SPAM

Every day, millions of people receive dozens of unsolicited commercial e-mails known popularly as "spam." Some users see spam as a minor annoyance, while others are so overwhelmed with spam that they are forced to switch e-mail addresses. This has led many Internet users to wonder: How did these people get my e-mail address?

Junk e-mail, a.k.a. spam, inconveniences tens of millions of Internet users and imposes huge costs on ISPs. Armed with lists of e-mail addresses, "spammers" send billions of e-mail messages every day -- messages that most users don't want.

It is often difficult or impossible to tell how a spammer acquired a user's e-mail address. Was it a result of some activity the user engaged in? Did the user give his/her e-mail address to the wrong person? Was the user randomly targeted? Are there steps the user could take to avoid such spam in the future? Some spam is generated through attacks on mail servers, methods that don't rely on the collection of e-mail addresses at all. In "brute force" attacks and "dictionary" attacks, spam programs send spam to every possible combination of letters at a domain, or to common names and words. While these attacks can be blocked, some spam is likely to get through. In many cases, spam generated by these attacks will be directed to shorter e-mail address (like bob@domain.com) before it is directed to longer addresses (like bobwilliams@domain.com).

Spam probably began at the same time the e-mail, or "Simple Text Messages" started being sent via wire! Those same wonderful programmers that has created tools to message people at the speed of light, also created the opportunity for other to send information at a VERY limited cost. How many times has your neighbor dropped a joke or cartoon that was cut out of the newspaper into an envelope, put a stamp on it, and sent it to you, thinking that this is something that you have waited all your life for?!? Just what I though, never. That same person will not even think twice about clicking the "forward to all" button on that E-Mail client to make sure that everyone they have ever contacted has that very same type of information!

Gas buying boycott for a day, forward to all for a good cause, massive amounts of porn advertisements, get rich quick schemes, "great" stock tips and many others! These are all the kind of messages that I receive on a daily basis in my spam E-Mail account inbox (more on that later). A note on the pr0n: I have NEVER put my address on ANY adult site, ever! Parents beware. Your children may be getting more than they ask for in their E-Mail boxes if they have a "free" E-Mail account.

If you think that you just created a "fresh" E-Mail account with Hotmail and will start with nothing in your inbox. Guess again. I created a new address and within 24 hours I had 3 E-Mails. 72 hours, over 18. That same "Fresh" E-Mail account has about 10 or so per day, every day. I had NEVER used this account with ANYTHING! Porn, weight loss, you name it, it is there, and usually from "forged" E-Mail address accounts.

Most ISP's and providers have a "abuse" procedure if a particular customer is using their service to "illegally" send Spam to others. This is all fine and dandy, but you do not HAVE to use ANY provider, to avoid fueling the fire, I am not going to get into great detail about the exact way to do it. But there is PLENTY of free ISP's and free SMTP servers that you may bounce or relay messages through, "forging" the header information (to not be able to trace it back to the person that sent it) and get your message out to the planet. I have sent numerous "abuse" information to MSN, Hotmail, AOL, etc because the address that the E-Mail claimed it was "from" was something like fred54678kjd@msn.com or getcashfast@hotmail.com In every case, I was sent information back that it was a "forged" header and the account does NOT even exist.

Say you can send:

100 per minute

6,000 per hour

144,000 per day

4,320,000 per month

Not bad for free to $20 for a "traditional" ISP. Just in stamps alone, that would be almost 1.5 million dollars a month! Not including the cost of envelopes, paper, time used stuffing, etc! Sure, this example may be a little off base, technically speaking, due to the many factors involved, but think of cable or DSL accounts and then think again. Also, not to awful many "direct mail" marketers are sending mail to EVERY possible mailing address that it may be in every home town, but with the wonders of computers, the possibility is there and easy.

How can you fight back? It's a losing battle, but you can do some things to help cut back on the crap in your inbox every day.

Give these options a look. You may be surprised in what you can do with a little bit of work to save you time later.

Some other quick tips you should already be doing are: