which you do not want
to receive. This is typically used to eliminate flame spam
messages so you don't have to see them.

For example, I am subscribed to a number of topics on Yahoo
Egroups. In general these groups have pleasant conversations
among people who stay on topic and don't flame. There are two
individuals, however, who are abusive and make no substantial
contributions and see the need to post flames and sarcastic
remarks regularly. I could just ignore (and delete) these
messages myself, or I could (and have) set up a bozo filter in
Outlook which automatically deletes all messages from their email
address. This ensures that I don't need to read the messages from
these people except as part of a reply to another message (rare).

Using the filters supplied with virtually all modern email and
newsgroup clients, you can seriously cut down on spam and other
unwanted messages. However, to be effective, you have to maintain
your filters on a regular basis. Here's what I do: whenever I
receive an email which is undesirable, I scan it quickly to
identify something which would identify it. This might be the
FROM address, the SUBJECT (some or all of it) or various phrases
within the message body. If the FROM address is strange (which it
often is in spam messages), then it's better to key off the
subject or text body. These identifiers are then added to my
filters. In other words, I tell the email client "if you see this
phrase in the message body, then please automatically delete the
message.

Note that you must be careful that the phrases are specific to
the type of message you want to delete. Otherwise, you will wind
up deleting messages which you actually want to receive. For
example, let's say a common phrase is "sex movies for sale". You
should add the whole phrase to your filter, not a short word like
"sale" which could unintentionally delete messages about other
things.

Note that your filter should move the messages to the trash, and
you should always take a quick scan of the messages in your email
trash can before deleting. This will help prevent you from
accidentally deleting a valid message. Filters are not perfect.

Some good phrases to add to your bozo filters are:

Click here to be removed.
bulk e-mail
bulk e mail
MLM
multilevel
I just found your address by searching through
adult
adults only
If you are under 21
This is a one-time mailing
This is not a spam
million dollars
senate.gov
Section 301, Paragraph (a)(2)(C) of S. 1618
Bill 1618 Title III
Since your email address was listed on a related Web site
Claim your prize

Once you've spent some time creating a few bozo filters, you
will begin to realize the power at your fingertips. Using the
filtering components of products such as Outlook and Outlook
express, you can automatically file emails in specific folders,
forward them without your intervention and of course delete spam.
Have fun and use these to help improve your productivity.

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets
at http://www.internet-tips.net - Visit our website any time to
read over 1,000 complete FREE articles about how to improve your
internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Spam: Bozo Filters

2008-07-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

Get Your Emails Organized, Part II : Fight Spam !

2008-06-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

In the last few years the extent of Spam (unsolicited email) has
multiplied a hundred times. Have you taken measures to reduce
spam to a minimum ? If not, I will give you some hints how you
can fight this new evil of the information age .

Those annoying violators of your privacy are not worth your
valuable time...

Pseudo Excuses Of Spammers

Those guys hide their shameless behaviour after pseudo excuses
like "Thank you for your request" or "Re : More information" ,
"Thank you very much for your offer", "I saw your ad", "I've just
visited your website" etc. - so people could think "Mmmmmmh,
I'm not sure if I have NOT requested that stuff or perhaps he has
a real request" ; it could be a legal email, though...

Following the rules outlined in this article, you'll be able to free
more of your time for doing business again and not getting over-
whelmed by a flood of emails.

Use A Different Email Address For All Your Marketing Needs...

I'm almost certain that you will have more than just one email
address for your email needs . Or rather not ? Then you are
making a big mistake.....

Do you already have your own domain ? With your own website,
you will have included a lot of email POP-accounts which are just
perfect to fit your desire to be protected against spam . If you
don't have your own domain, you should order one ASAP or you
are not serious about marketing on the Internet....

You should at least set up the following e-mail accounts :

1.) E-mail for subscriptions to newsletters ONLY
-e.g. : ezines@domainname.com

2.) E-mail for private purposes (friends, relatives, colleagues)
-e.g. : firstname@yahoo.com , firstname@hotmail.com

3.) E-mail for public ads (public e-mail address )
- e.g. : ads1@domainname.com ---> This Is The Email
Address Where SPAM Goes To

4.) E-mail for outgoing ad messages (e.g. if you're the owner of
an FFA-page and you send confirmation e-mails; this would
be the "sender"-address) ------> This is the email address
where you have to deal with autoresponders/undeliverables/
and also SPAM

5.) E-mail for personal marketing contacts only (e.g. contact with
other newsletter publishers/JV-partners/affiliates etc. )
- e.g. : firstname@domainname.com

And additionally, if you publish an ezine, you'll need these :

6.) E-mail for article submissions
-e.g.: articles@domainname.com

7.) E-mail for advertisement info
-e.g.: ads@domainname.com or adinfo@domainname.com

Then you create new inboxes for each of these new email
accounts . The next step is to set up rules for filtering the
incoming emails into the right folders ( described in part I of
"Get your emails organized" ) .

With this very basic filtering system, you can categorize your in-
coming emails at a glance. You will also be able to delete all
spam mails you received with two clicks of your mouse .

The 3 Golden Rules Of Spam Reduction :

NEVER EVER use your private/subscription addresses/marke-
ting contacts email addresses for public purposes. Never leave
these addresses on websites and don't use them in your email
correspondences (except for validation purposes from ezines
you are subscribed to, e.g. to get your free ads) !

NEVER EVER post to FFA-pages (by the way, you won't get
any results from using them as these pages are hardly ever seen
by a human ....- Owning an FFA-page is something different) !

NEVER EVER reply to spammers (this is just a hint for them
that the email address is VALID !) !

And last but not least : I've come across a great resource that
fights spam with their own methods at :

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

This is a cgi-script that fights spam by creating dynamic email-
addresses . The harvesting software collects that many email
addresses that a lot of them are just rubbish for the owner who
uses those methods .

Although you can reduce the amount of spam by adopting the
rules and habits I mentioned in this article, I am quite sure that
spammers will survive because not everybody knows how to
prevent or reduce spam and those intruders will find new
victims....
multiplied a hundred times. Have you taken measures to reduce
spam to a minimum ? If not, I will give you some hints how you
can fight this new evil of the information age .

Those annoying violators of your privacy are not worth your
valuable time...

Pseudo Excuses Of Spammers

Those guys hide their shameless behaviour after pseudo excuses
like "Thank you for your request" or "Re : More information" ,
"Thank you very much for your offer", "I saw your ad", "I've just
visited your website" etc. - so people could think "Mmmmmmh,
I'm not sure if I have NOT requested that stuff or perhaps he has
a real request" ; it could be a legal email, though...

Following the rules outlined in this article, you'll be able to free
more of your time for doing business again and not getting over-
whelmed by a flood of emails.

Use A Different Email Address For All Your Marketing Needs...

I'm almost certain that you will have more than just one email
address for your email needs . Or rather not ? Then you are
making a big mistake.....

Do you already have your own domain ? With your own website,
you will have included a lot of email POP-accounts which are just
perfect to fit your desire to be protected against spam . If you
don't have your own domain, you should order one ASAP or you
are not serious about marketing on the Internet....

You should at least set up the following e-mail accounts :

1.) E-mail for subscriptions to newsletters ONLY
-e.g. : ezines@domainname.com

2.) E-mail for private purposes (friends, relatives, colleagues)
-e.g. : firstname@yahoo.com , firstname@hotmail.com

3.) E-mail for public ads (public e-mail address )
- e.g. : ads1@domainname.com ---> This Is The Email
Address Where SPAM Goes To

4.) E-mail for outgoing ad messages (e.g. if you're the owner of
an FFA-page and you send confirmation e-mails; this would
be the "sender"-address) ------> This is the email address
where you have to deal with autoresponders/undeliverables/
and also SPAM

5.) E-mail for personal marketing contacts only (e.g. contact with
other newsletter publishers/JV-partners/affiliates etc. )
- e.g. : firstname@domainname.com

And additionally, if you publish an ezine, you'll need these :

6.) E-mail for article submissions
-e.g.: articles@domainname.com

7.) E-mail for advertisement info
-e.g.: ads@domainname.com or adinfo@domainname.com

Then you create new inboxes for each of these new email
accounts . The next step is to set up rules for filtering the
incoming emails into the right folders ( described in part I of
"Get your emails organized" ) .

With this very basic filtering system, you can categorize your in-
coming emails at a glance. You will also be able to delete all
spam mails you received with two clicks of your mouse .

The 3 Golden Rules Of Spam Reduction :

NEVER EVER use your private/subscription addresses/marke-
ting contacts email addresses for public purposes. Never leave
these addresses on websites and don't use them in your email
correspondences (except for validation purposes from ezines
you are subscribed to, e.g. to get your free ads) !

NEVER EVER post to FFA-pages (by the way, you won't get
any results from using them as these pages are hardly ever seen
by a human ....- Owning an FFA-page is something different) !

NEVER EVER reply to spammers (this is just a hint for them
that the email address is VALID !) !

And last but not least : I've come across a great resource that
fights spam with their own methods at :

http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/

This is a cgi-script that fights spam by creating dynamic email-
addresses . The harvesting software collects that many email
addresses that a lot of them are just rubbish for the owner who
uses those methods .

Although you can reduce the amount of spam by adopting the
rules and habits I mentioned in this article, I am quite sure that
spammers will survive because not everybody knows how to
prevent or reduce spam and those intruders will find new
victims....

Article by Detlev Reimer. Feel free to use the article with these
bylines included. Detlev has just finished creating his first product,
a database program for Internet marketers which will help you to save
and organize e.g. your advertising, customer and contact data. For
further details, please visit : http://www.promobuddy.com/ . Sign up
for his newsletter at http://www.internetmarketing-success.com/ .

How Can I Stop Getting Spam?Sean Proske

2008-06-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

A Tutorial for Webmasters
By Sean Proske
mailto:sproske@thewebhostcompany.com

Are you getting too much spam? We all are, but if
you're a webmaster the word spam takes on a whole
new meaning.

It's not uncommon for the luckiest of email
users to receive a dozen or so spam messages each
day, while those of us who aren't so fortunate
receive hundreds.

The casual home user tends to be more fortunate,
so this article is devoted to those of us with one
or more website because webmasters are getting hit
by spam ... and hit hard.

The reason ... a website doesn't do you much
good if you don't give potential customers a way
to contact you, and that normally means posting an
email address on your website, where it is
vulnerable to email address harvesting tools used
by spammers. Domain registration records are also
a common source used by spammers.

In order to conduct business online you now need
to sift through the endless barrage of offers for
herbal viagra, pornography, pyramid schemes, and
so on.

With such a large volume of spam to contend with,
it's likely you've lost sales due to missing
important emails that simply floated away in this
sea of spam. And there's no way to really
calculate the cost of that lost business. If
you've missed email then how can you ever know how
much business you've lost?

If you want to solve the problem, you need to be
proactive because the sad reality is that if you
do nothing, it will only get worse until finally
it reaches the point where your email account has
become totally and completely unmanageable.
Fortunately there are a few options available to
you.

--------------------------------------------------
Securing Your Domain Registration Against Spammers
--------------------------------------------------

First let's address the whois database, which is a
publicly accessible database in which your domain
registration record is listed ... and that
includes your email address. It's not uncommon
now for people to be spammed at a brand new email
address within hours of registering a new domain.

Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com is a domain
registrar that now offers private domain
registrations. At the time of writing this
article, they are the only registrar who currently
offers this service. Hopefully in time, other
registrars will pick up on this idea and offer the
service too.

With a private domain registration, which costs
only a few dollars more than a regular
registration, your contact information including
your email address will not be publicly accessible
in the whois database.

That's guaranteed to cut down on spam quite
significantly as this very important source of
addresses that spammers use, will no longer
provide your address to them.

If you don't wish to obtain a private domain
registration, then there is another option that
will be equally effective. Set up a new email
address that you use only for the purpose of
providing registration information for your domain
name. You can easily scan email sent to that
address for messages from your registrar, and
delete the rest without having to read it.

--------------------------------------------------
Securing Your Website Against Spammers
--------------------------------------------------

The other major source, and by far the biggest
source of email addresses for spammers is of
course the mailto links on your own website.
Email address harvesting or extraction software as
it's known is cheap, easy to use, and readily
available ... and it's very effective. That
means there are a lot of spammers out there with
easy access to your email address.

Chances are hundreds or even thousands of spammers
using such software have already harvested your
address. And what can you do about this? You
need to provide a way for your customers to reach
you by email, or you'll lose business. There are
steps you can take to prevent your email address
from being harvested and used by spammers though,
while still providing legitimate visitors to your
site with a way to email you.

One solution is to make all the mailto links on
your site point to a form instead, which will
still provide a means for people to send you
email. Provided you use a CGI script that
doesn't require the address to be embedded
within the form itself, you can shield your
address from email address extractors.

If you don't want to require people to fill out
a form to email you from your website, then you
can get a little more creative. It is possible to
put a mailto link on your site that when clicked
will still launch the sender's email program,
and start a new message with your address in the
To field ... but without having to embed your
email address in the mailto link where spam
software can snatch it. Click below to see an
example of how it works.

http:/ hewebhostcompany.com/cgi-local/email.cgi

It looks like a normal URL, and there's clearly no
email address anywhere in the link, but when
clicked, instead of loading a web page in your
browser as you may have expected, your email
program opens up.

How's that possible you might ask? Simple. A
little magic with CGI using Perl or PHP will do
the trick. A free copy of a script that does this
is bundled with Postmaster Pro, available at
http://www.postmasterpro.com which is discussed
below.

--------------------------------------------------
What About Spammers Who Already Have My Address?
--------------------------------------------------

So far we've discussed a few fairly simple
techniques designed to prevent spammers from
obtaining your email address in the first place.
But, how do you deal with the spam you're
already getting? Your address is already out
there. The solution is to either block or filter.

For either, you'll need software. For blocking, I
recommend Postmaster Pro. If you prefer to filter
then Spam Assassin is highly recommended. Both
run on the server, so there is no need to download
spam before filtering it out. That's a huge time
saver if you're not yet on a high-speed
connection. It also makes it a bit less likely
you'll end up downloading a virus since email from
untrusted senders, i.e. spammers will be
significantly reduced.

------------------------------------------------
Spam Blocking Software
------------------------------------------------

Postmaster Pro which is available at
http://www.postmasterpro.com takes a novel
approach to blocking spam. It only allows email
to be delivered after people who've sent you
email have been placed on an approved sender list.
But the interesting thing is that people who send
you email can put themselves on your approved
list. This is done simply by clicking a link in
an email that automatically gets sent to them the
first time they send email to you, which is
perfect for those of us who don't know in
advance whom we should put on the approved list,
i.e. if you're running a business online. It
also makes building and maintaining such a list
very simple.

Given the fact that spammers normally use invalid
return addresses, and those who do use valid
return addresses seldom read email that's sent
there, let alone respond to it (they receive
thousands of failed delivery notifications,
complaints, remove requests, and autoresponder
messages every time they do a mailing) ... it's
a very effective technique with no chance of
blocking legitimate email, as is the case with
filtering.

--------------------------------------------------
Spam Filtering Software
--------------------------------------------------

For those who would prefer to filter ... Spam
Assassin is perhaps the best option. It is
available at http://www.spamassassin.org. Once
you have Spam Assassin installed, it will provide
you with very powerful and flexible filtering
tools. Spam Assassin is a mature product, having
been around for quite some time. If you're
going to filter, Spam Assassin is about as good as
it gets.

As with any filter though, you do run the risk of
missing legitimate email from time to time. There
really isn't a good way to tell how often this is
happening unless you want to read all the email
that gets filtered out, which negates the whole
point of filtering. If you set your filters
permissively enough though, you should be
reasonably safe. For the first month or so after
installing any filter, you should continue to read
every single email in order to make sure it isn't
set too restrictively to allow legitimate email
through.

By using the techniques mentioned in this article,
you can take back your mailbox, and dramatically
reduce, if not eliminate spam.

--------------------------------------------------
Sean Proske is the CEO and founding partner of
thewebhostcompany.com which has provided reliable
and affordable hosting since 1996.
http://www.thewebhostcompany.com
mailto:info@thewebhostcompany.com
--------------------------------------------------
2003 by Sean Proske

You have permission to publish this article
electronically or in print, in your Newsletter, on
your website, or in your E-Book, as long as the
author's Resource Box is included with the
article.
A Tutorial for Webmasters
By Sean Proske
mailto:sproske@thewebhostcompany.com

Are you getting too much spam? We all are, but if
you're a webmaster the word spam takes on a whole
new meaning.

It's not uncommon for the luckiest of email
users to receive a dozen or so spam messages each
day, while those of us who aren't so fortunate
receive hundreds.

The casual home user tends to be more fortunate,
so this article is devoted to those of us with one
or more website because webmasters are getting hit
by spam ... and hit hard.

The reason ... a website doesn't do you much
good if you don't give potential customers a way
to contact you, and that normally means posting an
email address on your website, where it is
vulnerable to email address harvesting tools used
by spammers. Domain registration records are also
a common source used by spammers.

In order to conduct business online you now need
to sift through the endless barrage of offers for
herbal viagra, pornography, pyramid schemes, and
so on.

With such a large volume of spam to contend with,
it's likely you've lost sales due to missing
important emails that simply floated away in this
sea of spam. And there's no way to really
calculate the cost of that lost business. If
you've missed email then how can you ever know how
much business you've lost?

If you want to solve the problem, you need to be
proactive because the sad reality is that if you
do nothing, it will only get worse until finally
it reaches the point where your email account has
become totally and completely unmanageable.
Fortunately there are a few options available to
you.

--------------------------------------------------
Securing Your Domain Registration Against Spammers
--------------------------------------------------

First let's address the whois database, which is a
publicly accessible database in which your domain
registration record is listed ... and that
includes your email address. It's not uncommon
now for people to be spammed at a brand new email
address within hours of registering a new domain.

Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com is a domain
registrar that now offers private domain
registrations. At the time of writing this
article, they are the only registrar who currently
offers this service. Hopefully in time, other
registrars will pick up on this idea and offer the
service too.

With a private domain registration, which costs
only a few dollars more than a regular
registration, your contact information including
your email address will not be publicly accessible
in the whois database.

That's guaranteed to cut down on spam quite
significantly as this very important source of
addresses that spammers use, will no longer
provide your address to them.

If you don't wish to obtain a private domain
registration, then there is another option that
will be equally effective. Set up a new email
address that you use only for the purpose of
providing registration information for your domain
name. You can easily scan email sent to that
address for messages from your registrar, and
delete the rest without having to read it.

--------------------------------------------------
Securing Your Website Against Spammers
--------------------------------------------------

The other major source, and by far the biggest
source of email addresses for spammers is of
course the mailto links on your own website.
Email address harvesting or extraction software as
it's known is cheap, easy to use, and readily
available ... and it's very effective. That
means there are a lot of spammers out there with
easy access to your email address.

Chances are hundreds or even thousands of spammers
using such software have already harvested your
address. And what can you do about this? You
need to provide a way for your customers to reach
you by email, or you'll lose business. There are
steps you can take to prevent your email address
from being harvested and used by spammers though,
while still providing legitimate visitors to your
site with a way to email you.

One solution is to make all the mailto links on
your site point to a form instead, which will
still provide a means for people to send you
email. Provided you use a CGI script that
doesn't require the address to be embedded
within the form itself, you can shield your
address from email address extractors.

If you don't want to require people to fill out
a form to email you from your website, then you
can get a little more creative. It is possible to
put a mailto link on your site that when clicked
will still launch the sender's email program,
and start a new message with your address in the
To field ... but without having to embed your
email address in the mailto link where spam
software can snatch it. Click below to see an
example of how it works.

http:/ hewebhostcompany.com/cgi-local/email.cgi

It looks like a normal URL, and there's clearly no
email address anywhere in the link, but when
clicked, instead of loading a web page in your
browser as you may have expected, your email
program opens up.

How's that possible you might ask? Simple. A
little magic with CGI using Perl or PHP will do
the trick. A free copy of a script that does this
is bundled with Postmaster Pro, available at
http://www.postmasterpro.com which is discussed
below.

--------------------------------------------------
What About Spammers Who Already Have My Address?
--------------------------------------------------

So far we've discussed a few fairly simple
techniques designed to prevent spammers from
obtaining your email address in the first place.
But, how do you deal with the spam you're
already getting? Your address is already out
there. The solution is to either block or filter.

For either, you'll need software. For blocking, I
recommend Postmaster Pro. If you prefer to filter
then Spam Assassin is highly recommended. Both
run on the server, so there is no need to download
spam before filtering it out. That's a huge time
saver if you're not yet on a high-speed
connection. It also makes it a bit less likely
you'll end up downloading a virus since email from
untrusted senders, i.e. spammers will be
significantly reduced.

------------------------------------------------
Spam Blocking Software
------------------------------------------------

Postmaster Pro which is available at
http://www.postmasterpro.com takes a novel
approach to blocking spam. It only allows email
to be delivered after people who've sent you
email have been placed on an approved sender list.
But the interesting thing is that people who send
you email can put themselves on your approved
list. This is done simply by clicking a link in
an email that automatically gets sent to them the
first time they send email to you, which is
perfect for those of us who don't know in
advance whom we should put on the approved list,
i.e. if you're running a business online. It
also makes building and maintaining such a list
very simple.

Given the fact that spammers normally use invalid
return addresses, and those who do use valid
return addresses seldom read email that's sent
there, let alone respond to it (they receive
thousands of failed delivery notifications,
complaints, remove requests, and autoresponder
messages every time they do a mailing) ... it's
a very effective technique with no chance of
blocking legitimate email, as is the case with
filtering.

--------------------------------------------------
Spam Filtering Software
--------------------------------------------------

For those who would prefer to filter ... Spam
Assassin is perhaps the best option. It is
available at http://www.spamassassin.org. Once
you have Spam Assassin installed, it will provide
you with very powerful and flexible filtering
tools. Spam Assassin is a mature product, having
been around for quite some time. If you're
going to filter, Spam Assassin is about as good as
it gets.

As with any filter though, you do run the risk of
missing legitimate email from time to time. There
really isn't a good way to tell how often this is
happening unless you want to read all the email
that gets filtered out, which negates the whole
point of filtering. If you set your filters
permissively enough though, you should be
reasonably safe. For the first month or so after
installing any filter, you should continue to read
every single email in order to make sure it isn't
set too restrictively to allow legitimate email
through.

By using the techniques mentioned in this article,
you can take back your mailbox, and dramatically
reduce, if not eliminate spam.

--------------------------------------------------
Sean Proske is the CEO and founding partner of
thewebhostcompany.com which has provided reliable
and affordable hosting since 1996.
http://www.thewebhostcompany.com
mailto:info@thewebhostcompany.com
--------------------------------------------------
2003 by Sean Proske

You have permission to publish this article
electronically or in print, in your Newsletter, on
your website, or in your E-Book, as long as the
author's Resource Box is included with the
article.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Proske is the CEO and founding partner of
thewebhostcompany.com which has provided reliable
and affordable hosting since 1996.
http://www.thewebhostcompany.com
mailto:info@thewebhostcompany.com

Small Business Q & A: Beware Of Spam Withdrawals

2008-06-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Q: I am so sick of all the spam that is sent to my business
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?

A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.

Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.

Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.

After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."

Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.

I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.

And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?

After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.

You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.

So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.

Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.

How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.

First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.

Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.

Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.

Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.

Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.

One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.

Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.

Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.

Here's to your success!

Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort
out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it
all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might
be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer,
what's the best solution for dealing with spam?

A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when
the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying
to pry it out of the can.

Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email.
I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email
address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am
a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used
to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400
messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people
I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would
like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.

Spammers, they are called the scourge of the Internet the
digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.

After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead
engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced,
"I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter
on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."

Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.

I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this
wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when
within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest
day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I
suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not
only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I
had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my
friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile.
They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give
me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans,
waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks
concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy
was incredibly heart warming.

And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were
worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if
only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?

After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy
to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm
afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.

You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by
eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81
emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam
now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies
more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited
e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.

So how do spammers get your email address in the first place?
It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a
result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will
sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy
says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their
sites.

Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest
email address, so if you have a personal or company website
that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider
is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise
when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email
newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.

How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people
think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it
and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so
smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to
eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of
spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.

First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of
spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you
removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to
let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link
to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you
receive increase.

Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses.
Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys
and online purchases.

Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your
computer or company network. There are a variety of spam
blocking applications on the market that range in price from
free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely
eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive.
Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that
you feel are right for you.

Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam
application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who
recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to
the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company
email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They
had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam
and everything else. Not a good idea.

Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try
adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software.
Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling
incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora,
and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features
that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.

One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would
quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting
from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.

Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.

Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing
email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you
don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer
receive any email at all.

Here's to your success!

Tim Knox
tim@dropshipwholesale.net
For information on starting your own online or eBay business,
visit http://www.dropshipwholesale.net

Tim Knox as the president and CEO of two successful technology
companies: B2Secure Inc., a Web-based hiring management software
company; and Digital Graphiti Inc., a software development company.
Tim is also the founder of dropshipwholesale.net, an ebusiness
dedicated to the success of online entrepreneurs.
http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
http://www.smallbusinessqa.com

Top 7 tips for reducing spam

2008-06-09T02:04:00.000-07:00

You may publish this article, free of charge in your e-zine
or any publication.

The article must be published in its entirety, unedited,
without any changes to its content. You may format the
article to fit your requirements.

The resource box at the end of this article must be
included with the article.

A courtsey copy of your ezine or publication in which the
article is published will be appreciated.
email: article@business-development-strategies.com

Format 60 CPL. Word count 812 Copyright Patrick Silva, 2004

Top 7 tips for reducing spam.

Spam, also known as unsolicited emails is the scurge of the
Internet. Like annoying phone calls from telemarketers
trying to sell you something while you are having dinner,
spam is irretating, frustrating and takes up a lot of your
valuable time.

Spammers use special software called Email Harvesting
Robots to scour the Internet 24/7, 365 days a year to find
and gather email addresses.

These Robots look for the '@' symbol which is the symbol
used in all email addresses. Then they extract your email
address, without your knowledge or permission and add it
to their email address data base.

If you post your email address on your web site, your
e-zine, forums, chat rooms or anywhere on the Internet,
you are laying yourself wide open to email harvesting
robots and spammers.

Some unscrupulous scum send viruses through spam email that
can mess up or distroy your computer. Some of the viruses
that the spammers email you hide inside your system files,
replicate themselves and mail themselves to everyone in
your address book.

Spam is becoming such a huge problem that the US Government
is passing legislation to regulate unsolicited emails.
However the US Government has no control over spam that
originates in other countries.

Therefore, spam is a scurge that governments might not be
able to control.

But we, as individuals can protect ourselves by doing
whatever we can to reduce the amount of spam we receive.
Here are seven tips that will help you reduce spam.

1) NEVER EVER respond or reply to a spam email no matter
how tempting, curious or annoying the message is. Keep
your cool. If you do reply, the spammer will know that
your email address is an active one. Do not open any
attachments. Just delete the spam.

2) Never click on the 'unsubscribe' link in a spam email.
If you do, again the spammer will know that your email
address is active. He will sell your email address to
other spammers. The spam you receive will double or
tripple.

3) Protect your primary email address. This is the one that
you get from your Internet Service Provider (ISP.) Do
not give out your primary email address to anyone unless
you trust them. If you want to subscribe to a newsleter
with your primary email address, make sure that you read
the terms of use and their privacy policy.

4) Have an 'All Purpose' email address like a Yahoo or a
Hotmail email address to post in forums, chat rooms etc.
The email you receive to these addresses are web-based.
You can read your Yahoo or Hotmail email messages on your
Yahoo or Hotmail account on their web site without
downloading them into your computer. You can delete all
the spam right from those web sites.

5) If you have your own web site and have to give out your
email address for people to contact you, you can 'cloak'
your email address by substituting the HTML code for the
'@' symbol. This way, the email harvesting robots will
not be able to extract your email address from your
web site.

When you cloak your email address, you can include an
active email link such as 'Contact me' or 'Email me.'
When your contact clicks on the active email link, her
email program will open with your email address in the
'To' box.

6) Never ever buy anything from a spam email. The
information you give out to a spammer could be used for
illegal purposes. You could probably end up being a
victim of identity theft.

7) Black List every spammers email addresses.

To do this, you have to find the email address of the
spammer. Most spammers do not give their email addresses
in the 'From' box of the email or they give a phoney one.

To find out his real email address, click the 'File'
button on your email program. Then, when a window opens,
click on 'Properties.' This will open a window with two
tabs - General and Detail.

The 'General' tab will show you the message source and
display the email address of the sender. But the 'Detail'
tab will give you more details like IP address and the
email address of the sender.

Once you have the email address of the spammer, add it
to your 'Black List' in your email program. This is
somewhat of a tedious process I know. It will innitially
take some time to black list email addresses of every
spammer. But, believe me, it will surely be worth your
trouble on the long run.

The above tips, if followed, will greatly reduce the spam
you receive and save you a lot of annoyance, aggravation,
frustration and time.

One more point worth mentioning is the saying "To reduce
spam, do not be a spammer."

You may publish this article, free of charge in your e-zine
or any publication.

The article must be published in its entirety, unedited,
without any changes to its content. You may format the
article to fit your requirements.

The resource box at the end of this article must be
included with the article.

A courtsey copy of your ezine or publication in which the
article is published will be appreciated.
email: article@business-development-strategies.com

Format 60 CPL. Word count 812 Copyright Patrick Silva, 2004

Top 7 tips for reducing spam.

Spam, also known as unsolicited emails is the scurge of the
Internet. Like annoying phone calls from telemarketers
trying to sell you something while you are having dinner,
spam is irretating, frustrating and takes up a lot of your
valuable time.

Spammers use special software called Email Harvesting
Robots to scour the Internet 24/7, 365 days a year to find
and gather email addresses.

These Robots look for the '@' symbol which is the symbol
used in all email addresses. Then they extract your email
address, without your knowledge or permission and add it
to their email address data base.

If you post your email address on your web site, your
e-zine, forums, chat rooms or anywhere on the Internet,
you are laying yourself wide open to email harvesting
robots and spammers.

Some unscrupulous scum send viruses through spam email that
can mess up or distroy your computer. Some of the viruses
that the spammers email you hide inside your system files,
replicate themselves and mail themselves to everyone in
your address book.

Spam is becoming such a huge problem that the US Government
is passing legislation to regulate unsolicited emails.
However the US Government has no control over spam that
originates in other countries.

Therefore, spam is a scurge that governments might not be
able to control.

But we, as individuals can protect ourselves by doing
whatever we can to reduce the amount of spam we receive.
Here are seven tips that will help you reduce spam.

1) NEVER EVER respond or reply to a spam email no matter
how tempting, curious or annoying the message is. Keep
your cool. If you do reply, the spammer will know that
your email address is an active one. Do not open any
attachments. Just delete the spam.

2) Never click on the 'unsubscribe' link in a spam email.
If you do, again the spammer will know that your email
address is active. He will sell your email address to
other spammers. The spam you receive will double or
tripple.

3) Protect your primary email address. This is the one that
you get from your Internet Service Provider (ISP.) Do
not give out your primary email address to anyone unless
you trust them. If you want to subscribe to a newsleter
with your primary email address, make sure that you read
the terms of use and their privacy policy.

4) Have an 'All Purpose' email address like a Yahoo or a
Hotmail email address to post in forums, chat rooms etc.
The email you receive to these addresses are web-based.
You can read your Yahoo or Hotmail email messages on your
Yahoo or Hotmail account on their web site without
downloading them into your computer. You can delete all
the spam right from those web sites.

5) If you have your own web site and have to give out your
email address for people to contact you, you can 'cloak'
your email address by substituting the HTML code for the
'@' symbol. This way, the email harvesting robots will
not be able to extract your email address from your
web site.

When you cloak your email address, you can include an
active email link such as 'Contact me' or 'Email me.'
When your contact clicks on the active email link, her
email program will open with your email address in the
'To' box.

6) Never ever buy anything from a spam email. The
information you give out to a spammer could be used for
illegal purposes. You could probably end up being a
victim of identity theft.

7) Black List every spammers email addresses.

To do this, you have to find the email address of the
spammer. Most spammers do not give their email addresses
in the 'From' box of the email or they give a phoney one.

To find out his real email address, click the 'File'
button on your email program. Then, when a window opens,
click on 'Properties.' This will open a window with two
tabs - General and Detail.

The 'General' tab will show you the message source and
display the email address of the sender. But the 'Detail'
tab will give you more details like IP address and the
email address of the sender.

Once you have the email address of the spammer, add it
to your 'Black List' in your email program. This is
somewhat of a tedious process I know. It will innitially
take some time to black list email addresses of every
spammer. But, believe me, it will surely be worth your
trouble on the long run.

The above tips, if followed, will greatly reduce the spam
you receive and save you a lot of annoyance, aggravation,
frustration and time.

One more point worth mentioning is the saying "To reduce
spam, do not be a spammer."

Patrick Silva is a Seminar Instructor, A public Speaker and
a Researcher. He is the editor of 'A Learners Lounge,' a
free e-zine dedicated to inspire and motivate you to
achieve success. To subscribe, click on the link below
www.business-development-strategies.com/e-zine.html

How Spammers Fool Spam Filters

2008-05-31T04:18:00.000-07:00

Trust

And How to Stop Them

Effectively stopping spam over the long-term requires much more than blocking individual IP addresses and creating rules based on keywords that spammers typically use. The increasing sophistication of tools spammers use coupled with the increasing number of spammers in the wild has created a hyper-evolution in the variety and volume of spam. The old ways of blocking the bad guys just dont work anymore. Examining spam and spam-blocking technology can illuminate how this evolution is taking place and what can be done to combat spam and reclaim e-mail as the efficient, effective communication tool it was intended to be.There are several widely-used methods for filtering spam, each of which can be defeated by spammers to some degree. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and the methods spammers use to defeat them is the basis of an effective, comprehensive anti-spam strategy.

Signature-based Filters

Signature-based filters examine the contents of known spam, usually derived from honey pots, or dummy e-mail addresses set up specifically to collect spam. Once a honey pot receives a spam message, the content is examined and given a unique identifier. The unique identifier is obtained by assigning a value to each character in the e-mail. Once all characters have been assigned a value, the values are totaled, creating the spams signature. The signature is added to a signature database and sent as a regular update to the e-mail services subscribers. The signature is compared to every e-mail coming in to the network and all matching messages are discarded as spam.The benefit of signature-based filters is that they rarely produce false-positives, or legitimate e-mail incorrectly identified as spam. The drawback of signature-based filters is that they are very easy to defeat. Because they are backward-looking, they only deal with spam that has already been sent. By the time the honey pot receives a spam message, the system assigns a signature, and the update is sent and installed on the subscribers network, the spammer has already sent millions of e-mails. A slight modification of the e-mail message will render the existing signature useless. Furthermore, spammers can easily evade signature-based filters by using special e-mail software that adds random strings of content to the subject line and body of the e-mail. Because the variable content alters the signature of each e-mail sent by the spammer, signature-based spam filters are unable to match the e-mail to known pieces of spam.Developers of signature-based spam filters have learned to identify the tell-tale signs of automated random character generation. But as is often the case, spammers remain a step ahead and have developed more sophisticated methods for inserting random content. As a result, most spam continues to fool signature-based filters.

Rule-based (Heuristic) Filtering

Rule-based filters scan e-mail content for predetermined words or phrases that may indicate a message is spam. For example, if an e-mail administrator includes the word sex on a companys rule-based list, any e-mail containing this word will be filtered.The major drawback of this approach is the difficulty in identifying keywords that are consistently indicative of spam. While spammers may frequently use the words sex and Viagra in spam e-mails, these words are also used in legitimate business correspondence, particularly in the healthcare industry. Additionally, spammers have learned to obfuscate suspect words by using spellings such as S*E*X, or VI a a GRR A. It is impossible to develop dictionaries that identify every possible misspelling of spammy keywords. Additionally, because filtering for certain keywords produces large numbers of false positives, many organizations have found they cannot afford to rely solely on rule-based filters to identify spam.

Blacklists

The goal of blacklisting is to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to crack-down on customers who send spam. A blacklisted ISP is blocked from sending e-mail to organizations. When an ISP is blacklisted, they are provided with a list of actions they must take in order to be removed from the blacklist. This controversial method blocks not just the spammers, but all of the ISPs customers. Blacklisting is generally considered an unfriendly approach to stopping spam because the users most affected by the blacklist are e-mail users who do not send spam. Many argue blacklisting actually damages the utility of e-mail more than it helps stop spam since the potential for blocking legitimate e-mail is so high.In addition to the ethical considerations, there are other problems with blacklists. Many blacklists are not updated frequently enough to maintain effectiveness. Some blacklist administrators are irresponsible in that they immediately block suspect servers without thoroughly investigating complaints or giving the ISP time to respond. Another downside is that blacklists are not accurate enough to catch all spam. Only about half of servers used by spammers, regardless of how diligent the blacklist administrator may be, are ever cataloged in a given blacklist.Blacklists are used because they can be partially effective against spammers who repeatedly use the same ISP or e-mail account to send spam. However, because spammers often change ISPs, re-route e-mail and hijack legitimate servers, the spammer is a moving target. Blacklist administrators are forced to constantly revise lists, and the lag-time between when a spammer begins using a given server and when the blacklist administrator is able to identify the new spam source and add it to the blacklist allows spammers to send hundreds of millions of e-mails. Spammers consider this constant state of flux a part of doing business and are constantly looking for new servers to send spam messages.Blacklists, therefore, have some utility in stopping known spammers. Because of their limitations, however, this data should only be used in conjunction with other sources to determine if a given message is spam.

Whitelists

Whitelists are databases of trusted e-mail sources. The list may contain specific e-mail addresses, IP addresses or trusted domains. E-mails received from a whitelisted source are allowed to pass through the system to the users email box. The list is built when users and e-mail administrators manually add trusted sources to the whitelist. Once built, the catch-rate for spam can be close to 100%, however, whitelists produce an inordinate number of false positives. It is virtually impossible to produce an exhaustive list of all possible legitimate e-mail senders because legitimate e-mail can come from any number of sources. To get around this difficulty, some organizations have instituted a challenge-response methodology. When an unknown sender sends an e-mail to a users account, the system automatically sends a challenge back to the sender. Some challenge-response systems require the sender to read and decipher an image containing letters and numbers. The image is designed to be unreadable by a machine, but easily recognizable by a human. Spammers would not spend the time required to go through a large number of challenge-response e-mails, so they drop the address and move on to those users who dont use such a system.Whitelists are only partially successful and impractical for many users. For example, problems can arise when users register for online newsletters, order products online or register for online services. If the user does not remember to add the new e-mail source to their whitelist, or if the domain or source is entered incorrectly, the communication will fail. Additionally, whitelists impose barriers to legitimate e-mail communication and are viewed by some as just plain rude.Whitelists are not widely used by e-mail users and administrators as a primary tool to fight spam because of the high number of false positives, and the difficulties in creating a comprehensive list of e-mail sources. Because whitelists are not widely used, spammers typically do not develop countermeasures. As with other spam fighting techniques, whitelists are most effective when used in conjunction with other anti-spam tools.

Bayesian Filters

Named after Thomas Bayes, an English mathematician, Bayesian Logic is used in decision making and inferential statistics. Bayesian Filers maintain a database of known spam and ham, or legitimate e-mail. Once the database is large enough, the system ranks the words according to the probability they will appear in a spam message. Words more likely to appear in spam are given a high score (between 51 and 100), and words likely to appear in legitimate e-mail are given a low score (between 1 and 50). For example, the words free and sex generally have values between 95 and 98, whereas the words emphasis or disadvantage may have a score between 1 and 4.Commonly used words such as the and that, and words new to the Bayesian filters are given a neutral score between 40 and 50 and would not be used in the systems algorithm. When the system receives an e-mail, it breaks the message down into tokens, or words with values assigned to them. The system utilizes the tokens with scores on the high and low end of the range and develops a score for the e-mail as a whole. If the e-mail has more spam tokens than ham tokens, the e-mail will have a high spam score. The e-mail administrator determines a threshold score the system uses to allow e-mail to pass through to users. Bayesian filters are effective at filtering spam and minimizing false positives. Because they adapt and learn based on user feedback, Bayesian Filers produce better results as they are used within an organization over time. Bayesian filters are not, however, foolproof. Spammers have learned which words Bayesian Filters consider spammy and have developed ways to insert non-spammy words into e-mails to lower the messages overall spam score. By adding in paragraphs of text from novels or news stories, spammers can dilute the effects of high-ranking words. Text insertion has also caused normally legitimate words that are found in novels or news stories to have an inflated spam score. This may potentially render Bayesian filters less effective over time.Another approach spammers use to fool Bayesian filters is to create less spammy e-mails. For example, a spammer may send an e-mail containing only the phrase, Heres the link. This approach can neutralize the spam score and entice users to click on a link to a Web site containing the spammers message. To block this type of spam, the filter would have to be designed to follow the link and scan the content of the Web site users are asked to visit. This type of filtering is not currently employed by Bayesian filters because it would be prohibitively expensive in terms of server resources and could potentially be used as a method of launching denial of service attacks against commercial servers.As with all single-method spam filtering methodologies, Bayesian filters are effective against certain techniques spammers use to fool spam filters, but are not a magic bullet to solving the spam problem. Bayesian filters are most effective when combined with other methods of spam detection.

The Solution

When used alone, each anti-spam technique has been systematically overcome by spammers. Grandiose plans to rid the world of spam, such as like charging a penny for each e-mail received or forcing servers to solve mathematical problems before delivering e-mail, have been proposed with few results. These schemes are not realistic and would require a large percentage of the population to adopt the same spam eradication method in order to be effective.Working alone, each individual spam-blocking technique works with varying degrees of effectiveness and is susceptible to a certain number of false positives. Fortunately, the solution is already at hand. IronMail, the secure e-mail gateway appliance from CipherTrust, provides a highly accurate solution by correlating the results of single-detection techniques with its industry-leading correlation engine, the Spam Profiler. Learn more about stopping spam by requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way.The core of IronMails spam capabilities, the Spam Profiler analyzes, inspects and scores e-mail on over one thousand different message characteristics. Each method is weighed based on historical accuracy rates and analysis by CipherTrusts experienced research team. Optimizing the Spam Profiler requires precise calibration and testing thousands of combinations of values associated with various message characteristics. To automate this process, CipherTrust developed Genetic Optimization, an advanced analysis technique that replicates cutting-edge DNA matching models. Genetic Optimization identifies the best possible combination of values for all characteristics examined by the Spam Profiler and automatically tunes the IronMail appliance, reducing administrator intervention and assuring optimum protection against spam and spam-born threats.

Take The Next Step

Learn more about how IronMail can secure enterprise e-mail systems by visiting www.ciphertrust.com or requesting CipherTrusts free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way. This resource will provide the information you need to make an informed decision about eliminating spam and securing your e-mail systems.

And How to Stop Them

Signature-based Filters

Rule-based (Heuristic) Filtering

Blacklists

Whitelists

Bayesian Filters

The Solution

Take The Next Step

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

3 Criteria for Controlling Enterprise Spam

2008-05-30T02:56:00.000-07:00

Trust

Or: T*ake Y O U R email ba & ack + From the Sp@mmers! 0400constrictor bubble snake informational

If you have a business, then you have a spam problem. The efficiencies of communicating through e-mail not only benefit organizations like yours; they also benefit the spammers who profit off of sending pernicious e-mails to millions of people every day. In fact, spam is so cost-effective that it costs less than $0.0004 to send a single spam. Thats 25 emails for just one penny!

The Spam Problem

According to Meta Group, Companies are routinely getting 20,000 daily spam messages, putting significant burden (e.g. bandwidth and storage consumption) on mail relays, SMTP gateways, and internal mail servers. To make matters worse, companies have invested millions of dollars in spam-fighting technologies that have been rendered obsolete within months of purchase by the innovation of spammers who have found ways to thwart new technologies along the way. Examples of spammer ingenuity abound. As recently as mid-2003 Bayesian logic was touted as the immutable defense against spam, but by early 2004, most spam had evolved to be Bayesian-proof. There are even programs available for download on the internet that will test your spam for you before you send it to make sure it will get past the spam filters. Clearly, the solution is to partner with a company that specializes in fighting spam. Who you choose is a crucial step because you dont want your solution to become obsolete within a few months, and you certainly dont want to create a problem with false positives.

Criteria 1 Diversity The Cocktail Approach to Filtering Spam

The first step in addressing spam is identifying it. But, unlike viruses, spam identification is not straightforward. There is no smoking gun that clearly indicates to a detection system that a message is a spam. For instance, the common approach of looking for keywords such as Viagra or Free, misses many spams. The method of blocking known spammer IP addresses lags and does nothing to deter determined spammers. Any effective spam detection system must employ multiple techniques for identifying and measuring the probability that a message is spam including the newer heuristic analysis and real-time collaborative spam filtering tools.

Criteria 2 Flexibility Different Strokes for Different Folks

A fundamental issue with spam is defining what exactly constitutes spam. One person may consider any bulk e-mail spam, while another highly values the opt-in bulk e-mails they receive. Different organizations may have policies with very different definitions of what is allowed. A good anti-spam solution must allow administrators to enforce these different rules and even allow them to apply different rules to different users, preferably by integrating with policy tools and user databases such as LDAP directories. It should be able to support differing thresholds for different spam results and adjustable confidence values in spam detection techniques. It should allow administrators to customize responses for inbound or outbound traffic. Rules should allow re-labeling, blocking and quarantining of messages, as well as a test mode where rules are tried without impacting mail flow. Ideally, your solution will include an integrated policy manager, which enforces corporate policy across the entire e-mail system, and allows different rule sets for different users and groups.

Criteria 3 Expertise Know Thy Enemy

Spammers are constantly improving their methods, particularly as corporations have finally begun to fight back. Vendors must be able to develop and deploy policies, signatures, keywords and values to corporations using their solution. They should be developed based on data from a distributed network of customers and other Internet detection points by a team of spam blocking experts. Only by constant improvement can any solution continue to be responsive to spammers even in the face of new threats.

Or: T*ake Y O U R email ba & ack + From the Sp@mmers! 0400constrictor bubble snake informational

The Spam Problem

Criteria 1 Diversity The Cocktail Approach to Filtering Spam

Criteria 2 Flexibility Different Strokes for Different Folks

Criteria 3 Expertise Know Thy Enemy

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Securing the E-mail Boundary: An overview of IronMail or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

Maximizing Email Security ROI: Stop Spam and Save!

2008-05-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

Trust

This is the first of a five-part series on Maximizing Email Security ROI

In the realm of email security threats, the costs of spam are relatively easy to recognize. Although most organizations rarely, if ever, take the time to calculate their spam costs, they can easily account for the losses caused by spam with regards to employee productivity, consumption of IT resources and help desk costs. Harder to measure are the less obvious, and potentially catastrophic, costs incurred through legal liabilities and damage to an organizations reputation that can be caused by an ineffective spam filtering technology.Spam is much more than a nuisanceit costs corporations in both money and human resources. Understanding your exposure and taking steps to mitigate the problem not only saves capital, it can also help lower your exposure to costly litigation and damage to your companys well earned reputation.

Lost Productivity

Each spam message that makes its way past your organizations gateway costs the company money. The actual cost of each individual message is miniscule, but with an estimated 80% of all e-mail messages qualifying as spam, the constant flood of unwanted messages is of grave concern.How much time do employees spend dealing with spam, and how much does it cost you? Ferris Group estimates that the average employee spends 30 minutes each day dealing with spam, equating to 115 hours per employee, per year. Based on interviews with 82 Fortune 500 companies, Nucleus Research claims the average annual cost per employee of dealing with spam is now $1,934. While your costs will vary, it is safe to assume that if you dont have an effective spam filter, you are wasting thousands of dollars per employee per year to manage spam.

IT Resources Consumed

The costs of spam dont stop with the employee. According to CIO Magazine, costs include additional e-mail and networking equipment to maintain e-mail service quality, bandwidth costs from unwanted spam data across Internet links, and the staff costs to maintain and administer these additional loads.

Help Desk Cost

The ongoing barrage of spam generates increased calls to corporate help desks due to complaints and technical problems related to bad files, missing information, messages deleted by mistake and virus outbreaks. When a message is erroneously deleted as spam, Help Desk personnel are generally required to search through system backups to retrieve the missing email. Viruses and worms, frequently delivered via spam messages, also wreak havoc on the Help Desk as users call in for help restoring files and updating signatures. In addition, complaints from angry users tie up resources that could be spent on other issues.

Liability

Spam can force organizations to deal with lawsuits filed by employees for creating a hostile working environment. Spam containing pornography, insulting content or fraudulent phishing schemes can expose organizations that have not taken reasonable steps to combat such attacks. Employees unfamiliar with company policies may forward such content to fellow employees or even contacts outside the company, resulting in sexual harassment or countless other liability lawsuits.Each organizations exposure to such lawsuits varies, but large awards to the plaintiff are not uncommon when they do occur. In fact, the October 2002 issue of TechRepublic states that the average jury award against employers in [sexual harassment lawsuits] is $250,000. That amount often triples when attorney fees and litigation costs are added to the mix.

Reputation Cost

The cost of spam to a business reputation is equally difficult to define. The cost is nothing until something catastrophiclike a phishing attackhappens. The average individual victim of identity theft loses about $500, and businesses lose an average of $4,800. By allowing phishing and spoofing attacks into your business network, your organization is exposing itself, its brand and its employees to enormous risk. If your organizations trademarks or brand are used in phishing attacks, the cost to your companys brand is estimated at between $100,000 and $150,000.

What You Can Do Now To Stop the Spam

Knowing the risks involved in spam is the first step to solving the problem. CipherTrusts FREE whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way describes the issues that put your email system at risk. Download it today to learn more about how you can stop spam, secure your email system, and protect your company and employees from email-borne threats.Part II of this series will describe the issues involved in determining ROI for anti-virus software and services as they apply to email.

This is the first of a five-part series on Maximizing Email Security ROI

Lost Productivity

IT Resources Consumed

Help Desk Cost

Liability

Reputation Cost

What You Can Do Now To Stop the Spam

CipherTrust is the leader in anti-spam and email security. Learn more by downloading our free whitepaper, Controlling Spam: The IronMail Way or by visiting www.ciphertrust.com.

Keep Spam Mail Away From You

2008-05-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of years, spam mail has become perhaps the most terrible headache of email users on the internet. Depending on how popular your mail service provider is and how old your email account is, you may be receiving every day ten to several hundred unwanted emails about advertisements, propaganda, news and a bunch of other topics that you did not and most probably will never ask for in the future. Mail service providers have developed some protection systems to reduce this discomfort their customers are experiencing, such as filters, but sometimes spam attacks can even get past these barriers. Even if these barriers are effective, all those spam mails produce annoying heaps in the junk mail folders just to take up your mail account's precious storage space.

As mail services offering large storage spaces are becoming widespread this year, people are moving to these new accounts and creating their new addresses. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a couple of months since the most famous of these email services, Gmail, has started giving out accounts by invitations and the word has already gotten around that spam attacks have discovered these new fresh targets as well. Although the number of these attacks is low at the moment, it will surely increase and may reach a threat-posing amount in a short period of time.

No matter how well the spam filters are, us email users cannot be fully protected from spam today, but we can still take some precautions to evade these attacks, while registering for new accounts and after. Some crucial tips to avoid spam may be listed as follows:

1. While you're creating an account, do not choose a short username. You will receive spam mail due to dictionary attacks. For example, think of the username "angel". Each address starting with the word "angel" will receive a spam mail:
angel@
angels@
angelic@
angelica@
angelina@
...

2. Since usernames that are to be attacked are generated from the first few letters, it's better to start the username with letter or number series without a meaning:
Example:
ytgkj.username@ or 72149.username@

3. It's always better to use special characters in the user name if they are allowed.
Example:
user-name@, user_name@ or user.name@

4. If you are sure that it's a spam mail, do NOT click the links like "Click to unsubscribe, remove your address from the list" and do NOT reply them with emails having subjects like "Remove", "Unsubscribe" etc. These will verify your email address and will only make your address receive more of them.

5. Some sites may want email addresses for registration. These are potential spam dangers. If you have to use an email address for registration, always use a temporary address. Sites like "Mailinator.com" create temporary mail addresses for a short period of time and you are done with these addresses once you are finished with registration.
If you also have to receive email after you have registered, in other words, when you are filling out forms on the internet, do not use the mail account that you give your friends and relations. Instead, get yourself a free webmail (hotmail, yahoo, etc.) and use that always.

6. Never write your e-mail on the web. Some robots are scanning the web for email adresses. If you need to give your address, write it like :
myaccount "AT" myprovider "Dot" com
instead of 'myaccount@myprovider.com' .

7. When you are sending emails to multiple recipients, always use BCC. Why? If you type the addresses in the CC or To line, all the recipient addresses appear in the mail content when those emails are forwarded. If the forwarded mails reach the spam senders in some way, all these addresses are added to their spam lists.

8. If your webmail provides a junk/bulk mail filter service, make sure that this service is activated. However, all the mail coming into this folder might not be spam. Because the mass emails sent by some sites you register or mail groups that you are a member of are sent by script-based ways, they may be considered as spam and they make their way into these folders. It's good to check this folder once in a while.

9. Finally, make sure that you view the Message Headers fully. How do you do this? For example in Gmail, click "More options > Show original" besides the address received from and in Hotmail, click "Options > Message display settings > Message header > Full". This will allow you to see useful information about the sender of the spam mail you received.
If you are sure that it's a spam mail, copy the header information as it is and report it to spamcop.com. From the same web address, you can send the mail service provider the information about the spam mail.

Please do not forget that these are only precautions that you can take against spam individually and will not stop spam completely, but at least it will help in keeping spam away from you.

Webmaster of Extreme Gmail Forums - http://www.email-x.net

Block Spam with An Easy Behavioral Change

2008-05-24T02:57:00.000-07:00

E-mails now have a connection back to their servers. I will leave the technical aspects out of this article. Instead, I will walk you through how information from your computer is getting back to them.

You have probably experienced this already, an e-mail lands in your box with many symbols in the subject line created with the Shift Key plus a Number Key. This is the most common one. For example, it may look like this: &*)(*&^%$! Except the length of the symbols are longer.

When you click on it to delete it, any further action, including the deletion of the e-mail seems to go into la-la land. In other words, you can do anything else. This may last up to a minute or two depending on your computer speed. You have just been pinged and information is going back to their server saying there is a live connection.

In addition, because the symbols change all the time, its difficult to block them unless you use a program like Spam Arrest.

Here is an easy way and excellent way to protect from this and all you have to do is change the way you dial in and out.

If you have a DSL line or any other type Internet connection that is open all the time. Control how frequently you allow e-mails to upload into your system. If you use Outlook, you go into Tools, Options, select the Mail Delivery tab and change "check messages every" 30, 60 or 90 minutes. This also helps on time management if e-mails are eating up too much of your time.

Next, after all your e-mails are uploaded into your software, whether you set the time management feature above, close off the Internet connection. It will not stop the lost 30 or 60 seconds these e-mail lock up your computer but you have cut off any possible pinging.

After you close the Internet connection, read, review and delete the e-mails. After completing this, you can go ahead and reopen the Internet connection, and send your responses.

If you have a dial-up connection, you can do this same method, except you will ignore the Mail Delivery option mentioned earlier.

This actually isn't just happening on e-mails with these symbols. There are other programmed e-mails dumping cookies on your computer. I will not address how to remove cookies in this article. To find out how your software can remove your cookies use F1 (help) on your keypad in your e-mail software to find the answer before. WindowsXP also has additional information for removing cookies under: Start, Help and Support.

Catherine Franz, a eight-year Certified Professional Coach,
Graduate of Coach University, Mastery University, editor of
three ezines, columnist, author of thousands of articles
website: http://www.abundancecenter.com
blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

Demand for Spam? It exists

2008-05-23T03:00:00.000-07:00

Do you like spam? No, I'm not kidding. Everybody knows what spam is, almost everybody seems to have learned by heart simple advice like "do not click ..." "do not respond..." , "do not buy..." but
On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. "This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.
The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.

Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.
Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine ‘live' email accounts, which means more spam. What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.

Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.

Blunder 2 -- trying to unsubscribe to spam using the ‘unsubscribe' link in the email -- 18% of respondents
Some users are naive enough to think that spammers really won't send any junk mail to their addresses if they tell them not to. Haven't they heard that spammers use the unsubscribe link solely to identify active email accounts. When individual email addresses or entire domains are found to be active, they are doomed to flood of spam.

Blunder 3 -- What's more: Over 10% of respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. Sending out huge volumes of spam is very cheap, so let's face it--spam is an effective means of advertising. Spam is booming, and these 10% users who actually bought anything advertised by spam, are partly to blame for it.

The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work. Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam. Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users. Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users exercise bad email behaviour."
On March 23, 2005 Mirapoint and the Radicati Group, a consulting and market research firm, released preliminary results of their end-user survey on email hygiene. "This preliminary data is surprising and somewhat shocking to us," said Marcel Nienhuis, market analyst at the Radicati Group.
The survey shows that some end users haven't learned the lesson and still make the same blunders.

Blunder 1 -- clicking on embedded links within spam (not including the unsubscribe link) -- 31% of respondents have done it at least once. The most dangerous mistake.
Clicking on any embedded links in spam messages helps spammers determine ‘live' email accounts, which means more spam. What's worse, users can pick viruses, Trojans or other malicious code--just by clicking on embedded links. It may cause various problems, including loss of confidential information--identity theft, and loss of money from bank accounts as a result.

Users shouldn't forget about such threat as phishing. Not long ago, on February. 15, 2005, it was the Radicati Group that pointed out --fraud and phishing types of email are one of the fastest growing segments of spam. In the first quarter of 2005 the Radicati Group expects fraudulent emails to reach 8% of all spam.

Blunder 2 -- trying to unsubscribe to spam using the ‘unsubscribe' link in the email -- 18% of respondents
Some users are naive enough to think that spammers really won't send any junk mail to their addresses if they tell them not to. Haven't they heard that spammers use the unsubscribe link solely to identify active email accounts. When individual email addresses or entire domains are found to be active, they are doomed to flood of spam.

Blunder 3 -- What's more: Over 10% of respondents have purchased products advertised in spam. Sending out huge volumes of spam is very cheap, so let's face it--spam is an effective means of advertising. Spam is booming, and these 10% users who actually bought anything advertised by spam, are partly to blame for it.

The consequences can be very serious when such a user is at work. Online criminals find more and more ways of stealing valuable information, some of these techniques include spam. Spam filters won't solve the whole problem; much still depends on end users. Marcel Nienhuis, analyst from the Radicati Group, was absolutely right when said " no technology in the world can protect an organisation if users exercise bad email behaviour."

Alexandra Gamanenko currently works at Raytown Corporation, LLC—an independent software developing company. This company provides software capable of disabling information-stealing modules, which can be hidden inside spyware as well as viruses, worms and Trojans.
Learn more -- visit the company's website
www.anti-keyloggers.com

What SPAM Means:

2008-05-22T03:28:00.000-07:00

Darren Miller
Has anyone else noticed the sudden blast of unsolicited e-mail (spam) loaded with url's for the unsuspecting and curious Internet surfer to click on?

Has anyone else noticed the sudden blast of unsolicited e-mail (spam) loaded with url's for the unsuspecting and curious Internet surfer to click on?

What's even better, the bulk of this SPAM is in a foreign language. I was at a neighborhood party this weekend and you can't imagine the number of people who asked me for assistance with this. They have no idea what to do.

The sad fact is there are a lot of Stupid People who have nothing better to do and can't seem to find a better way of making a buck than Annoying Me and everyone else subject to their stupidity with spam. I guess that's a little harsh. Not really.

How Does The Average Person Deal With This

I wrote in a previous article how bad a feel for the average person having to deal with such things. It is increasingly becoming a nightmare for all to deal with. For the technical among us, it's not as bad given that we deal with such things on a technical level almost everyday.

Given this current flood of SPAM I thought I would post an article I wrote quite some time ago. It's a short article, and may be old news for some, but I can tell you that many people still don't follow the basic's when dealing with SPAM.

How You May Be Helping Spammers

I can't imagine that anyone with an e-mail address has not received unsolicited e-mail or spam in one form or another. What do you do when you receive these types of e-mails. Do you delete them right away, respond to them informing the sender you do not wish to receive them, or forward them to a friend whom you think might be interested in the information?

When the Internet as we know it was very young and most unsolicited e-mails where either by accident or the result of opt-in subscriptions, you could respond with the word "unsubscribe" in the reply subject and your name was taken off the list. That quickly changed once people found out how powerful a marketing tool e-mail was. Now, most of the time you respond to unsolicited e-mails you are letting the sender know that your e-mail address is active or alive. Instead of being taken off the list you are targeted more aggressively. The sender of the e-mail may also sell your e-mail address to other e-marketers, substantially increasing the number of unsolicited e-mails your receive.

WHow Do Spammers Get My E-mail Address

Well, there are quite a few ways, but one of the ways spammers get hold of your e-mail address is literally by guessing. For instance, say your e-mail address is part of the domain "-notrealdomain-.com", and your e-mail address is "me@-notrealdomain-.com", the spammers have programs that will generate thousands of combinations of names / domains i.e. "me@-notrealdomain-.com", "you@-notrealdomain-.com", "them@-notrealdomain-.com" hoping that somewhere along the line the target e-mail address exists. It's really not difficult to do, since a computer can do this over and over again. If you receive one of these e-mails and reply to it, you have just informed the sender that they did indeed find a live address. It's all downhill from there.

Spoofing E-mail Addresses

Another interesting tactic is to send someone an e-mail and make it appear as if it came from your address. Have you ever received an e-mail from someone you don't know and don't have in you contact list asking you to stop sending them unsolicited e-mails? Many people experience this problem. Basically, the spammer made the recipient of the spam think you sent it to them. This is called e-mail spoofing and is relatively easy to do. The spammers use mail servers that allow something called "mail relay." This allows them to send e-mails from any source address (even yours) to any target address.

Conclusion

A few things to keep in mind when dealing with unsolicited e-mails and spam:

If you are starting to receive SPAM in alternate languages, check your e-mail client for the ability to filter / block SPAM by specifying language types.

If you only speak English, and don't expect to receive e-mail in German, then block it;

If your SPAM filter downloads data from your vendor for known SPAM sites make sure to perform and schedule the download to happen frequently;

If you receive e-mail or spam from someone you don't know, do not respond to it, just delete it;

If someone informs you that they are receiving spam from your e-mail address, inform them that it was not sent by you and most likely came from a spammer who spoofed your address. Tell them to just delete it;

Never give out your e-mail address unless you are sure the site or organization will be responsible for it's privacy;

If you are going to sign up for something like a news article or other information, read their privacy statement, agreement, and disclaimer before doing so; And

Review the entire privacy statement to make sure there are no check boxes or radio buttons on by default. You never know what you are agreeing to.

These are just a few of the things you can do to help prevent SPAM from becoming a huge burden. You will most likely not be able to prevent all SPAM from getting to your inbox, but you sure can decrease the number.

Darren Miller is an Information Security Consultant with over sixteen years experience. He has written many technology & security articles, some of which have been published in nationally circulated magazines & periodicals. Darren is a staff writer for www.defendingthenet.com

How To Stop Unwanted Email Spam

2008-05-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

You can stop unwanted email spam, you can choose to reduce spam email or you can do nothing and continue to be annoyed. Those are your only choices because spam email is not likely to go away.

Every single one of us would love to stop unwanted emails but only a very small percentage of people do anything except complain about spam.

You might remember a couple of years ago they passed a new federal spam law that was supposed to eliminate spam email. So why is spam still around and why is it so difficult to get rid of it?

Email spammers buy lists of email addresses from list brokers, who compile their lists by harvesting email addresses from the Internet. Then they send millions of unwanted email messages to these email addresses with one click of a mouse.

Email spammers make huge amounts of money from these lists and that's why they do it. These email spammers are breaking the federal spam law, The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, in every way possible.

This federal spam law, which became effective January 1, 2004, is next to impossible to enforce. Email spammers make so much money they can afford to outsmart The Federal Trade Commission with sophisticated technology.

Now that you know the origin of spam email and why email spammers are sending this junk you realize that spam is not likely to ever go away. But that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. Here are a couple of ways to significantly reduce spam that won't cost you a cent.

Don't display your email address in newsgroup postings, chat rooms or in an online service's membership directory. Sometimes email spammers use these sources to harvest email addresses.

Another thing you can do is create two email addresses with one for personal messages and the other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat rooms.

You can also create an account at a disposable or free email address service. You can then have those emails forwarded to your permanent email address. If the disposable address starts to receive spam, you can turn if off without affecting the permanent address.

You should also create a unique email address because email spammers often use dictionary attacks to sort through possible name combinations at some Internet Service Providers. A common name, like johndoe or thesmiths may get more spam than a unique name like fx721OMe9.

Check your email account to see if it provides a tool to filter out potential spam or a way to channel spam into a bulk email folder. When you're choosing an Internet Service Provider consider what email options they offer.

If you want to end your headaches, you can stop unwanted email spam altogether. All it takes is installing an Internet spam filter. Most are reasonably priced between $25 and $40 depending on where you get it.

Once you install an Internet spam filter you'll wonder why it took you so long because it takes all of the frustration away from your email.

A good Internet spam filter will completely eliminate spam email and that lets you take back control of your Internet message Inbox. You'll have to find something else to get annoyed about because a good Internet spam filter will block 100% of unwanted spam.

Internet spam filters stop unwanted email forever, and after all, isn't that the idea?

This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com
We offer you the safest, most effective and easy-to-use Internet spam filter available, blocking 100% of unwanted spam at
http://www.spyware-information.com/anti-spam-filter.html

A new release of Spam Blocker from Softinform Version 2.1Soft

2008-05-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

A new release of Spam Blocker from Softinform Version 2.1

One of the major problems in the Internet is nothing more nor less than unwanted advertising letters, also known as "spam" - wasted incoming megabytes of information. The mail server filters block only a fraction of proposals to "increase" or "relax". The mighty "authorization" protection is, first of all, expensive (let's not forget the monthly fee), and second of all, it is not very convenient for the people on your contact list (they will have to go through a long and humdrum "access" process). If you want to rid your mail box of "spam", you need a comprehensive anti-ad "shield" that will save the money you spend on traffic by downloading bulky mail, as well as the time you spend on viewing and deleting useless emails.

The new version of Spam Blocker 2.1 delivered by the SoftInform company provides maximum efficient protection for user computer (user mailbox in particular) from torrents of "spam". This is due to the fact that all correspondence is analyzed before it is downloaded from the mail server. The application checks the mail and retrieves the headings of all letters pending in the user mailbox (email addresses, sender names, letter subjects, etc.).
The new release of "remote" ad blocker features a substantially tuned up interface. The added nice-to-haves include automatic and manual mail check buttons and a visualized process of receiving mail (an animated icon in the system tray and a tool tip with the total number of letters and the number of letters blocked by the application). The main alterations, however, concerned the "technical" facet of the application. Spam Blocker 2.1 is sported as a self-learning application. The new version of the spam-filter automatically registers sender names and servers (domain addresses) in the black (with letters marked as spam) and white (correct) lists.

By using various settings of Spam Blocker 2.1 you can fine-adjust the application to suit your needs. Various modes for checking messages (automatic and manual), support of an unlimited number of accounts, checking the mail box at set intervals (e.g., every five minutes) or at user's will, updating system lists, flexible rule settings and lists editing ability make Spam Blocker 2.1 a convenient and irreplaceable tool for blocking "spam".

Sick and tired of endless "spam"? Registering new ("clean") mail boxes over and over again? Every day dozens of letters for you and thousands for your company burning up megabytes of traffic that is by no means free? All it takes is to install Spam Blocker 2.1.
And watch annoying and useless e-mail advertising disappear.

You can download the trail version of Spam Blocker from:
http://spam-blocker.adscleaner.com/download/spamblocker.exe
You will find more information on the official site: http://spam-blocker.adscleaner.com
If you have any questions, please write to: max@offliner.com, Max Maglias, PR-manager at SoftInform.

Can one really get through those SPAM filters?

2008-05-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

The e-mail marketing scenario has certainly changed over the past
year or so (the most significant changes being the increase in
e-mail blocking and filtering). These changes have resulted in
updates to e-mail marketing best practices that all legitimate
e-mail marketers should follow. The difference is that some of
these practices are now required by law. An innumerable amount
of SPAM complaints have forced the law to enforce certain
norms that should be complied to so as to keep your business
out of disputes.
Hence, there are certain precautions which are recommended to
keep your marketing campaigns unblocked and on the other hand
law friendly.

There are a couple of questions which need to be answered before
you press that send button:

Are you using a good permission policy?
Make sure you have a preexisting business relationship and/or
affirmative consent i.e. the recipient of your e-mail has made
a purchase, requested information, responded to a questionnaire
or a survey, or had off-line contact with you and that he/she
has been clearly and fully notified of the collection and use
of his/her e-mail address and has consented prior to such
collection and use.

Now, coming to the "From" and "Subject" part of the e-mail:

Does your "From" line include your company name or brand?
Is your "Subject" line the right length? (5-8 words, 40
characters including spaces)
Does your "Subject" line describe a specific benefit?
Does your "Subject" line include your brand?
Does your "Subject" line create a sense of urgency?

After implementing the above, the body of the e-mail comes into
action:
Mailing to a targeted audience eliminates the chances of being
filtered in the future. Is your e-mail personalized with the
recipient's first name, last name or both, if appropriate?
With respect to the above, it should also be kept in mind that
the consent has been taken to collect the recepient's details.

According to the law, all the e-mail campaigns should include a
way for recipients to unsubscribe or opt-out. This can be in the
form of a link or instructions provided anywhere in the e-mail
And the most important of all, unsubscribe requests must be
handled within 10 days of the request. Apart from this, the law
also requires you to include your physical address in the e-mail
campaign.
Follow these and you are a legitimate business in the the e-mail
arena.
Remember, when your answer is "yes" to these questions, you are
ready to hit the send button and maximize your success.

For more information on legitimate online marketing practices,
visit www.lead-solutions.com.

Anubhav Sinha is the webmaster and creator of lead-solutions.com which is a reknowned newsletter in the field of internet marketing and advertising.

I Think I've Become A Spam Addict

2008-05-13T03:49:00.000-07:00

I THINK I'VE BECOME A SPAM ADDICT

I recently wrote an article, "5 Reasons Why You Should Post
A Free Classified Ad" and have received a lot of positive
feedback about the article but nobody said anything nice
about the spamsters.

I tried to imagine what the Internet would be like without
spam and concluded my life would be negatively impacted by
it's absence.

Most of the spam I get is funny. Ridiculous claims, poor
syntax and bad spelling seem to be the constants.
Sometimes when I try to reply to their scheme I am told by
the server that they have been shut down. These pathetic
souls are promoting something that is, at least
temporarily, out of business. They cite U.S. House and
Senate bills that died in session as evidence they are not
spamsters. I have actually been advised that unsolicited
bulk email is not spam.

When I check my email and find no new messages it's a let
down. I feel unpopular, unloved. If it's a slow day and
all I have is a little spam I read it. It's pretty obvious
these front line spamsters have been taken in by the slick
website that provides a bundle of services for a fee which
includes "blasting" a pitch to millions of "opt in" email
addresses. I feel better just knowing there is somebody
dumber than Stupidman. They're so dumb they probably don't
know they're spamming plus they paid for the privilege.

I used to save the "Nigerian" letters that arrived by snail
mail. The stamps were pretty and there was some variation
in the story line. Visitors that came to my office were
amused by my collection and often requested copies. I
received a Nigerian email a couple of weeks ago that was
sent from a Yahoo! account.

What a pleasant, nostalgic experience. The poor grammar,
their admission of stealing $70,000,000 from the Nigerian
government (death sentence ?), offering me 30% to committ
a federal crime by laundering the money. All I had to do
was provide them with the information necessary to raid my
bank account and steal my identity. Sure it was spam, but
it was entertaining. The Yahoo! account made me suspicious
that this might be a "fake" Nigerian scheme. I hope not,
as I thought it was uplifting to know that the Nigerians
were using the Internet to improve their economy.

I've even received some educational spam. Got a long chain
letter scheme in Spanish (or Spammish as it is referred to
in the Stupidman household). It became a project for my
son, Greased Lightning, and me to translate. As he'll be
taking Spanish II next year this was a worthwhile family
project. He even enjoyed it.

I don't like receiving the porn spam. It might be okay if
I was single but I'm not. I worry that I'll be accused by
The Boss, Mrs. Stupidman, or the kids of being a porn
addict. (It's bad enough being a spam addict.) All I can
do is delete it. On the rare occasions when they offer an
"unsubscribe" you have to do it at a website. That sounds
like a good way to get on even more porn lists.

If you are viewing an empty mail box and missing out on the
rich, cultural experiences like the Nigerian letter and
Spammish email, it may not be because you are unpopular.
It's probably due to your spam filters. Turn them off,
have some fun and read the spam.

Stupidman, Internet Guru Trainee. Doesn't that say it all.

How To Prevent Being Lynched By Heavy Handed Spam Laws

2008-05-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

California's new heavy handed spam law, slated to take effect on 1 January 2004, not only provides stiff fines PER SPAM EMAIL sent. It also opens the doors wide for civil litigation against a spammer, and gross amounts of cash recovery for "damages" done to the recipient. In a society that is already embroiled in lawsuit frenzy, this law appears to be a ticket to instant riches for any California resident that owns an email account.

The term "spam" of course, refers to unwanted commercial e-mail that clogs millions of computer mailboxes every day. The Internet culture's current mindset toward spam is so near to reaching critical mass, it's akin to that of a rabid and out of control lynch mob in old Tombstone - to put it succinctly, "shucks, let's hang somebody."

While 30 or so states in the US now have anti-spam laws on the books, most of them are difficult to enforce against real spammers (the ones who send multi-millions of emails at a whack, hawking this week's special snake oil.) Those people often are located outside US borders, and are about as easy to track down as a ghost.

It's my prognostication that few if any real spammers will be lynched. The people who are most likely to be harmed are legitimate businesses who participate openly in electronic marketing, conducting their affairs above board with real addresses and real phone numbers.

Small emarketers who derive part or all of their income from email marketing, and have worked to develop their own opt-in emailing list, appear to be the ones who are most vulnerable to aggressive anti-spam laws.

The fact is this: Sooner or later, some list member will "forget" that s/he opted-in, and will inevitably scream SPAM at the top of their lungs. With the prospect for major remuneration under the California law, there undoubtedly will be those who suddenly contract a case of chronic "opt-in amnesia." Managing the most valid opt-in emailing list in the Universe is about to become even more taxing.

What To Do?

1. - Develop an iron-clad opt-in agreement that the new subscriber must read and electronically agree to (via a radio button, checkbox, etc.) before s/he is presented with your opt-in form.

2. - Rigorously use a double opt-in subscription process, where the first message the new subscriber receives will require them to "confirm" the voluntary status of their opt-in action. It's likely that this process will reduce somewhat the number of new subscribers who make it all the way to your opt-in list. Still, you'll wind up with a higher quality list, containing subscribers who are serious about reading your emails.

3. - Email any existing lists you have, explaining that you are cleaning your lists, and asking those subscribers to re-subscribe under your new policy. (Offer them something good in return for their trouble.) You may lose some subscribers, but those are probably the ones who never paid attention to your mailings to begin with, and are most likely to suddenly contract "amnesia."

4. - Retain electronic confirmations of all opt-in actions. It would be wise to save those records externally to disk on a daily basis.

5. - Provide an automated removal link in all emails sent. A "reply to this email for removal" or "email this address for removal" statement may not be sufficient in the near future.

7. - Sign all messages you send, top and bottom, with your full name and email address. Keeping your name in front of your subscribers will greatly improve their ability to recall their voluntary opt-in action.

8. - Be sure your email subject line relates directly to the context of your message body. This is a prominent clause in most current spam laws.

9. - Use only a valid and working return address for any email sent. The recipient must be able to reach you (or a member of your staff) by clicking the reply button to any email received.

While I don't appreciate being spammed, I've also learned to quietly use the technology available to me, ie. email filters and delete buttons. Still, it won't surprise me in the least to soon hear of some guy who has filed a million dollar lawsuit because he contracted carpal tunnel syndrome in his "delete" finger.

Blind and uninformed legislation appears to be laying a foundation for just such a frivolous boondoggle, as slick legislators continue to jump on the bandwagon, "taking action" on popular social issues as a self-serving exercise in ensuring their own re-elections.

What I fear most however, is a terminally diseased social consciousness that refuses to take individual responsibility, while expecting big government to be a panacea for all ills, no matter how small or insignificant.

Dan B. Cauthron runs several websites and publishes his 100% original and highly opinionated *Revenew QuikTips* online whenever he has something significant to say. To subscribe please visit: http://DanBCauthron.com Dan also operates: http://Earn-Revenew.com
http://SlideInADSGenerator.com

Search Engine Spam: Useful Knowledge for the Web Site Promoter

2008-05-10T01:56:00.000-07:00

Before getting started on using gateway pages and other HTML techniques to improve your search engine ranking, you need to know a little about spam and spamdexing. Spamming the search engines (or spamdexing) is the practice of using unethical or unprofessional techniques to try to improve search engine rankings. You should be aware of what constitutes spamming so as to avoid trouble with the search engines. For example, if you have a page with a white background, and you have a table that has a blue background and white text in it, you are actually spamming the Infoseek engine without even knowing it! Infoseek will see white text and see a white page background, concluding that your background color and your page color are the same so you are spamming! It will not be able to tell that the white text is actually within a blue table and is perfectly legible. It is silly, but that will cause that page to be dropped off the index. You can get it back on by changing the text color in the table to, say, a light gray and resubmitting the page to Infoseek. See what a difference that makes? Yet you had no idea that your page was considered spam! Generally, it is very easy to know what not to do so as to avoid being labeled a spammer and having your pages or your site penalized. By following a few simple rules, you can safely improve your search engine rankings without unknowingly spamming the engines and getting penalized for it.

What constitutes spam?
Some techniques are clearly considered as an attempt to spam the engines. Where possible, you should avoid these:

Keyword stuffing. This is the repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Search engines now have the ability to analyze a page and determine whether the frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to the rest of the words in the document.
Invisible text. Some webmasters stuff keywords at the bottom of a page and make their text color the same as that of the page background. This is also detectable by the engines.
Tiny text. Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.
Page redirects. Some engines, especially Infoseek, do not like pages that take the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques.
Meta tags stuffing. Do not repeat your keywords in the Meta tags more than once, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to your site's content.
Never use keywords that do not apply to your site's content.
Do not create too many doorways with very similar keywords.
Do not submit the same page more than once on the same day to the same search engine.
Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a web page, give the copies different file names, and submit them all. That will be interpreted as an attempt to flood the engine.
Code swapping. Do not optimize a page for top ranking, then swap another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.
Do not submit doorways to submission directories like Yahoo!
Do not submit more than the allowed number of pages per engine per day or week. Each engine has a limit on how many pages you can manually submit to it using its online forms. Currently these are the limits: AltaVista 1-10 pages per day; HotBot 50 pages per day; Excite 25 pages per week; Infoseek 50 pages per day but unlimited when using e-mail submissions. Please note that this is not the total number of pages that can be indexed, it is just the total number that can be submitted. If you can only submit 25 pages to Excite, for example, and you have a 1000 page site, that's no problem. The search engine will come crawling your site and index all pages, including those that you did not submit.
Gray Areas
There are certain practices that can be considered spam by the search engine when they are actually just part of honest web site design. For example, Infoseek does not index any page with a fast page refresh. Yet, refresh tags are commonly used by web site designers to produce visual effects or to take people to a new location of a page that has been moved. Also, some engines look at the text color and background color and if they match, that page is considered spam. But you could have a page with a white background and a black table somewhere with white text in it. Although perfectly legible and legitimate, that page will be ignored by some engines. Another example is that Infoseek advises against (but does not seem to drop from the index) having many pages with links to one page. Even though this is meant to discourage spammers, it also places many legitimate webmasters in the spam region (almost anyone with a large web site or a web site with an online forum always has their pages linking back to the home page). These are just a few examples of gray areas in this business. Fortunately, because the search engine people know that they exist, they will not penalize your entire site just because of them.

What are the penalties for spamdexing?
There is an inappropriate amount of fear over the penalties of spamming. Many webmasters fear that they may spam the engines without their knowledge and then have their entire site banned from the engines forever. That just doesn't happen that easily! The people who run the search engines know that you can be a perfectly legitimate and honest web site owner who, because of the nature of your web site, has pages that appear to be spam to the engine. They know that their search engines are not smart enough to know exactly who is spamming and who happens to be in the spam zone by mistake. So they do not generally ban your entire site from their search engine just because some of your pages look like spam. They only penalize the rankings of the offending pages. Any non-offending page is not penalized. Only in the most extreme cases, where you aggressively spam them and go against the recommendations above, flooding their engine with spam pages, will they ban your entire site. Some engines, like HotBot, do not even have a lifetime ban policy on spammers. As long as you are not an intentional and aggressive spammer, you should not worry about your entire site being penalized or banned from the engines. Only the offending pages will have their ranking penalized.

Is there room for responsible search engine positioning?
Yes! Definitely! In fact, the search engines do not discourage responsible search engine positioning. Responsible search engine position is good for everybody - it helps the users find the sites they are looking for, it helps the engines do a better job of delivering relevant results, and it gets you the traffic you want!

As a webmaster, you should not be too afraid that you are spamming the search engines in your quest for higher search engine rankings. No question about it, though, spam is something that every webmaster should understand thoroughly. Fortunately, it is easy to understand it. So learn the rules, re-examine your web pages, resubmit to the engines, then create gateway pages to get better ranking on the engines, using the rules above. If you need any more information on search engine spamming and search engine positioning, see http://www.searchpositioning.com. I wish you the best of fortune in your web promotional efforts!

David Gikandi

support@searchpositioning.com
SearchPositioning.com
http://www.searchpositioning.com
Positioning is 95% of your business!

Why I Love Spam!

2008-05-09T03:39:00.000-07:00

Why I Love Spam!
By Paul White

Actually I hate it as much as everyone else when I get an anonymous email in my box from someone who has harvested my email address, and who always has a return address like:- XX1234@hotmail.com

Luckily I have a special tool installed on my email program. It's called a delete button!

What I do love however, is the type of unwanted emails you get when you are a member of a safe list, or if you mail to an FFA page, or even the solo ads which you get when you subscribe to some newsletters.

Those of you who have used these FFA mailing services know that you get hundreds or thousands of emails all at once, from people trying to sell you something.

The inexperienced marketer would use a junk email account to collect these, and then delete them all without even looking at them.

But the really smart marketer realises that these ads are a rich source of learning!

You could pay a thousand dollars for a marketing course which would teach you as much as you learn from looking through these ads!

So when you do look at them, what is the first thing that strikes you?

Yes! You can't possibly read them all!

So which do you choose to look at?

Those with the great looking subject lines.

Those that have that magic 'something' that set themselves apart from all of the other ads.

Now can you use whatever these ideas are for your own advertising campaign?

The same of course applies once you open the email. Does the headline grab you? Does it make you want to read on, or does this become just another one which you delete?

There is no single way to get your own ad to stand out. If there were then everyone would use it, and it would no longer be effective.

Trust your instincts. If it grabs your attention, then chances are, other people will respond to it as well.

Don't copy someone elses ad exactly though! Just use the feel of it, use similar words, similar layout etc.
until it becomes your own.

And keep experimenting, until you get the response you want.

And keep reading and looking at other people's ads to see what you should, and just as importantly, what you should not be doing!
Paul White is a former teacher, and is now a highly successful online marketer. He helps people all around the world to become successful online. Visit the popular 'Profit Websites' at:- http://www.profitwebsites.com

Who Sends Out Spam?

2008-05-09T03:36:00.000-07:00

Who Sends Out Spam?
by Bob Osgoodby

There are a number of different groups of people who send out unsolicited commercial email, or as it is called spam. First there are those that don't provide a real existing email address and use one that is forged. They're no dummies - they don't want a ton of complaints sent to them. They may also not provide a mechanism that someone can use to be removed from future mailings.

Every jurisdiction on the state level and country level should pass legislation similar to that which exists in Utah, that requires that their real email address is used and there is a mechanism in place to be removed. Non-compliance fines should be severe.

The really bad guys, use the address of someone else which is valid. The holder of that email address could indeed be in for a rocky road, and even face the possibility that their ISP will shut them down. If this ever happens to you, and it will be obvious by the amount of "hate mail" you receive, immediately notify your ISP so they can takes steps to protect you.

Then there is the "poor soul" who isn't aware of the conventions of the web, joins an affiliate program, buys a disk with millions of names and starts his own advertising campaign. These people are identifiable and will be shut down in a matter of hours. In the "school of hard knocks", they have learned their first lesson.

Most people who purchase web space from a provider are put on a web server with 254 other people. If any one of those people start spamming, it clogs the server and slows down the service for everyone else. In fact, many servers have a built in "self protection mechanism" and if the number of returned emails (bounces) exceeds 500, it automatically shuts your account down. If people start complaining about the slowness of their service the technician on duty will quickly identify who is causing the problem.

Now we come to the professional spammers. These people follow all the rules, and send out bulk mail on the behalf of others. They use a legitimate email address and provide a method to "opt out" from receiving future emails from them. The fees they charge range from 2 cents to 5 cents for each email sent. Their lists are cleansed daily, and if they say they can deliver 100,000 impressions, they can. But, do the arithmetic - they will be receiving between $2,000 and $5,000 for a mailing of that size.

These "pros" have their own servers, don't go through the various ISPs, have their own dedicated high speed telecommunication links and servers, and are virtually "bullet proof" as far as being shut down.

Professional spamming is big business, and those who are involved have a lot of money tied up in equipment and ongoing costs. If national legislation is enacted similar to the "Utah Model", they will comply. Any attempt to stop them will likely result in failure. If they can't comply, their investment is so large, they would likely move out of the jurisdiction imposing the rules to someplace which is more lenient.

But let's think about the problem of spam a bit deeper. I'm sick to death with the porno ads - these people should not send me stuff I simply don't want to receive. They can send email to people who have agreed to receive it, but leave me alone as well as all the kids who receive their garbage. Violators should be heavily penalized for sending this out to people who have stated they don't want it.

I also don't want to get ongoing ads for affiliate programs or for mortgage services I don't want or need. Give me an "opt-out" system that works and penalize those who don't follow the rules.

I really don't care if I receive legitimate offers from reputable companies, and I will most likely read them once this problem is brought under control.

What we need is a national "opt-out" list. The penalties should be severe for those who send email to someone who is on this list. The list should be available to anyone who wants it to ensure they will not send advertising to them. There should also be a clearinghouse where complaints could be sent for those violating the law.

But there should also be a mechanism to protect the innocents such as publishers of newsletters. If I say something that someone doesn't like, they should not be allowed to report me for spamming. Any complaint received should require that a copy of what they received be included with their complaint. Face it - there are some people who simply react and make a complaint without following the "unsubscribe" options. There are others who simply forgot they requested something, and when they receive it go "ballistic". And then there are the zealots who fire off a complaint, about any email received that is not from a friend or family member.

Yes Virginia, there are some people who are not the "sharpest knives in the drawer", and any legislation enacted should account for this. We need legislation like this, and if enacted, perhaps the Internet would truly be a more viable place to do business.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby's Free Ezine the "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips - Monday thru Friday. Instructions on how to place your ad are in the Newsletter. Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm

When Computers Talk to Each Other -OR- Spamming My Autoresponder

2008-05-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Autoresponders are marvelous tools! They are YOU working 24/7, answering questions and advertising your products automatically. All you need is for someone to send an e-mail to your autoresponder address, and the autoresponder takes over from there to convince the prospect. Simple, huh?

Of course, the person who will be emailing you (hoping that you are a real person and not a machine) ALSO has a product to promote and an autoresponder to do it with. He or she uses his/her autoresponder address to request more information from you, with a smug grin about their cleverness, because, after all, they cant be bothered to answer all the questions you will have about THEIR product, and you just MIGHT complain that they are responding to an ad with an ad, and who wants that kind of hassle?

Their autoresponder sets off your mail sequence and you are happy because you have a lead receiving all your Pulitzer Prize ads. As soon as your first email is received by your leads autoresponder, HER autoresponder starts sending HER Pulitzer Prize ads to YOUR autoresponder and SHE is happy, because SHE got a lead.

What we end up with is two autoresponders that know one heck of a lot about each other. I see a romance budding somewhere between the "joins now!" and the "see its!" And it looks like a lasting relationship too. I mean, one is offering instant and enduring wealth while the other is spouting promises of an easy and blissful life. Electronic Heaven, here we come!

Exaggeration? No way! I know for a fact that my autoresponder is having a sordid affair with a suave and debonair gold digger called "digitalgold", because they keep writing to each other long letters full of promises and quivering anticipation.

And where do humans come into this equation? Frankly, nowhere - except of course, in footing the bill for this expensive digital love affair. And then they wonder "but why arent my marketing efforts working? I wrote my ads, I set up my autoresponder - everything is done 'by the book'. It must be the fault of the program I joined!" And, yes, sometimes it IS the fault of the program you joined, but more often than not is the lack of professionalism that hounds Internet Marketing.

It seems that some people hide behind the anonymity of the nickname and the impersonal nature of the Internet to treat the field as their own personal playground, not taking into consideration that the one they are hurting most is themselves. Why? Because I will never buy a product from my autoresponders suitor, "digitalgold". The whole idea of a business relationship has been shattered by a thoughtless action.

Then, of course, to avoid all the autoresponder messages to my legitimately placed ads, I too, will place an autoresponder as my return address. And the problem just proliferates.

I wonder if it is the beginning of artificial intelligence.

Do I suggest that we go back to doing things the old, long and tedious way? God forbid that we should actually start TALKING to each other - with words coming out of our mouths! And isnt everyone too far away from the other to actually have a face to face conversation? Beep! Wrong answer. With todays technology we could actually have that face-to-face conversation even if we are on the opposite poles. I have at least three programs on my desktop that will handle sound plus video. The webcam that sits on top of my computer screen cost me the humongous amount of 25 Euros. The headset I absconded from my brother. Dont have all that expensive technology yet? No problem. Chat programs are free - we can converse in real time by typing.

So - next time you want to pitch your product, do me a favor, will you? Talk to ME not to my autoresponder. Knock on my virtual door politely and who knows? I might even let you in and we can have what used to be called "a conversation". It might take a little longer than pressing the send button, but think of all the hours you spend cleaning out your email boxes from unwanted emails.

Plus, you never know what goes through the digital minds of those autoresponders. What if they stop courting each other and start discussing a revolution?

Amalia Sotiriadou, who is a huge fan of modern technology but is very, very tired of spamming.

Amalia has been training people for two decades in a corporate and a personal environment. Her relationship with computers began in 1974 when they still used punched cards for data entry and has grown to a passion ever since. She has been involved in Internet Marketing for three years and is determined to train people to be successful in this field.
At her new site, http://talentgrid.com/business, "TGeBiz: Your MAP to SUCCESS", she is planning to do just that in an almost revolutionary way, with group and individual mentoring programs.

The Inadvertent Spammer

2008-05-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

The Inadvertent Spammer
The Internet and email are still in their youth, and continue to develop before our eyes; along with that some of the rules of the game evolve as well. One rule you dont want to break is are those that apply to Spam. [see my article Spam An Emotional Issue]
Whether you are an intentional spammer or an inadvertent one is not that relevant. The perception of being a spammer has the same effect as actually being guilty.
How does one inadvertently spam people? Not having their direct permission to send them email sounds straightforward right? Not exactly.
When you meet someone at a networking event, and they hand you their business card, is that permission? Yes and no. It is permission to send them a personal follow up note. It is NOT permission to ad them to your ezine list or to your promotional mailing list. It is permission to send them an invite to be added to your list.
Another example is that of email addresses collected on a website in exchange for the download of a free book or report. The form gives you no indication of what they will do with your email address. It doesnt ask your permission; it doesnt give you a chance to select your preferences. By merely accepting the free report, have you given permission to receive emails and promotions from the site owner? No, you havent.
Renting an email list and using an email service provider to send out your email, if not done properly, will have you perceived as a spammer. If it is not clear to the recipient who is sending the message, and how they got their name, your campaign is in question, even it is was legitimately sent from an opt in list. The key is the relationship the list owner has with the recipients, as well as the clarity of the message. Is this is well maintained opt in list? Did people know what kind of messages they were opting in to receive? If both answers are yes, and the emails are clearly branded from both the list owner and their partner, the campaign will succeed.
Sending out an email communication to a number of people without using the BCC function is almost inadvertent spamming. By not hiding your recipients email addresses, you have laid them vulnerable to collection and use by an actual spammer, or to a novice emailer who utilizes the reply all function, inadvertently spamming your entire list. You are then guilty by association.

Here are the top 8 tips to help you maintain a good email reputation

Have a clear and visible email and privacy policy
When asking for email addresses let people know what you
intend to do with them
When sending email, make sure your brand is clear and
recognizable to recipients
Make sure the name in the Sender line is recognizable
[johnsmith@amazon.com may not be as recognizable as
Customerservice@amazon.com]
When using a third party provider to send out emails to a
list, make sure that your relationship with the actual
sender is explained
Be aware of words that trigger spam filters, and avoid them
See list:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter_phrases.htm
Check your outgoing email here:
http://ezinecheck.com/check.html
Make it easy to unsubscribe or change preferences

To your effective emailing ~ Jane

Stay tuned for the release of my book:
Are You Sending The Right Message -
Effective Email Communication for Executives and Entrepreneurs.

If you would like more great articles like this, subscribe to our complimentary newsletter, the eMarketing Edge at http://www.janetabachnick.com/ezine.html"

Stop Spam and Viruses at Same Time

2008-05-05T03:05:00.000-07:00

The recent outbreak of viruses caused no end of headaches for those infected as well as computer users who repeatedly received tainted email.

Though this virus didn't rate high for physical destruction, it did rate as one of the wildest and most criminally intent viruses ever.

"Bad Trans" reportedly logs actual keystrokes and then transmits credit card and password data it captures to the person who released it.

If that isn't scary enough, the old safety rule of "you have to open the attachment to get the virus" doesn't apply here! Anyone using Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express runs the risk of infection if they use the preview pane - which most do.

Virtually anyone who had their anti-virus software up to date found the virus relatively easy to stop before infecting the system, but they also found dealing with the virus highly inconvenient.

Every time an infected email arrived they had to stop and clean it up.

Adding to the inconvenience - this latest virus carries a 40K attachment, no small file on a dial-up connection, especially if you get it emailed to you several times a day.

Quite frankly, I got extremely tired of downloading this virus, which seemed to come in wave after wave.

Out of curiosity, I looked to see if I could find a program that would let me check my email before downloading it.

I went to the popular download site http://www.download.com and started looking around.

After some searching I discovered a program called "Spam Buster", a free program that allows you to check the headers in your email box before downloading to your computer.

What makes the program so great is that you can see who the email is from, the subject line (a big spam tip-off), the name, size of the file and the date.

Now this solution won't apply in every instance (no solution ever does) but it really helped out this time.

Every version of the virus I saw carried two easily identifiable characteristics - an re: in the usually blank subject line and an underscore ( _ ) in front of the return email address.

With this program I was able to immediately spot the virus and eliminate it with a simple mouse click.

However, I noticed an excellent side benefit!

I also eliminated the vast majority of unsolicited email bombarding my computer daily.

Rather than wait for dozens of messages to download, I quickly click the message subjects and push delete.

What a time saver!

This last wave of viruses should teach all of us that prevention and preparation hold the key to keeping our online sanity.

Make sure to keep your anti-virus program updated weekly and consider checking your email before it ever downloads to your computer.

Furthermore, expect viruses to get more sophisticated and more destructive, and it is your responsibility to protect your computer, your data, and personal information.

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Feel free to substitute your affiliate link in place of our link in the resource box.

Earn 50% on every purchaser you refer.

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If you do use the material please send us a note so we can take a look. Thanks.

SPAM: Open the Can Carefully

2008-05-05T03:02:00.000-07:00

In the past several years, the word Spam has changed its common meaning. Until the mid nineties, the word spam was a household name referring to a mystery canned meat from a company called Hormel. It was epitomized in a Monty Python skit known as The SPAM Skit. They managed to say the word SPAM more than a hundred times in two-and-a-half minutes.

Nerds being nerds (name someone you know who youd consider a computer geek who DOESNT know any piece of Monty Python word-for-word), the name soon gained a new meaning. As unwanted newsgroup postings on the Usenet grew, they began to be called SPAM for their repetitiveness. Eventually this came to be a catch-all phrase for any unwanted communication through a computer.

Now the word is still a household name, but has a completely new meaning. Meat in a can has nothing to do with what we label SPAM today. Generally the term is in reference to unwanted commercial email. UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is the proper term for what most people term to be SPAM.

Whatever you call it, you probably hate it. In several polls (both official and amateur), Spam has been listed as the number one annoyance to users on the Internet. It is talked about more and more often as even the politicians have begun to do something about it. The trouble is no one is REALLY doing much to stop it on a grand scale.

There are many steps in the right direction, however. For now, lets talk about how someone, like you, puts themselves in a position to receive Spam. Then well discuss how you can avoid or get rid of it.

Getting On the SPAMmers List
There are three common ways that email addresses get put on the SPAMmers list.

1 - Spiders & Robots: The most common way to get listed is to post your address on a website, forum, chat room, or public profile (such as MSN, ICQ, About.com, etc.). These addresses are easily gathered by programs called spiders or robots. These programs simply troll the Web looking for email addresses to ad to the SPAMmers list.

2 - Nefarious Opt-In Scams: The next most common way to get your address listed is to give it to a questionable business on the Internet (usually with all good intentions). That business may then turn around and sell it to someone else as a part of a list.

3 - Random Address Generation: This is another tactic employed by SPAMmers and its just what its name implies. A piece of software generates random addresses using commonly-known domains (hotmail.com, msn.com, earthlink.net, etc.).

Once your name is on a list with one SPAMmer, it will soon make its way to more. Most of those who build these lists are in the business of selling these lists as well. Not many SPAMmers build their own lists anymore unless theyre very small-time or have a specific way of gathering these lists that makes it very easy. Youd be surprised at how much time it takes to actually generate a sizeable list of email addresses excepting the random generation method. To get a good list of email addresses a list that is fairly low on bad addresses takes time and considerable computing power. This is why most harvesters (as theyre commonly called) are not SPAMmers themselves.

These lists are sold to anyone who will pay the money to obtain them. As the sending of UCE has become more and more competitive, these lists have become more and more targeted towards specific industries. Some lists are great for eBay users, some are great for get-rich-quick schemes, some are better for medical markets.

Staying Off The SPAMmers List
If you spend any amount of time surfing the Web especially if you use chat rooms, forums, or other publicly-displayed message areas you need to get a disposable email address. These are widely available for free from places like Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com, and any number of smaller destinations on the Web. If a chat room or user group requires that you post a public address in your profile, use that disposable address. If you post in the UseNet or other groups, set up an email address with your ISP specifically for that posting.

Before giving your real email address to ANYONE, make sure you know who they are. Friends and family are obvious, but what about that business youre giving an address to? How about that eBay seller? Know who they are and whether you can trust them before you give that email address to them. Check if they have an anti-SPAM policy or privacy policy listed and read what it says.

Getting Rid of SPAM You Already Receive
Most email clients, such as Outlook Express, include filtering systems that you can employ to block, trash, or otherwise deal with questionable emails. I have filters that take any email with three or more ! marks (!!!) in the subject and put it in a Crap folder. Another filter puts anything with MLM, FFA, or Network Marketing into the same folder. A third has a list of known SPAM addresses that are automatically dumped into the SPAMforSpamCop folder. After going through the Crap folder and scanning the subjects to be sure there arent any legitimate emails in there, I then move all of those to the SPAMforSpamCop folder as well. That entire folder is then packaged up and sent to SpamCop.net for dissection. If you need more information on SpamCop.net, please refer to my article Reporting Spam to SpamCop.net on my website. You can read that article here:
http://aww.aaronzwebworkz.com/resources/newsletter/articles.shtml?spamcop

If you havent already done so, set up at least one more (I use several) email address. If you sign up for a lot of one-time mailings (eBooks, articles, etc.), consider using a service like SpamGourmet (http://www.spamgourmet.com). You can sign up for temporary email addresses that will work only the specified number of times before deactivating. I use them for one-time mailings or, say, a five-part series mailing. Then, if they send anything more, it will reject it and Ill never have to deal with it.

Your main email address should not be easy to guess. A good test for this is to call someone who doesnt know your email and ask them what they think your email address probably is. If they cant guess your username in the first few tries, youve got a good one. If they can, you need to reconsider it or do something to change that.

Attacking the SPAMmer

Spam: Letting Your Legislators Know

2008-05-02T02:48:00.000-07:00

Copyright (C) Richard Lowe Jr. and Claudia Arevalo-Lowe, 1999-2001. Permission is granted to reprint the following article as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright information, and the resource box is included. Please let me know if you use this article by sending an email to mailto:articles@internet-tips.net

Article Title: Spam: Letting Your Legislators Know Author: Richard Lowe, Jr.
Contact Author: mailto:articles@internet-tips.net
Publishing Guidelines: May be freely published w/bylines Web Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Autoresponder Address: mailto:article-198@internet-tips.net

Are you tired of receiving massive volumes of spam? I know that I am fed up with receiving countless spam emails every single day. It's gotten to the point where I receive ten spam messages for every valid message (I get about a hundred valid messages per day). Wow! That's a lot of spam.

What do I do? Well, I make good use of SpamKiller and Spamcop.net, I never reply to spam message or ask to be removed and I never, ever purchase anything based upon receiving spam.

There is more to be done. These method all depend upon the receiver doing something, taking some action, to filter out the messages. However, the problem remains.

Let's say a spammer sends out a million copies of an email. Those million messages must be routed (sent) all over the internet, each message passing through one or a dozen servers to get to their final destinations. So in addition to annoying (potentially) one million people, the spammer also uselessly "borrowed" resources several million times from many servers. While sending one email is a negligible hit on a server, sending millions of messages can make a noticeable dent in performance.

As I said, you can just delete these message when they arrive, you can filter them using tools such as SpamKiller, and you can report their senders to their ISP's (it's so rewarding to find out that you've caused a spammers account to be canceled).

There is still more than you can do, if you want to become active in the war on spam. And make no mistake, this is a war. The spammers are the equivalent of the Nazi scum in World War II (completely unethical, evil and amoral), the ISP's are the allies, and you and me are the innocent bystanders who occasionally get whacked by a stray bullet or artillery shell.

You can let your legislators know what you want. Believe it or not, your representatives (in all areas of government) do pay attention to the desires of their constituents (that's you and me). If you want to be heard, however, you have to talk (seems obvious, but how many people complain about government yet never even let anyone in power know about their complaints?)
Okay, here are some tips to follow when sending a letter to one of your representatives.

1) Find the correct representative. Do a little research. In other words, send a letter to your own Senator, not the one clear across the country that you saw on television.

2) Don't bother sending emails. Your representatives are totally overwhelmed with email. In addition, sending an email is so easy that they have gotten into the habit of just ignoring it.

3) Write just one page (two pages is the maximum).

4) Write legibly or type. Handwritten letters seem more personal, while typewritten letters appear businesslike. Choose the proper format for the effect you want to achieve.

5) State your purpose in the first paragraph.

6) If you are writing about a bill, include the name and number.

7) Be factual.

8) Avoid emotional arguments.

9) Do not spam your legislators (seems obvious, doesn't it).

10) Treat them with respect.

11) Include your name and address. Anonymous letters tend to get thrown away.

12) Do not demand support. Asking tends to get a better response then demanding.

13) The suggested style is:

The Honorable ____________________
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator _____________________

The Honorable ____________________
United States House of Representative
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Representative ________________

(Begin e-mail by Dear Representative ____________ or Dear Senator _____________

14) Spend some time learning about your representative so you can know in advance what is important to him or her.

In your letter, inform the representative of your concern and suggest how you would like it handled. You might say something like "dear senator Billy-bob, I am one of your constituents. I feel that spam emails has become a major problem and I would like you to do something about it." You could go on to cite why it is a problem, some possible or acceptable solutions (do you want a bill passed or perhaps one stopped) and so on.

This is how our representatives find out what we want them to do. So by all means, let them know your feelings, especially about spam. This way, they are more likely to do the right thing.

NOTE: The following information must be included if you reprint this article:
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.
Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net
Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm Daily Tips: mailto:internet-tips@GetResponse.com

Claudia Arevalo-Lowe is the webmistress of Internet Tips And Secrets and Surviving Asthma. Visit her site at http://survivingasthma.com

List of articles available for reprint: mailto:article-list@internet-tips.net

SPAM...

2008-05-01T04:34:00.000-07:00

Here is my latest article. It may be freely used in ezines, on websites or in e-books, as long as the Resource Box is left intact.

I would appreciate notification of where it was used, and if possible, a copy of the ezine or newsletter that it was used in. Please send notification mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com .IMPORTANT: Please ensure the word--Mayapan--is in the Subject line.

--------------------------

"SPAM...And How To Lose It!"

From what we read, it looks like that the SPAM issue is finally reaching the heights of government it should, and is causing increased problems throughout the communications network, all over the world.

From what we also read, it seems as though a certain way of thinking is now becoming entrenched, to wit: SPAM is here to stay...it cannot be stopped, absolutely.

As to the first, it's about time that governments did enact severe penalties for misuse of bandwidth. And, we hope that draconian measures will, over time, have a salutary effect upon all spammers, and upon all those who aspire to such lowly pursuits. But, we doubt their effectiveness, overall.

As to the second, however, we beg to differ: SPAM is not here to stay. It can be defeated...

Bold words, you might say. And, you'd be right.

But, we've done it...and we can prove it.

First off though, contemplate some current aspects about SPAM:

1. Spammers are getting "better and better" at delivering their message;

2. More and more spam filtering services are starting up, to "fight the good fight"; and

3. Content filtering by ISPs, email services and self-styled "protectors-of-the-realm" shall we say, is becoming more prevalent and intrusive.

Let us try to encapsulate those three points into a "world-view" about SPAM, if you will (what philosophers might refer to as *weltanschauung*):

On the web, there exists a Group One which, using a certain mode of communication (i.e. email), is trying to get its messages viewed by all Groups, while another Group Two--some of which may be part of Group One--with the same mode, is trying desperately to stop those messages, while still a Third Group--which may be part of Group One or Group Two or both--has taken upon itself the task of invading the privacy of personal communications--again using the same mode--in the mistaken belief that action will help to stop Group One, or some of Group Two, or both, or even all three.

What could be more ludicrous? Is it any wonder that confusion reigns supreme, in this particular *weltanschauung*?

And, amidst all this confusion, there is a very basic mindset that allows spammers to keep winning, and it is this: ask anybody what they do to stop SPAM, and the answer will be something like, "Well, I use filters to keep it out of the inbox" or "Filters at my ISP stop SPAM coming to my inbox" or, yet again, "I use a filtering program to check for SPAM and delete it before it gets to me."

In other words, everybody is reacting to something that the spammers have initiated. Now, no matter what the situation is in life, *reaction* is generally a recipe for disaster...

For those of you who are students of warfare, the advantage of Group One is immediately apparent: *they've set the rules of engagement, and everybody is dutifully following on*. Is it any wonder then, that spammers are winning, and will continue to win, if nothing changes?

Unless...unless, of course, the rules of engagement *are* changed...but *not* by the spammers.

What is the single and *only* thing that will stop a spammer from sending any message? This may not be readily apparent to some, simply because there is so much confusion and hype. But, the answer is simply this: if the spammer knows that the message *cannot possibly* get through to you, there is *no point in sending it*!

Think of this: if there was some way to make sure--categorically--that all SPAM could not get through to end-users, no spammer could afford to keep sending any SPAM. No virus programmer would bother sending out viruses via email. Porn merchants would drop email like a hot potato, if nothing could get through to you.

Well, of course, if the computer internet connection is severed, then no SPAM gets through. But, that's like the doctor who blandly says, "Well...the disease is cured." while the patient lies dead from the surgery!

Well, this is where the rules of engagement can be changed, and which brings us back to our bold statement and claim above...

Everybody is now simply concentrating on stopping SPAM getting to the inbox, and *then* bringing in the remainder (which is your valid email). That plays directly into their hands, pilgrim--it's like putting gasoline onto the fire.

So...change the rules of engagement, by turning it around: concentrate on *bringing in your valid email*, and simply discard the rest (and that's all the SPAM).

If *you* decide what the criteria should be for accepting all valid email, and spammers *don't know* the rules to follow, then no SPAM can *ever* get through to you; nor can any scams, viruses, porn or anything else you don't want.

*It really is that simple...*

Now, of course, how does one set the required rule that no spammer could ever know? Again, the answer is disarmingly simple: set up a filter rule in your email program which always categorically identifies all your valid email. Any message that does not comply with this rule is discarded as SPAM. All the bad stuff can even be stopped at your server, so that you never, ever see it.

That's the good news...

Now, here's the even better news : there *are* a few email programs that *can* support such a filter rule, although others cannot. That crucial information can be found in an ebook that we recently published, in which we subjected 25 email programs to detailed testing. You can find more information about it here:
http://online-wealth.com/spam_killers.htm.

Just remember this: online SPAM is not a necessary evil--it's just an evil necessary for those who SPAM online. And, if you do nothing now, the spammers win and will continue to win, always.

Your choice...
Roger Burke has been involved with computers since 1967, and has managed to break quite a few, over the years. He, and his wife Sherry, are now actively engaged in online self-publishing and promoting specific affiliate programs at http://online-wealth.com . If you have any comments or questions about this article, please send emails to mailto:webmaster@online-wealth.com . IMPORTANT: Please ensure the word--Mayapan--is in the Subject line.

Spam- An Emotional Issue

2008-04-10T02:41:00.000-07:00

Spam -an Emotional Issue

Spam- more than just an annoyance. Why does Spam inspire so much passionate hate?

Spam is an emotional subject, just ask any computer user. In a sense, Spam is nothing more than unsolicited
direct marketing in an email version, or electronic junk mail. People dont get as fired up about junk from the
postman, so why all the emotion about Spam? To understand why this is, you need to look at peoples
relationships with their computers.

Email is a push medium, like television advertising; networks push ads to you, just as you are sending, or
pushing an email communication to a recipient . The television viewer has the remote control in hand to bypass
commercials and just surf away. Similarly, it is the email recipient who is in the drivers seat , hand on the mouse
or delete button. Whether Spam is read or not, it still considered a major annoyance for many emailers.

While both Television and email are push mediums, the difference is in the expectation. TV viewers expect advertising;
in my lifetime, its always been a part of the medium. Some creative ads even have some entertainment value. Viewers
have accustomed themselves to using commercial breaks to check on other shows or to get a snack.

With spam, the real emotional trigger is the proprietary way that people feel about their computers. They feel that their
computers are their own private domain, and that they control what they see and hear. The resistance to spam, is mostly
an emotional one; a wish to hold onto this private domain. Or at least the illusion of it. Television has had years to indoctrinate
viewers into the format that networks use. I grew up with the idea that tv has commercials- it always has.

My inbox didnt always have SPAM, and it is not a welcome intruder.

Two years ago, while researching new interactive advertising technologies for an article for SAM magazine , I came across
a company called Amicada. Their concept was to show commercials to computer users, while online and off, for which the
viewer would be rewarded. It was completely opt in, requiring a download of their software. It then initiated ongoing pop-ups
for these commercials on your computer; you could choose to delay viewing an ad, but it was guaranteed to remind you
again later.

I didnt buy the concept; personally brisled at the idea of having more pop-ups while I was online, and any pop ups while offline.
For me the rewards could not be high enough to want to participate; I assumed that the majority of people would feel the way I did.

Perhaps the internet surfing public cast their same vote. Despite significant support and backing by Unilever and some VC funding,
Amicada has joined the DotBomb graveyard. To read the SAM article: http://www.janetabachnick.com/mouse.html

The other emotional trigger of spam is the content of the emails. Items hawked are typically for enlargement of private body parts,
multi level marketing under the guise of business opportunties, viagara, and plain old pornography. It is like a snake oil salesman
having orbed into our living room uninvited, and we arent happy about the intrusion.

As spammers try to be seen and get read, over the volumes other emails flooding our inboxes, they are resorting to new, cheap
tricks, casting additional aspersions on the practice. Subject lines, like here is your statement or here is the info you requested
have gotten us to fall for it, opening an email expecting it to be something in fact we had requested, only to leave us feeling taken,
our time wasted. I havent even mentioned the time and cost factors that Spam takes up.

Now that you understand the emotional issues that people feel with regard to Spam, you can see why any email perceived as spam
reflects negatively on the sender. The message, spam me, and well never do business, ever in this lifetime. You can be perceived
as being a spammer, even if people opted in to get your message, because people forget what they sign up for online. All the more
reason you want to make sure that you are not an inadvertent spammer.

To your effective emailing ~ Jane

Stay tuned for the release of my book Are You Sending The Right Message-
Effective Email Communication for Executives and Entrepreneurs."

Reprint Permission
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reprint permission granted in part or whole when the following credit appears:
"Reprinted with permission from Jane Tabachnick eMarketing (Copyright, 2003, Jane Tabachnick)
If you would like more great articles like this, subscribe to our complimentary newsletter, the eMarketing Edge a
http://www.janetabachnick.com/ezine.html"

Spam Revisited

2008-04-10T02:40:00.000-07:00

Spam has reared it's ugly head again. I got thinking about it because of a few articles I've noticed on the subject popping up here and there. One side of it concerns spam filtering software ( the reason you keep seeing weird words like FR^E instead of FREE as publishers try to avoid the trap) and secondly it concerns over zealous `spam cops`.

Here's my take on it. I mentioned this briefly in the bonus issue a few days ago :o)

1. No matter how much mail you're receiving please be sure that you didn't request it. Some things that look like spam are really ads or offers from places you've given permission to. Be vigilant when you enter your e-mail into forms or reply to autoresponders. Watch out for terms such as 'Allow carefully selected companies to send you special offers' or similar!

2. It's easy enough to manage your spam by managing your e-mail addresses. Use multiple accounts to make sure important pail goes one place, and junk goes another. Use one address for all those web forms you fill in.

3. Don't use spam filtering software. None of it really works, yet. If you do use it please be sure to allow your e-zines through. For example, mine always begins with the subject NNews: making it easy for you to filter, or unblock, as the case may be.The address will always be netpreneurnow.com, so you can also enable that domain. No-one else uses that domain bar me!

Some mail service, such as HotMail, have an `exclusive` feature where ONLY e-mails and domains authorized by you are allowed through. That's good to have on your primary, private e-mail. Only mail from contacts can come there. Just be sure to add any new correspondents to your address book or you won't get their mail!

4. Now for the mail that is spam. If it has an unsubscribe link, use it. I know that a lot of unsubscribe links are ignored but the majority do work. If there's no link there's not much you can do except delete it. Can you manage to press that little button?

5. A lot of the stuff you find on the internet is free or nearly so because of advertising. If you enjoy an e-zine, and benefit from it, I'm sure that you can manage an extra ad or two? If you don't like the e-zine or perhaps they're a little to overboard with their solos then just unsubscribe. It's totally under your control. Just remember that a e-zine represents a lot of work to the writer at no cost to you, but I'm glad to have you anyway! :oD

6. The only mailings that I would class as spam are those that I never requested, also called UCE (unsolicited commercial email). Some people bend the rules (a lot!) and take the fact that you e-mailed them to be a good reason to e-mail you ads back. I would not call it spam as such but it isn't really good practice. Another type of unwanted e-mail are those that come from services that were only *supposed* to mail you once, but keep doing it. Finally, the worst kind, are those that just take your e-mail from web pages, news groups or whatever then send you mail. That's the only way someone gets your address without you doing anything short of stealing it from another service. Those people who use e-mail scavengers are the kind that deserve the bad press.

6b. But, like anything, there's a grey area there. If I take e-mail addresses of web sites to request a link swap or similar am I spamming? If I use Zeus (which does the same thing) is that
spam? No, because there's no ad involved in those situations. Do not forget the middle word in `Unsolicited Commercial Email`!

7. And those Spam Cops. I've never encountered one, but the things I hear aren't too good. I'd suggest they are a little more
thorough in their investigations and less hasty. Dialogue is much better!

So how do you say safe from a publishers point of view? Newsletters / Ezines should always be opt in. Don't add someone because they posted to your FFA but an `invitation` could be ok. Don't add bulk lists to your autoresponders. Basically, ensure that anyone who gets mail from you has given you permission!

No doubt this debate will go on and on. Spam will get worse, but as long as you can distinguish between Spam and Advertising and take some basic steps with your accounts all should be ok.

--------------------
Stuart Reid is the publisher of Netpreneur News and webmaster of Netpreneur Now! Visit us for weekly tips, reviews, recommendations and more. Sign up for a free ad and 30 free e-books.
mailto:signup@netpreneurnow.com
http://www.netpreneurnow.com/
--------------------

Spam Free Marketing

2008-04-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

I received an email the other day from a work at home mom who recently started a small publishing company. She wanted to start selling advertising to other WAHM businesses but was concerned about bulk emailing them... with good reason.

Spam is the four-letter word that most offends those of us working online. Everyone with a website receives it and like bad art, we all know it when we see it. But also -like art- in a way, spam is in the eye of the beholder. I have participated in discussions that disintegrated because each member had his or her own definition of spam and was angry at those who disagreed.

In the offline world, it is perfectly acceptable to cold-call or snail mail a business to tell them about a product or service you offer. When I worked in an office environment, I took such calls all the time. Often, I said 'no thank you' and that was the end of it. But every once in a while, the call came in at just the time I was searching for such an item - and a sale would be made.

