Search Engines and Spam

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/

Small Business Q & A: Beware Of Spam Withdrawals

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

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

I Love Spam

Spam is considered any unsolicited and often un-wanted
e-mail. The term seems to have originated from a Monty Python
sketch set in a cafe that serves nothing but the canned,
processed meat, called Spam.

In the skit there is a table of Vikings singing, spam, spam,
spam, spam, lovely spam. While the skit does arouse laughter,
the receiving of spam e-mail usually does not do the same for
our demeanor.

It is the rare inbox which hasn't been visited by some sort
of un-wanted message containing anything from get-rich-quick
schemes to Cyber-Porn.

Most email browsers or accounts allow a person to use
blocking or filtering mechanisms which send junk mail directly
to the trash bin.

Professional spammers use sophisticated software that
actually spiders the Internet gleaning e-mail addresses from
Web sites.

If you have ever filled out an online survey, your e-mail
address has most likely ended up on a for sale list of targeted
buyers.

While most spam and postal junk mail is annoying, it can
have some benefits. Running an online business requires us at
times to be effective ad writers. Immediately deleting all this
junk mail means you are throwing way an opportunity to learn
ad strategies.

Next time spam shows up, why not take a few minutes to
read through these ads and see how they are written. See if
the headline or body attracts your attention, or what is
effective about the ad and what turns you off.

I actually love it when those card decks come in the postal
mail. Flipping through the cards, I'll put those that have attractive
headlines in one pile, trash the ones that aren't appealing, then
go back later and really read the one's in the first pile.

I'm always on the lookout for new ideas on what works in
ad writing, new tactics ad writers employ, and seeing what
is working and not working for them.

Successful online marketers are constantly studying not
only their own ads, but what others are doing. So instead of
getting upset the next time you receive your daily dose of
spam, why not look at it as an opportunity to help you
become a better marketer?

If you would like your name removed from many of
the bulk mailing lists, this Web site will be a blessing. Simply
give them your e-mail address and they will scan their
bulk mailing lists and remove you. It is a unique concept
they have. You can read more about what they do at their
Web site.

http://removeyou.com

Dave Cole
Editor/Publisher
Prosperity: The Choice Is Yours
Read other articles by Dave:
http://choosetoprosper.com

Spam: Hiding Your Email Address

In many instances you will want to put your email address on your
website, even if you provide a form as a contact method. This is
useful because it increases the number of ways that someone can
contact you. Why is that important? Because presumably if you have a
website you are attempting to communicate with the world - and
communication goes both ways. If you have a commercial site then the
answer should be obvious - someone may want to purchase something.

Another reason to put an email address directly on your web page is
for people to request information via autoresponder. These allow your
visitors to click a simple mailto link and get your promotional
materials or articles in their email inbox.

The problem with directly including your email addresses on your page
is spam harvesters. These a programs created by scum and run by
ignorant or unethical fools. What they do is search through the
internet, looking at web sites and pages for email addresses to add
to those million email address collections that you see advertised
(mostly in spam) all over the place.

There is really no ironclad way to prevent these bottom-feeders from
scanning your web site for email addresses. There are a number of
techniques, however, to make it a little more difficult for them.

One of these is to code your email addresses in something called
Unicode. This is a "language" for encoding special characters on web
pages. All modern browsers support Unicode as it's primary intention
is to allow languages all over the planet to be represented.

For example, the following email address:

webmaster@internet-tips.net

will be shown in Unicode as:

webmaster
@internet
-tips.net

As you can see from the table below, using Unicode characters is
simple. Just substitute the Unicode sequence in the table for the
corresponding character. Then use all of those sequences wherever you
want to put that email address.

@ @ E E M M U U c c k k s s
. . F F N N V V d d l l t t
- - G G O O W W e e m m u u
_ _ H H P P X X f f n n v v
A A I I Q Q Y Y g g o o w w
B B J J R R Z Z h h p p x x
C C K K S S a a i i q q y y
D D L L T T b b j j r r z z

I suppose it is inevitable that the scum spammers will eventually
make their spam robots smart enough to understand these codes. Until
then, however, it is a reasonably effective technique for reducing
spam in your inbox.

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

Spam: Poison Pill

A common way for spammers to create their vast lists of email addresses is to cull web pages for "mailto:" tags. There are many different programs, available for small to huge costs, which will do this automatically, easily and efficiently.

I monitor my web site log files on a regular basis, and I'm always amazed at the vast numbers of spam harvesting programs that regularly scan my pages. Not only do these obnoxious things steal email addresses, they use bandwidth which I pay for without any kind of compensation. I put up my web pages for people to read not for some scumbag spammer to scan them.

There are many ways to combat the spammer. None of these methods are perfect. As in any war, both sides are continually developing new weapons to use against the other. New methods work for a short time until the enemy comes up with countermeasures and overcomes the weapon.

One of the more effective ways to confuse the spammer (not hard because they don't tend to be very bright) is the "poison pill" defense. This consists of handing the spam harvesting robots some pages which appear juicy, full of yummy email addresses ripe for the picking.

The email address on these pages are fake. They have nothing to do with reality and exist only to choke the spam robots, causing them to overflow and possibly even crash.

Here's how a typical poison pill works. A script is created which performs all of these tasks. It is important that the scripting be done on the server, so CGI, ASP, PHP or a similar scripting language must be used. Server side scripting must be used because many spam robots are not smart enough to understand client-side scripting languages such as JavaScript.

The script creates a page which appears in all ways to be a normal document in a web site. The page may include some text informing human visitors of the intention (this is important so any people who see the page are not confused).

It also needs to include a meta tag informing all robots not to index the page. This is critical, as you do not want robots such as googlebot or scooter (the spiders for Google and Altavista, respectively) seeing this stuff. Don't worry, spam harvesters ignore these meta tags.

The script gives the page a name, usually randomly picked from a database or made up somehow, and fills it with a few dozen (at the most) email addresses. These email addresses are cleverly created to appear perfectly valid but actually are useless - they are just made up.

Links to other fake pages are created for the spam harvester to follow. Any robot (or human being, for that matter) that follow these links will find similar pages, full of desirable email addresses.

Depending upon the robot, it's possible the spammer could gather tens of thousands of totally fake, unusable email addresses before his robot blows itself out of the water. It's even better if the robot survives, as the spammer now wastes his time sending messages to nonexistent email addresses.

In the meantime, the harvester has been lured away from valid pages which may or may not contain email addresses.

My site, Internet Tips and Secrets, uses one of these poison pills. It is called wpoison and it really works well. If you want to see it, look at this page.

http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/guestlist.pl

If you want to get a copy for yourself, check out the wpoison page.

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

This is just another weapon in the war against spam.

Is it effective?

I know from personal experience that it does trap spam robots, and it does seem to lure them away from real, useful email addresses.

Is it ethical?

I believe so, as long as you are careful to include the meta tags to inform "good" robots to leave the pages alone as well as some text to let your visitors know what's going on.

It's not as satisfying as spamcop.net, and there is no where near that pleasant glow of success upon learning that some scum spammer has had his ISP cancel his account, but the poison pill is useful nonetheless. My advice is to include it in your arsenal along with the other weapons and tools at your disposal.

To see a list of article available for reprint, you can send an email to: mailto:article-list@internet-tips.net?subject=send_article_list or visit
http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm

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

Tired of Bogus Spam Complaints? United We Stand ....June Campbell

If you are distributing material to an opt-in email list, you need to know about a fledgling, grassroots organization called e-Crucible. The organization is committed to "opposing by any ethical, political, and legal means available the vigilante activities of "anti-Spam" fanatics and the unfair and unjust handling of 'Spam' complaints by certain Internet Service Providers."

According to the Executive Director, John Botscharow, e-Crucibles is in the process of acquiring non-profit status so it can exist as a legal entity.

But first, a little background.

As an online publisher, you already know what I mean by bogus spam reports. Either in error or with mischievous intent, a subscriber decides your ezine is spam. Quicker than you can say, "Hey, you subscribed!", s/he sends hostile, rude and often abusive emails to every web site or email address listed in your ezine. In some cases, the complainant includes a worm or virus with the email for added impact. Or maybe s/he reports you to SpamCop, CAUSE or a similar vigilante group.

The bad stuff hits the fan. You're deemed guilty and there is no wayto prove your innocence. Without contacting you, SpamCop emails your ISP, your web host, your advertisers and even the writers whose articles you have published. At best, you spend the next few days explaining and pleading your innocence to the people involved. At worst, your website host and your ISP shut you down. Your business is interrupted until you can make other arrangements. If you live in an area of the world where you have only one ISP available, this can mean the end of your Internet business.