Of course, the power and low-cost of email make this an inexact comparison. So what do you do when you have a product or service that you *know* your target market *needs* -- and you want to use the power of the Internet to let them know about it?

THE PERSONAL APPROACH

The keywords are 'target market.' Find out who they are by doing an Internet search to find them. Check out sites which include directories of businesses in your target market. Then, visit those sites - and send their owners a *personal* email pitching your product. Be sure to use their *names* and comment on something you learn about their businesses from their sites. If they offer newsletters, sign up for them and comment upon something you read there. This establishes a prior business relationship and is not considered spam by *most* people.

However, even this personal approach will offend *some* webmasters, and it will cost you a lot of time relative to the number of people you reach. A more efficient means of getting your message out would be to join discussion groups geared to your audience and announce your product there.

ONLINE NETWORKING THROUGH DISCUSSION LISTS

But message boards and discussion lists have their own spam issues. When joining a list, you must read their guidelines and follow them. Sending out a blatant advertisement to the members of a discussion list will not be tolerated - but you are welcome to describe your business where it is *appropriate* (i.e., someone asks where they can find a product just like yours and you announce that you just happen to sell that).

You are also allowed to put information in your sig line that directs people to your website - so whenever you contribute to the discussion, you have an opportunity to promote your business.

When you join, sit back for a couple of days and follow the conversation so you can get a feel for the tone of the discussion, the people involved and what is customary among them. Then, introduce yourself as a new member (which also give you an opportunity to bring up the subject of your business, website, product - within the guidelines they set when you join).

An added benefit to marketing through discussion groups is the fact that you will build new relationships with other business people that can lead to joint ventures, assistance and even friendship. In the offline world, it is similar to being part of a chamber of commerce or other networking group and it works just as well on the web.

At the ParentPreneur Club, we have our own discussion group, PPC Advisory, where members brainstorm the issues they face as work at home parents. To join, email mailto:ppca-subscribe@topica.com .

Here are more of my favorite groups targeted to work at home parents. You'll find others specific to your needs by searching for them at http://www.yahoogroups.com and http://www.topica.com

mailto:clubmom-affiliates-subscribe@yahoogroups.com This group is made up of members of the Club Mom affiliate program. All members have websites with mom-related content and products, which makes them ideal partners for the Club Mom membership program. You must be an affiliate of Club Mom to be a member of this list.

mailto:DirectSelling-subscribe@yahoogroups.com For direct sales consultants who exchange ideas and suggestions on building a client base, fund raising, recruiting, booking, inspiration, motivation, party games, contests, merchandising, holiday ideas and more.

mailto:EP-subscribe@yahoogroups.com This is a function of the Entrepreneurial Parents (http://www.en-parent.com ) website. A forum for Entrepreneurial Parents (EPs) to connect directly with each other, discussing topics ranging from balancing work and family under one roof, to sharing practical business tips, to collective brainstorming, to supporting each other in responsible parenthood.

mailto:themompack-subscribe@yahoogroups.com The MomPack (TM) is a cooperative, not-for-profit organization, founded by working moms, run by working moms and for working moms to exchange business information amongst each other to help promote and advertise each other's businesses on and offline.

DON'T FORGET THE SEARCH ENGINES!

Do not overlook the value of getting your site listed in search engines, which will bring prospective customers to *you*. There are still many engines that will list your site for free. If you plan to do this yourself, walk do not run to http://www.jimtools.com . Jim Wilson carries one of the most complete free site submission resources we have seen.

Merle at http://www.mcpromotions.com also has a wealth of resources at her site. She specializes in promoting websites and handles our monthly search engine submissions for the ParentPreneur Club. Her prices are very reasonable.

GET PUBLICITY

Press releases should be part of your marketing plan, as well. There is nothing so cost effective as having your business mentioned in an offline publication or other medium. One newspaper article could result in dozens of leads for your business.
Karon Thackston has put together a free email course on how to write effective
press releases. To receive it, send a blank email to mailto:pressrelease@zipresponse.com Karon can also handle your PR needs. http://www.ktamarketing.com

Another interesting offer comes from JeriLynn Thomas of the Womens News Bureau. Jerilynn is offering a PR Boot Camp tailored to the needs of female entrepreneurs. Check it out at http://www.womensnewsbureau.com/prbootcamp.htm

EZINE ADVERTISING

Finally, there will come a time when you will need to pay for some advertising. Ezines that go out to your target audience give you a big bang for your advertising buck - your cost per thousand (CPM) is generally way less than what you could expect to pay in other media. Most sites that publish an ezine carry an advertising page.

We could devote several more articles to the particulars of writing ads and creating marketing campaigns. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that writing advertising copy is not an exact science. No one can guarantee how your audience will respond to an ad, no matter how well you think it turned out. The big marketers always test ads first and we suggest you do. You can buy ezine ads at deep discounts at http://www.ezineadauction.com (another site run by Merle of MCPromotions). We use it ourselves to sell remnant space in our ezines and have bought ads in other newsletters at a fraction of their published rates. This is a great resource for anyone who needs to advertise their businesses.

As you can see, there are lots of low-cost options for promoting your business online that do not entail bulk email. They're easy to implement and are proven to work... try them and see!

--------------------

Donna Schwartz Mills is the work-at-home parent behind the ParentPreneur Club
http://parentpreneurclub.com/cgi-bin/art/pl.cgi?sp Find out how we're getting healthy while earning a healthy living at home - http://www.unitoday.net/socalmom .

Search Engines and Spam

2008-03-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

What is Spam?

Spam (for Search Engines) refers to the use of any illegal technique to improve a page' ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Who decides what 's illegal? The SEs, who else?

Tons of articles have been written about search engines and spam. Why the need for another article? Because, believe it or not, at the end of 2001 MOST of the major search engines are still vulnerable to MANY unethical techniques used by malicious Webmasters.

Spam has been known for a long time. For years, Webmasters tried to cheat the search engines. Today, many SEs say they know all the tricks and penalize those pages. As you will see, most SEs only SAY that they will punish spammers, but in fact they DON'T.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, Placement, Positioning, Ranking, or whatever you want to call it, is the process of designing a Web page that can be easily indexed by the SEs and receive high rankings in the SERPs.

My Experience with Search Engines

Recently, using some major U.S. SEs, I made a search for a Web design company in New York. Let me to share with you my highly disappointing experience.

The search engine results pages (SERPs) in most of the search engines were full of Web pages that used one or more spamming techniques. The most frequently encountered illegal strategies used by many SEs were:

Keyword stuffing
Page redirect
Mirror domains

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the adding of many relevant, sometimes irrelevant, words in the:

Keywords META tag

One of the criteria some search engines use to rank pages in the results list is the presence of relevant words in the Keywords META tag. From use to abuse is a little step, so some webmasters place many words, repeating them many times in the hope that the page will rank higher. The record was a page that had 1,150 words (no mistake, WORDS not characters) in the Keyword Meta tag. The word "design" was repeated 209 times. Unbelievable, right?
What are Search Engines' positions regarding this spamming technique? One of the Web's most important Search Engine, in their submission guidelines, states that it will "exclude submissions" with "excessive keywords". It looks like 1,150 words are not "excessive" enough, because THAT SE and many others index the page.

Besides stuffing words in the Keywords META tags, some Webmasters also add lots of words in the:

Visible page

Another criteria some search engines rank sites in the results list is the so-called "word frequency": the more times a word is repeated in the content of a page, the higher are the chances it will be near the top in the results list.

Some Webmasters often abuse these criteria by placing words or phrases- most of the times- at the bottom of the page, many, MANY times. Do you recall the site that has 1,150 words in the Keywords Meta tags? Well, the same site just "copied and pasted" those words in the copy of the page.

You might think that it's weird to see a bunch of words inserted in the page. Well, Webmasters have found two methods to work around this problem: "tiny text" and "hidden- or invisible- text". "Tiny text" means that the Webmaster places the text in a very small size, most of the time hardly legible. "Invisible text" means the use of the same color for text AND for background, so users will NOT see the words but SE's spider WILL see, so the page will rank higher that it deserves.

The Search Engines' position regarding this spamming technique? One of the Web's most important Search Engine, in its guidelines writes: "We must sometimes exclude submissions" of "pages with text that is not easily read, either because it is too small or is obscured by the background of the page". Another SE's will "significantly downgrade a page's ranking" ... "if words cannot be read due to their small size or color".

Despite these statements, both SEs, as well as other SEs, index pages with text in the same color as the background. To illustrate the total lack of respect for users with little fear for SEs, one Web page has a whopping 936 words in BLACK text on a WHITE background. Incredible!

Page Redirect

One page can be redirected either by using the "refresh" META tag or using cloaking techniques. Why the need to redirect a page? One of the legitimate reasons to redirect a page is having a new URL for the site. But some Webmasters abuse page redirection to obtain higher rankings for their pages.

How does it works?

Using the "refresh" META tag:

This technique consists in building 2 pages: one, highly "optimized" - read "spammed"- with many, MANY words in the KW and Description META tag and also in the Title tag. Most of the time the copy of the page is also highly "optimized" with KW stuffing- many times with invisible text.

These pages called: "Doorways Pages", "Gateway", "Entry" or "Bridge" pages most of the time display a "Click here to enter the site" or simply "Enter" or sometimes "select Flash or HTML" message on the entire page. Using the "refresh" META tag the Webmaster will "redirect" the user to a second page, which will appear after a determined number of seconds after seeing the first page. If the time is set to "0" (zero) seconds, the viewer will NOT see the first page, but directly the second one.

Why two pages? The first one shown to SEs as highly "optimized" will help the page rank very high in the SERPSs, by cheating the SEs. The second one is "nicer", not too much spam, a good page for viewers.

Cloaking technique is probably the most controversial spamming technique.

It also uses 2 pages, one for the SE and another for the viewer. The big difference between this technique and the one above is that in the first case it is possible to see the code of the first page (shown to SEs), but in the second case it is not.

Hiding the Meta data (especially keywords) in the code can provide a huge advantage in this current highly competitive market, as there are known cases of Webmasters that stole a competitor's keywords in an attempt to rank higher.

What are search engines' positions regarding redirecting? Do not submit any site with an address that redirects to another address" or "Your site cannot mirror or redirect to another Web site" or we "may permanently ban from our index any sites or authors who engage in cloaking to distort their search rankings" or simply: "Don't cloak".

Pretty clear, right? Then why some Webmasters insist in using cloaking techniques? To hide their pages' code from prying eyes. Bad guys are not afraid to spam- most of the time, SEs only SAY: "don't do that". If you do, there will be NO- or sometimes very little- punishment.

Mirror domains

Consists in building hundreds or even thousands of pages with SAME content but with altogether DIFFERENT URLs (Web addresses). The advantage is clear: by finding the "right" tricks to cheat the SE algorithm one can "dominate" the SERPSs with pages one after another. One company had 62 pages in the Top 100 results list.

What are the search engines positions regarding this spamming technique? "Do not submit mirror sites". "Your site cannot mirror or redirect to another Web site". "Do not submit" . . . "the same pages from multiple domains". But in practice most of the SEs are vulnerable to this technique.

Questions for:

Search Engines

When are you going to be SERIOUS about your job?

When will you PUNISH the spammers? Have CLEAN indexes? It is not difficult. A dialog with the Webmasters community might result in opinions such as THIS ( http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum5/830.htm ) one:

"I can't understand why the search engines aren't professional enough to put their anti-spam efforts into a detailed agreement and have anyone that wants to be listed sign their agreement. Such an agreement would spell out very clearly what is and what isn't allowed. Anyone breaking the rules would be subject to specific penalties or banning, but would be notified and have a chance to fix the problem especially if the infraction was not too serious".

Clear enough?

Why do you accept advertising from sites which use spamming techniques? So, if a page cannot achieve high rankings, for few buck it becomes "featured" site or listing and voil!, on the top of the list. Is this the latest trick for a poor site to be listed high? Now, on one hand, in your guidelines you tell Webmasters not to spam, on the other hand, if a spammer PAYS, that's no problem. Good bye relevancy, hello profits! Here is a comment by a high-ranking official from a major SE: "the more we take payment for listings, the more you'll get great results" Excuse me? "Big" pockets' sites are NOT always more relevant than "poor" pockets' sites.

I know I'm not the first ( http://www.commercialalert.org/releases/searchenginerel.html ) one to ask but, when are you going to make a CLEAR distinction between paid listings and real results? The user needs to make an informed decision. The user needs to be helped, not confused.

Webmasters

Why use techniques seen by the SEs as spam? Why take the risk of having pages penalized, or even permanently banned, from indexes? Two months of glory, then a new domain, blacklisted again- poor way to market any business.

Think it's impossible to get higher rankings WITHOUT using spam? My answer is NO. Do your homework, read thoroughly and abide to SEs guidelines, cross your fingers and you'll be # 1.

Have you ever seen one of your page's ranking lower than a page which uses spamming techniques? I bet you did. Now, how did you react? Did you report it to the SE or you said "nah, that's no use anyway"? Or perhaps you thought it's not nice to turn in the Webmaster. OK, let me ask you something: would you like, that while waiting in line to buy a ticket to a movie, somebody, who comes AFTER you, go in the front and buy a ticket BEFORE you do?

Or perhaps THIS ( http://www.globalserve.net/~iwb/search_engine/spamdex.html ) is the solution?

A site will be nominated and posted on a listserv which any member can second then the offender will be notified of his conviction by the spamdex police. They will have a week to clean it up and re-submit and remove the offending listing from the search engines. After a week the offender will be reported to the search engines. The search engines will have a month to act or they will be added to the list as an accomplice to the activity.

Huh? What do you think?

Site Owners

When are you going to wake up? What am I talking about? Well, I'm taking about a report, which says, "nearly 46 percent of the marketers surveyed said they allocate less than 0.5 percent of their annual marketing budgets on search engine optimization (SEO) services". Now, read it again, and again.

So, you spend 95,5 % on gizmos such as Flash and Java Scripts and less than 1% for SEO. Let me tell you something: bells and whistles will never help a page rank high in SERPs. NEVER. I fact it will work against.

Which are your rankings, by the way? When was the last time you checked, if ever? Are you in the Top 30 results for your strategic keywords when the user runs a search? You're not? Practically you don't exist for your prospects. Still wonder why so many .com CLOSE? Are you going to be next?

Do you need a Ph.D. to realize that the SEO- your Web site "salesman"- is more necessary than ever? One of these days you'll discover the power of search engine marketing: the cheapest yet most effective way to promote your site to more than 300 million prospects. Bright future for SEO.
I can see a bright future for the SEO, don't you?

When are you going to understand that SEOs is NOT only optimizing the Keyword Meta Tag? SEO is a highly specialized, time-consuming and sometimes expensive but absolutely NECESSARY task. It's both an art and a science to position a Web page near the top in SERPs. So, forget about your in-house SEO "expert", shop around and find a reputable SEO firm or consultant.

Dos and don'ts when you talk to the SEO guy:

If a Web Marketer suggest you to get rid of that flashy or framed Home Page, just DO IT! Or, don't blame HIM for the consequences. If a SEO says something about cloaking and doorways, run, and I mean it.
Don't even think telling a SEOs, that you'll pay him, AFTER the pages show up in the search engines. Enough said. Don't be a kid by asking him to GUARANTEE you Top 10 positions! No honest SEO will do it. The only think a SEO can guarantee is an increase of the number of pages indexed and an increase of the current rankings. With some luck your sales will sky rocket.

Last thing: please, avoid those submission tools and their hype: "submit your site to 500,000 SEs for $24.95". Submit your Web site by hand. Period.

IN CONCLUSION:

Since the summer of 1995, when I worked for the first time with a Search Engine, I saw some SEs disappearing, and lots of new SEs appearing.

Competition is good, but users might be confused with thousands of SEs. Besides, not everybody knows sophisticated searching techniques such as the Boolean operators, so there is a lot of frustration out there. If we add the irrelevancy of the results in most of the SEs, we have a pretty sad picture.

A clean index should be the main priority for any search Engine. If a SE gives irrelevant results, the user will switch to another SE. Can a SE afford loosing users in the todays' fierce competition between SEs? I don't think so.

To wrap up, I am not saying here that ALL the Search Engines are vulnerable to ALL the known spamming techniques. All I say is that MOST of the Search Engines are vulnerable to MOST of the bad tricks.

I also believe that is NOT important to list WHICH SEs are vulnerable to WHICH spamming techniques or WHICH sites spam WHICH SEs. The important thing is it STILL happens.

At not only in the American SEs. I've checked also Spanish, German, French and Italian SEs. Less spam, but still there.

From now on, monthly I'll make an update of this article. I can only hope that one day I can say "everything is fine". Be back!

Daniel Bazac is the Web Marketer for Web Design in New York, a design, redesign and promotion company. He's specializing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). He's been online from 1995 and he's also a professional Internet Information Researcher. You may contact Daniel Bazac at mailto:danielbazac@hotmail.com or visit his Web site: http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/

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