This story is but one example of many. Frank Garon is a webmaster who publishes an opt-in ezine with a subscriber base of 12,000 (http://www.InternetCashPlanet.com). His ezine contains clear unsubscribe instructions. Sometime in April, 2001, a subscriber allegedly sent the entire ezine to SpamCop with the instructions to "shut down this American *&%^ spammer."

Garon reported that SpamCop contacted every email address and web host address contained in the ezine. One victim was a writer whose article had been published in the 'zine. She had the usual resource box at the end of her article, including a link to her site. The writer's email account was shut down, and at last report, her web site was in jeopardy. Remember that this writer did not send a single email. Common sense dictates that she could not possibly have been guilty of spam.

Garon and the writer sent an appeal to SpamCop. The response from SpamCop's "deputy" included the following:"..."If the admin of this ezine would like to pursue punitive action against the SpamCop user for filing a false complaint, we will need to see proof of opt-in confirmation. Otherwise, we will simply consider this matter closed..."

Now here's the kicker. SpamCop did not reveal the name and email address of the complainant. Without identification, how can Garon prove that the subscriber had opted-in? Worse, without the email address, how can Garon remove the subscriber from his list? What's to stop the same subscriber from filing the same complaint repeatedly? Again, it defies common sense.

As Garon wrote, 'To have to spend every day wondering if TODAY is the day some creep is going to falsely accuse you of Spam and cost you and your entire family everything you have put years of hard work into is MORE than a little scary."

To make the story even more bizarre, e-Crucible members state that they have reported real spammers to SpamCop with no results.

If you're an email publisher, the shark attacks come from three sources: odious subscribers, vigilante organizations and ISPs and web hosts who shut you down without giving you a chance to defend yourself. As an individual, you can do little to change the situation.

Please consider signing up for the free e-Crucibles mailing list and help strengthen this little organization with the big goals. Sign up at http://www.topica.com/lists/e-Crucible/ or send email to mailto:e-Crucible-subscribe@topica.com

Please note: e-Crucible is NOT pro-spam. They are opposed to spurious spam complaints that put legitimate marketers in jeopardy.

Visit June Campbell on the web for articles, a FREE ebook, or for guides to writing business plans, business proposals, joint venture contracts and more. http://www.nightcats.com

Have The Anti Spam Groups Lost Touch With Reality?

Every time I think the anti spam hysteria has gone as far as they can to make marketer's lives miserable, they prove me wrong and push the envelope even further.

The sad part of this problem is there are so many marketers that sympathize with them. One well know marketer has even gone so far as to compare myself, and other marketers who feel this situation has gotten out of hand, to the X-Files.

I really have to laugh at the pot calling the kettle black.

Here are two incidents from one day that will show how absurd this situation has become.

I received an email from one of my subscribers complaining they were unable to remove themselves from my list. I emailed them and let them know I would contact my list provider and do my best to have the situation corrected as quickly as humanly possible.

I also asked them to please let me know if they received future mailings so I could find out why support hadn't corrected the problem.

What was their response?

I received an email two days later. You are still sending me emails and if it keeps up I'll have to report you as a spammer.

Amazing! How understanding, how charitable.

Imagine the rush it must give someone to be able to hold a sword over my head. Imagine their feeling of power.

Well I'm sorry to disappoint everyone, but I wouldn't care if they held a gun to my head, the situation was beyond my control and their efforts would be better served making their business grow.

Ah! The X-Files get even thicker!!

On that same day I receive an email to my abuse department.

I don't have an abuse department, but nobody said these groups were populated by geniuses.

The story even gets better. They were emailing me to report a spam complaint against a fellow publisher.

Maybe it's me, but it seems slightly foolish to send a complaint to:

1. A Non existent spam department.

2. Asking a board member of E-crucible to reprimand a fellow publisher.

Wait here's the kicker!!

I should punish him because one of my articles was in his newsletter.

I must be dumb as a stump. I never considered punishing a publisher for running my articles.

Whoa Daddy!! I'm an X-Filer and they're the politically correct, sane, rational masters of the internet.

If these are the geniuses ruling the web, I'm more than satisfied being the dullest ax in the shed.

I owe them a debt of gratitude. Every time I find myself becoming too complacent, they send one of these foolish threats and get my blood flowing.

In the words of Pat Benatar, "Hit me with your best shot, fire away."

I'm content being the "Unforgiven,"

Wishing You Success,
John Colanzi

John Colanzi.
Does Internet marketing drive you crazy? Tired of wasting your money and/or time on programs that don't work? Visit our Free Online Marketing Library where marketer's reveal their most important, time- proven, and successful methods. http://johncolanzi.com/freeware.html

Coping With Spam Accusations

More and more publishers are consistently getting accused of spamming. Whether there is any truth to some of these accusations is yet to be seen, however in MOST instances these accusations are nothing but a complete farce! We as publishers seem to get picked on MORE so than anyone else online. I am not certain as to WHY exactly that is, but we do.

All in all what it boils down to is ABSENT minded people who go around signing up for "programs, products and services" and don't bother to pay ATTENTION to what it is that they are getting themselves into. Is this YOUR fault? NO it's not but, for some reason these people like to think that it is. Instead of them taking RESPONSIBILIY for their OWN actions, they bear the grudge on to us -the publisher.

Almost EVERY single publisher I know (I know hundreds) has at one point been FALSELY accused of spamming. I have seen publishers lose their web hosts, their ISP's and their ENTIRE businesses in a blink of an eye in the past 3 years. All of which took place, because some "MORON" forgot they subscribed. Today I am going to give a few tips on HOW to avoid this from happening to you, but in some instances you MUST realize it's absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

1.) Make copies of EVERY subscription request that you receive. Get into the routine of saving them to disk, every day before you close up "shop" for the evening. There is currently NO system that is absolutely, 100% "fool proof", always keep that in mind. Every evening, I go directly to my listserver and copy ALL of my subscription requests and unsubscription requests. I put them into my text editor and copy it disc.

2.) As soon as someone cries "SPAM" send them a copy of their request with FULL headers in tact. And if possible tell them WHERE it was EXACTLY that they got on your list. It will save YOU a lot of hassle in dealing with them.

3.) Record their IP Address, you do not have to tell them that you are doing it, but do it. Although IP Adresses CAN be forged, if they are not aware that you ARE doing it, the chances are it will be REAL. If you do NOT know how to do this, just copy and paste this code into your subscription form. Copy - input type=hidden name="env_report" value= "Remote_host,Remote_Addr"

4.) Make all fields on your form REQUIRED and if someone has a FISHY looking email address, don't add them to your list. Here is the code necessary for making all of your fields required. input type=hidden name="required" value="first name,lastname,email"

5.) If they persist that your ezine is "SPAM", your best bet is to contact your ISP and web host immediately. Make them aware of the situation and also forward them a copy of the persons subscription request (with full headers) and ALL correspondence with the complainant (full headers). In most cases your ISP will appreciate your honesty and nothing will come of it, even if the person DOES complain.

6.) My last bit of advice is, try to maintain a good working relationship with your ISP and web host. Both my ISP and web hosts are all well aware of what I do online, they also know I take ALL of the precautions that I can in respect to my businesses. Over the past few years I have gotten to know them on a "personal" level - which is nothing but a BENEFIT to me in the long run, should a situation such as this should arise. And I encourage you to do the same ;o)

If you have been falsely accused of spamming or are now being blocked because of it, you CAN fight back! Go to: http://www.e-crucible.org and file your complaint, as there is a pending lawsuit against "Anti-Spammers", ISP's and hosts that utilize these programs.

Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide, you can check it out at: http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She is the owner of Optin Frenzy a list building program for ezine publishers http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can also obtain Laurie's articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com

Knock Out Spam With the One-Two Punch

Are you sick of spam relentlessly spewing into your emailbox? So was I, until I learned how to knock it out, or at least slow it down, with my one-two punch. Do both of these things, neither of which will cost you a penny, and enjoy a distinct decrease in the amount of garbage in your inbox.

Here we go:

1 Mail Washing

First, hit the spam with Mailwasher, available free at www.mailwasher.net. This easy to set up little program lets you preview email before downloading it. You see all the usual details - sender, subject, size - but with one big difference: you can decide BEFORE downloading if you want it.

You get, I&39;m sure, many emails that you wouldn&39;t have downloaded if only you&39;d known what was in them. That&39;s just one thing Mailwasher can do for you. Its real power is in its ability to &39;bounce&39; unwanted messages (spam) right back to the person who sent it, marked &39;message undeliverable.&39;

To the spammer it looks as if your e-mail address is no longer active, and hopefully, the next time they &39;clean&39; their list, your email address will fall off. But even if it doesn&39;t, Mailwasher adds the spammer&39;s address to a blacklist. The next time they spam you, it&39;s already marked for deletion. (You can always unmark it.)

When you&39;re finished &39;washing&39; your mail of spam and unwanted downloads, click &39;process mail&39; and whatever messages are left will be downloaded as usual when you log on through your e- mail program, which you can do directly from MailWasher.

I have over 20 email addresses, so you can imagine the flood of spam that poured in my mailbox every day. Now I run them all through Mailwasher first, and it has made a huge difference.

To further reduce spam, Mailwasher has another trick that your regular email program doesn&39;t. It learns. There are all kinds of settings, filters, sorts and alerts. The more you use it, the more it learns what you do and don&39;t want to see. It does lots of stuff that I haven&39;t even tried yet. But for what I need - quick and dirty spam elimination - it does great.

Best of all, it&39;s free to try. If you like it, the author asks that you pay him whatever you think is fair. How much you pay him is up to you, but the funds go to future development of the product. Considering how useful this program is, I think that&39;s a very worthy cause.

2: Email Encoding

Once you&39;ve got Mailwasher going, you&39;re on your way to getting off the spam lists. To stay off, don&39;t skip this second step!

One of the ways that spammers get your email address is through harvesting programs that crawl the net snatching email addresses off of websites, message boards, newsgroups. Anywhere they can find something that looks like an email address, they grab it. And the way that they know it&39;s an email address is by looking for &39;mailto&39; or the &39;@&39; symbol.

There are programs available - also free - that will encode your email address for you. This converts your ASCII email address into its equivalent decimal entity. For example, the letter "a" equates to: "a" (without the quotes), the letter "b" equates to: "b", and so forth.

Here&39;s an example of an email address:

"johndoe@ someserv er.com"

which appears as: johndoe@someserver.com

To make the link clickable, you need to include the HREF tag, i.e.

"
nospam@my server.co m"

which appears as: nospam@myserver.com

Try it. Copy either of those expressions (WITHOUT the quotes), save it in an HTML file, and open it in your browser. It looks and acts just like any other email link, but the spam bots only see numbers and characters.

Here are a few free email encoders:

(JavaScript
utility)

(JavaScript
utility, doesn&39;t include HREF tag)

(emails the results to
you)

Encoded e-mail addresses can be read and translated back into the original ASCII text by almost any web browser, so you can use encoding wherever you can use HTML. I&39;ve replaced regular email links with encoded links on all of my websites.

Unfortunately not all forums will let you use HTML. In those cases, you&39;ll have to rely on putting the NOSPAM in your email address, or using only "throwaway" email addresses such as from Yahoo or hotmail when posting to public places. Another trick: spell out your email address, i.e. my email address is "sharon at geolocal.com" or "sharon at geolocal dot com." Not as good as being encoded and clickable but better than nothing.

Of course, spammers are a clever bunch. Whatever we come up with, they&39;ll find a way around. Pretty soon they&39;ll probably program their nasty spam bots to translate encoded emails for them.

The only answer for that is to replace email links with an IMAGE of your email address. Only human eyes can see that an image is an email address, so it can&39;t be harvested. But, *don&39;t* link the image to your email address unless it&39;s encoded - that would defeat the purpose, which is to make your email address unreadable by the spam bots.

The downside is that human eyes will have to manually type your address to send you an email. Unfortunately, that includes people you WANT to hear from. There&39;s no way around that. Hopefully one day we won&39;t need to go to such lengths to avoid what has become the scourge of the internet.

So, to summarize:

1) use Mailwasher to delete and bounce spam, which hopefully will get you dropped from spam lists, and

2) encode your email address on web pages and other places where it can be harvested. Try the one-two punch and see if it works for you. If nothing else, it will give you the satisfaction of knowing spammers are getting useless messages in their mailboxes too.

Sharon Fling is the author of "How To Promote Your Local Business On the Internet", and publishes an electronic newsletter that gives business owners tips, tools and resources for targeting local customers. For more information, visit http://www.geolocal.com or send a blank email to: subscribe@localbizpromo.com?subject=TRAART

Evict the Spammers from Your Inbox

Trust, Inc.Block Spam and Other Email Threats From Entering Your Gateway
Spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial email, is a powerful advertising channel for many products and services. As a result, spamming has become a profitable business, driven by the low cost of sending email compared to other direct marketing techniques. The high return on investment for spammers has resulted in an overwhelming volume of unwanted messages in personal and business email boxes. Consider this: Conducting a direct mail campaign costs an average of $1.39 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 14 is necessary just to break even on a product with a $20 gross profit. Selling the same item via unsolicited spam email costs only $0.0004 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 50,000 gets the seller back to break-even; anything above that is gravy. With profit margins like these, its easy to see why spammers will try anything to get past anti spam technology to deliver their messages to your inbox.

Types of Spam Threats
The recent onset of fraudulent spam variants such as phishing and spoofing pose an even greater risk than the spam volume clogging email servers. Spammers use techniques such as phishing and spoofing to fool users into opening messages that, at first glance, appear innocuous.

Phishing
Phishing is a specific type of spam message that solicits personal information from the recipient. Phishers use social engineering techniques to fool end users into believing that the message originated from a trusted sender, making these attacks especially dangerous because they often con victims into divulging social security numbers, bank account information or credit card numbers. In one six-month period from November 2003 to May 2004, phishing attacks increased in frequency by 4000%, and the trend continues upward.

An example of phishing is an email that appears to come from a bank requesting that users log into their account to update or correct personal information. When the users follow a link embedded in the email, they are redirected to a site that looks and behaves like the expected bank website. However, unbeknownst to the soon-to-be identity theft victims, the site is actually controlled by the scam artists who sent the email; any and all information entered by the victim can now be used in a variety of ways, none of them good.

Spoofing
Spoofing is a deceptive form of spam that hides the domain of the spammer or the spams origination point. Spammers often hijack the domains of well-known businesses or government entities to make spam filters think the communication is coming from a legitimate source.

Todays spammers are more crafty than ever before and have begun blending elements of both phishing and spoofing into their messages, further spinning their web of deception. The toxic combination of spoofing and phishing presents a major threat that can trick most anyone into providing personal information to a stranger.

Toothless Legislation
On January 1, 2004, President Bush signed into law the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or CAN-SPAM Act. While well intentioned, CAN-SPAM has done little or nothing to curb the flow of unwanted email. In fact, an estimated 97% of all spam email sent in 2004 violated the Act, and the United States still dwarfs other nations in terms of the origin of spam, with CipherTrust research revealing that an astonishing 56.77% of all spam comes from U.S.-based IP addresses. While CAN-SPAM was designed to decrease the overall volume of spam, the exact opposite has happened: in 2004, spam accounted for approximately 77% of all email traffic, and phishing attacks continue to increase exponentially, with studies showing an increase of 4000% from November 2003 to May 2004.

Anti Spam Software for the Desktop
The dramatic increase in spam volume has prompted a corresponding surge in stand-alone anti spam software solutions for the desktop, all with varying levels of effectiveness. Some anti spam software uses text filtering to screen incoming messages for known characteristics of spam, while other solutions rely solely on reputation systems that monitor and categorize email senders by IP address according to their sending behavior. Still other anti spam software uses challenge/response filters to block unapproved mail until the sender responds (manually) to a challenge email sent to their email account to verify his or her identity.

With so many different methods of filtering spam, no single software-based desktop anti spam solution is capable of effectively stopping spam before it reaches the inbox. The only way to successfully fight spam is to create an anti spam cocktail including reputation services, text filters, constant updates and a host of other best-of-breed spam blocking methods. Just as importantly, an effective anti spam solution should reside at the email gateway, not at the desktop. Without protection at the gateway, mail servers waste massive amounts of bandwidth and storage space processing every message, wanted or not, and end users face the unenviable task of deciding what to do with the countless spam messages that successfully reach them.

Take a Consolidated Approach to Anti Spam
Although it takes a person only a moment to process a message and identify it as spam, it is difficult to automate that human process because no single message characteristic consistently identifies spam. In fact, there are hundreds of different message characteristics that may indicate an email is spam, and an effective anti spam solution must be capable of employing multiple spam detection techniques.

In addition to effectively identifying spam, businesses must be assured that legitimate mail is not blocked in error. Even one false positive, or incorrectly blocked email, can have a significant impact on businesses today. Accurate spam blocking requires a combination of tools to examine various message criteria combined with real-time research and intelligence data.
By aggregating multiple spam detection technologies like text filtering, reputation services, traffic analysis and other best-of-breed techniques, and placing the solution
Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry's largest provider of enterprise email security. The companys flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection today.